It's not very intuitive, but it's at the heart of the system and it forces the player to make some difficult choices about the kinds of units he wants to play with.Īnother difficult choice is how the player spends his gold, which is the equivalent of Panzer General's prestige. The balance and counterbalance among these attack and damage types makes the game about much more than mere unit strength. This is further complicated by different types of damage and weaknesses (for instance, mechanical units are more easily damaged by magic). The concept of combined arms is deeply ingrained in Fantasy General, which lays out an almost ironclad rock/paper/scissors system by giving each unit either a missile, melee, or skirmish attack. How many times have I tried to fire artillery only to realize my 105mm battery was out of ammo? Ugh.I'm glad dragons and giants don't use bullets. Thankfully, Fantasy General dispenses with Panzer General's supply rules, which often slowed the gameplay. Spells have a significant impact, as do the special abilities of whatever wizard you're playing.
Instead of Panzer General's concept of suppression, Fantasy General uses wounds that can be healed by resting. Many units' special abilities make them unique and useful in a way that a historical game wouldn't allow.
The unit types are further divided into four races, each with their own mechanics. Although you can see the engine's roots in the ten basic unit classes (Sky Hunters are fighters, Bombardiers are bombers, Siege Engines are artillery, Cavalry are armor), the system doesn't just feel like the same old game with an alternative tile set. Each unit's information panel is illustrated with a dramatic line drawing that adds more character than the historical games' rather dry detail screens.Īs for the actual mechanics, the Panzer General provides a good framework for the fantasy milieu. Once you look past the fact that the unit pictures are trolls and dragons instead of infantrymen and tanks, Fantasy General looks very much like the previous Generals. It was created by the same internal development team, headed up by Paul Murray, that has made all the games (with the exception of Star General, which was farmed out to a developer called Catware). Since a lot of the game's initial appeal was its historical trappings, there is no small amount of irony that the best instance of the Panzer General games was Fantasy General.įantasy General was the last installment before the photorealistic artwork kicked in and cluttered up the maps.
FANTASY GENERAL 2 RACES SERIES
The series went to various fronts and even left the real world entirely with science fiction and fantasy installments. Unlike wargames, which you play to win once you've learned the mechanics, these games were designed to be played like a puzzle game: you have to play - and fail - once to figure out the solution and then you play a second time to implement the solution. The graphics got more advanced and the series was eventually slathered in photorealistic artwork, draped onto 3D engines of questionable value, and renamed "The Living Battlefield Series." The mechanics got more complex, but it's arguable whether this made the games any better. The first game was a huge success and it spawned what SSI dubbed the 5-Star General series.Īs the series soldiered on, it got worn out and a bit tired. Terrain, supply, experience and combined arms were all significant factors without bogging down the game's mechanics. Panzer General captured some important military concepts without the need for complicated tables and a fat rules book.
You could say it was the equivalent of the French Revolution in wargaming - suddenly, the entrenched monarchy of stuffy elitist tradition was overthrown and the genre was opened to the masses. SSI's first Panzer General was an experiment based on a Japanese console game.
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