Posted on: May 9, 2015

CyrusNunn
Verified ownerGames: 295 Reviews: 16
Hasn't aged gracefully
Fantasy General used to be a great game, and one that I was really looking forward to showing up on GOG. And to be fair, there's still a really good core mechanic in here, even if the best strategy requires only two types of units (Light Cavs and Sky Hunters) to win. The thing is, Fantasy General is really difficult to play. Twenty years of UI improvements are painfully missing here. There are no hotkeys, and the menu layout is just strange and counterintuitive. Plus, the clicks you have to make are usually on different sides of the screen -- there's a lot of unnecessary mouse movement. But the real killer is that there's no way to adjust the mouse scrolling speed, which is virtually instantaneous, given a CPU that's 20 years better than what this was designed for. And there's no way to scroll the map view manually because no hotkeys, so looking at anything besides the four corners of the map becomes a chore of clicking through several screens. I wanted to give this game a perfectly positive review. I really did. I loved it when it came out, but it desperately needs some mods to make it playable. In short, if you can handle a terrible UI, it's a truly a good old game. If you can't, give it a miss.
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