Fantasy General

If you wanted great strategy games back in the days of 199x, you looked to SSG ior SSI. Fantasy General from SSI is a gem; esp. once you slow down the scroll speed (see below). Just get it if you want a few hours of fun, casual army building/playing and you don't have Commands and Colors Ancients or Wizard Kings for the tabletop. Well worth the low, low price.

Panzer General was a revelation in computer gaming bringing wargaming to the forefront of PC gaming. The only real issue was making realistic battles work on hardware of the times. There is an expectation that wartime equipment work a certain way and failing to get that correct can limit a game. That's not the case with Fantasy General. The rules in a fantasy realm have to make sense, but they can operate however they want without upsetting history buffs. This game broke from reality in the best way possible and delivered a masterpiece in gameplay and strategy. FG may also be one of the first to incorpate small RPG and unit affinity elements in to a tactical wargame model. They arne't the focus, but they are there to flesh out his game. I'm convinced Gog and other retro game markets resurrected this hidden gem and paved the way for a 2019 sequel that used parts of the original soundtrack.

Fantasy General kicked off my love of turn based strategy when I was a child. Sure I tried Panzer General but it just didn't click, not in the way Fantasy General did. With great gameplay depth, strong soundtrack and visuals, and a highly intuitive interface (note I learnt how to play this at 5 or 6 years old), Fantasy General pulled me in and kept me in the TBS genre. This and Cyberstorm were my TBS go-to's for years and even now I feel they hold up very strongly outside of the limitations imposed by the much smaller screens and lower specs of the time. Some of the highlights of the game: Awesome things: - Amazing soundtrack - Wide unit variety with progression and items - A 5 island campaign with a strong difficulty curve - A clear and unique art style with plenty of details to take in - Multiple characters to play as, each bringing unique armies, abilities and drawbacks as a general The only real issue I've ever had with the game is the massive difficulty spike past the first two islands. I'm happy enough to challenge myself with that now, but those who are new to the genre might find it an unwelcome splash of cold water after the comparatively easy first two campaigns. Overall, 5 stars and I'd give it 6 if I could.

I'm having a blast with this simple hex-based strategy game. Your goal is to shepherd an army through a campaign lasting through many maps. There's some great guidance on YouTube, so that helped me avoid a lot of frustration, and stick to the strong units and leaders. The AI is fun to play against, even at the lower difficulty level, which is where I'm at. In short, stick almost exclusively to heavy infantry, and you'll be fine. Still, some experience with the maps really helps.

I was sceptical about a fantasy-themed Five Star game, as it's not really playing to the strengths of the genres. The joy of fantasy is in exploring a new world and immersing yourself in its lore, while in this game a "Shadowlord" and his faceless mooks have somehow conquered a world consisting of five islands and an equally faceless band of heroes is off to stop them, somehow. That said, initially I was pleasantly surprised. The base mechanics are solid. You have a wide range of units to choose from, which gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your army. The details you won't figure out without consulting a manual or the internet, but you don't really need to because everything works more or less as you expect. Over the course of the campaign you can allocate excess gold to research better types of units, gather experience, and pick up heroes and items along the way. But the game kept going. And going. And going. Every new mission was more or less like the last, except occasionally the units got new art and better stats. Not only was this extremely dull, but protracted campaign length lays bare the weaknesses of the Five Star system -- experience is king, and the AI gets it for free while you have to train it up from scratch. As a consequence you have to be constantly on top of your game. It's not enough to win a stage, you have to win it with minimal losses to avoid setting yourself up for failure in the future. The game stops feeling like a game and starts feeling like work. To make it worse, Fantasy General doesn't share the campaign branching system of the other games in the series -- you have to win every single of the fifty or so repetitive, unmemorable stages in a row, or it's game over. The last straw was when I realised that the majority of the stages are not merely uninspired, but are in fact randomly generated. If the designers couldn't be bothered making the levels, you shouldn't bother playing them.