Fantasy General holds up well in part because of its emphasis on clear presentation over flashy graphics. Unit types are easy to distinguish and terrain is clearly marked, letting you focus on strategy instead of deciphering the display. Unit strengths and weaknesses relative to other types of units and in different types of terrain combine to create a lot of tactical depth. Some missions add further depth with a good balance between needing to move quickly and wanting to collect extra resources for future missions. As in many "campaign" wargames, units move with you from mission to mission, gain experience, and can be upgraded. Of course this comes with the usual design challenge of magnifying the difficulty settings, as bad luck losing key units early can compound to make later missions more difficult than the designers intended, and vice-versa. That can make later missions either boring or frustrating even when the game begins as an interesting challenge. The campaign research/upgrade system also encourages unit specialization a little too much, which was worked around with the cludge of boosting the AI when an army is too specialized rather than balancing the research and upgrade costs more carefully. I could also ask for the river terrain to be treated as hex edges rather than full hexes, but that may well have been a system requirements limitation when the engine was first developed. Despite a few minor flaws, the game provides many hours of fun, and is one I've returned to many times. And one final caveat: As of this writing, I've played only the original SSI release, not the GOG re-release, so I can't speak to the quality of the new installer, OS adaptation, etc. The SSI version I have played is very stable on hardware and operating systems of its era.
