Fantasy General

This was one of my favorite fantasy strategy games of all times. Think Panzer General in a D&D setting. I might even still have the beautiful box somewhere in my basement, but the original game stopped working with later Windows versions and I never bothered using Dox Box. At the beginning of the game you can pick your general from various character classes and then follow a story campaign through many missions. You take your core army from one battle to the next and over the course of the campaign you get access to a huge number of different units. Unlike Panzer General your leader can cast a handful of spells and thereby take direct influence. If you like fantasy strategy games then this is a must buy. You won't be disappointed.

I always play RPGs, especially 20 years ago, so I missed the turn-based strategy games altogether. I've tried a few since, but there is just something about this one I like, from the beginning. But, believe it or not, I didn't buy the game for my PC! I installed and play the game on my Android tablet. Using Magic DosBox, it works really well. I just installed the GOG package on my laptop, then copied all the pertinent files to my Android SD card, set it up in Magic DosBox, and it works like a dream! BTW, for those who are having trouble with the game running too fast on their PCs, just turn on frame rate syncing and it will run fine; this works for most older games as their delta loops depend upon frame rate as their time reference.

If you're like me, you wanted to like Panzer General back in the day, but were put off by its flaws: limited "useful" unit types, annoyingly restricted time limit that required perfect play which was only possible with advanced knowledge of the enemy setup, and the ridiculously harsh unit experience grind where somehow American troops in 1942 north Africa were as experienced (if not more) than your troops that have been campaigning since 1939 Poland. Fantasy General solves all of this and adds more. -Tons of unit variety. Skirmishers (slingers) are weaker but can attack melee units without retaliation, and much welcome additional option for softening up tough targets whereas in Panzer General this role was limited to air (nullified by abundant anti-air) and cumbersome artillery. Archers are weaker than skirmishers, but can attack ANY unit without retaliation and support adjacent units. Various mage units have special spells. You can balance your army between "magical" units that start out tougher but cannot be upgraded, or mortal units that start off weaker but can be upgraded. -More flexible time limits. You can actually slug it out like a wargame now to win scenarios within the time limit. Panzer General was more of a puzzle game that demanded nothing less than the one perfect solution. No more silly Panzer General situation where you inflict 10 to 1 losses but still lose the battle. Fantasy General offers you more pitched battles whereas Panzer General was just a series of annoying speedbumps to slow you down. -More between battle stuff. You get the option on where to battle. You get gold between battles you can divide between R&D for new units (you even get to pick the category of units you want to focus research on) and purchasing units. All in all, you if you liked even just the concept of Panzer General, then definitely pick up Fantasy General, by far the best of the "General" series.

I have been waiting so very long for this to come to Gog, and am quite happy with the port. A few small glitches prevent me from giving it the 5 stars I want to. First, the mouse controls are very persnickety, and you have to use ctrl f11 and f12 to get the mouse to slow down so it is only annoying. Sometimes though, I have had this crash out the game. Also, don't minimize, it doesn't come back to full screen. Another small glitch is in the soundtrack, it doesn't change tracks smoothly and the audio is clipped in places. Other than that, a great game reborn. Thanks GOG team for bringing it back!

Got this one for free during a GoG sale at the same time I purchased HOMM3 and didn't think much of it as I got right to work liberating Erathia. Well, today I needed something to do while I had my morning coffee on my day of and so I decided to liberate Aer (the world in this game). I have to say I'm impressed. All the story is voice acted, it's got great art and visuals and really harkens back to a time when game designers gave their all to give games a feel and make them believable. For anyone who's played a hex-based TBS before, this'll be a breeze to pick up, and yet somehow still manage to be challenging even if it seems "primitive." There's no resource management in terms of collecting gems, wood or taxes or any of the like in other games such as HOMM. You find gold as you go by liberating towns, caves, dungeons, etc. and use that coupled with the spoils you get from your defeated enemies to replenish your troops, research upgrades and new ones. Then deck out your armies with items you find and go crush your enemies (if you're lucky!). If you don't go into it expecting too much, I think this one will end up on your favorites list for sure. And it works flawlessly on Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update (just in case you were wondering). But DOSbox pretty much works flawlessly on everything, to be fair.