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. 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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