From Field Marshals and Lieutenant Generals to Archmages and Warlords, here comes the next game in SSI's Five Star series (commonly referred to as the General series). Fantasy General takes the well-known Panzer General/Allied General game engine out of historical domains and into realms of never-history, thereby broadening the series' gaming horizon and making it accessible to an even wider range of gamers than the previous two games enjoyed. Gamers who've played the first two games will be able to jump into gameplay almost instantly-while there have been some changes to the game system (to fit it into the fantasy background), the core gameplay remains the same. Gamers new to the system (even beginners) should have little trouble getting started but, as with many strategy games, mastery may be somewhat more difficult to obtain.
The fiction behind Fantasy General, while hardly original, fits the game and is well written. The peaceful land of Aer, where learning and commerce flourished and everyone was warm and toasty, has fallen under the shadow of yet another Ultimate Bad Guy. While he has pretty much the whole world under his dark reign, the Forces of Good are still around and getting formed into a resistance, with a Council of Five at its core. You take the role of a heroic general charged with leading the Forces of Good against the Ultimate Bad Guy in a series of battles (the familiar campaign system).
Fantasy General is a DOS-based game, a fact that will please many who had trouble with a memory-hungry, surprisingly processor-intensive Win95-based Allied General. In fact, Win95 players are told they shouldn't run the game from a DOS window because it can act unpredictably. Because it's DOS-based, the minimum system configuration is a 386/40 (never thought I'd see a base requirement that low again!); the least-powerful system I tested it on was a 486/33 with a quad speed CD, and gameplay was still snappy (even with animations turned on). On a Pentium/60 the game plays very quickly (even with a minimum install), and on P-133... well, let's just say you won't spend much time waiting.
At start-up you're given a choice of gameplay options: type of game, difficulty levels, and the character you'll play. Games now come in three flavors: the campaign, individual scenarios, and something called The Arena. The core of the game (at least until you finish it) is the campaign. The system here is pretty much the same as the earlier games - you work your way through a series of battles across the continents of Aer. Different continents feature different terrain, forcing you to maintain a mixed-forces army (some units perform poorly in certain types of terrain). You are also given five individual scenarios to play. Unlike the earlier games, these aren't scenarios from the campaign game, but are completely independent. Some players might take umbrage at this, but it makes sense to me; because of the game's fantasy setting, there is just a touch of questing (in the form of magical items and heroes in locations like caves and ruins; do you ever wonder why heroes hang out in ruins?), and playing the individual scenarios out of their correct order would spoil this.
However, all is not lost, as there is always The Arena. The Arena gives Fantasy General something the series has lacked: the ability to generate battles other than those included in the game. You can choose a pre-generated map or a random one (specifying continent and terrain types, but not size), pick a character (including the bad guys) and modify his or her attributes, set starting gold and AI levels, build armies or use ones from an existing campaign, etc. You can even use The Arena to challenge others via play-by-mail (PBM is also supported with the individual scenarios). The only thing missing is the ability to design your own maps, or to create randomized campaigns (of course, you can set the battle's length as long as 100 turns, which is almost a campaign in itself).
Being able to take on the role of different characters also adds to the game system. In the campaign you can play either a knight, a lord, an archmage, or a sorceress (of course, the one female character is scantily clad... sigh). Unlike Allied General, where choosing to be a General for a particular nation pretty much meant you played a different set of battles, the campaign appears to be the same for each character. What is different, however, are the attributes of the commanding General and the force mix he or she can bring to the battlefield. So, even if you're fighting the across the same ground, the nature of combat will change with each character.
This is even more true in The Arena, where you can set a range of characteristics for your General and can choose from all the unit types. I wish there were somewhat more characterization involved in the character elements of the game; as it stands now, they are more a collection of statistics than heroes, wizards, and warlords. Also, more should have been done to differentiate the battles (especially ones occurring on the same continents, where the terrain is similar); in its present form, objectives, forces, and scenario length may change, but the feel of battles doesn't alter much, and dulls somewhat after long play.
New to the Five Star series is the concept of research (Rewards Allocation, in Fantasy General parlance). Before battles you can set the allocation of gold between research into different unit classes and the treasury (for buying and upgrading units and providing replacements during battle). As you get gold (captured during battle or as an award for successfully completing a battle), it gets allocated into researching new units in the different classes (and to either magical or mortal units, if that applies). You can put up to 15% of your loot into any category, and must use at least 1% for each (I guess the members of the Council of Five have to answer to the guilds and other folks back home), and must leave at least 10% available to the treasury. Beta versions of the game allowed you to set how much to allocate between magic and mortal units, but that was removed (to my chagrin) in the final version - I guess the designers felt having to set percentages of percentages was getting to be a bit too much. In general, however, I like the way research has been implemented in a game that's mostly combat-oriented; it provides an extra bit of spice without bogging down your rapid gameplay.
Army management is very similar to Panzer General/Allied General. Examine existing units, upgrade them, buy new units, etc. You may also assign magical artifacts (which you come across during combat) to specific units. There are ten unit classes you can purchase from (an eleventh class, heroes, contains single units which can only be found during battle), including old fantasy standards like heavy infantry, archers, and spell casters, and some more unique types like skirmishers, bombardiers, and sky hunters. I counted over 180 unit types (not including the heroes), although not all of these will be available to each character (except in The Arena, where anything goes). Units can also be classed as mortal, magical, or mechanical, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
In general, the unit classes are very similar to those in Fantasy General's historical cousins: sky hunters perform a lot like fighters, skirmishers like reconn units, and archers like light artillery. Because of this, gameplay (even with magic) is very reminiscent of the earlier games. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion; if you are a bit tired of the system after Panzer General and Allied General, the fantastical aspects of Fantasy General may not provide enough new flavoring to hold your interest; if you just love the system, then the similarities will pull you right back in.
Battles are very fast affairs, especially the scenarios on the first continent (which you can basically consider a training ground). Battle animations are much shorter, and take place on the map screen instead of a separate window; I actually found that turning them off detracted a bit from play (without them, things happen almost too quickly to absorb). Not surprisingly, the AI is something of a mixed bag. The computer is usually very intelligent in terms of managing its armies, moving weakened units out of the line of combat and replacing them with fresh units. The AI does "cheat" in that at more difficult levels it is given more gold (and perhaps more units, although this can be harder to tell with fog-of-war turned on) with which to work. Sometimes it seems like winning a scenario is more a matter of finding the trick behind it than wielding effective strategies; a scenario that can seem overwhelmingly difficult when played one way can be a snap when played differently. Losing a scenario (at least all the ones I've lost) always results in the end of the campaign. You don't ever get a chance to try it again with your reduced forces. The path of the campaign game isn't always locked in; sometimes you can bypass areas of a particular continent, although this may mean you'll be meeting a stronger force than you are prepared to take on.
Unlike games such as Command & Conquer and Warcraft II, Fantasy General is more of a wargame than a strategy game. Because of this, it's important to do a bit of homework on the unit types in order to have any success in later stages of the campaign (either that or learn from your mistakes!). The game forces you to play with a balanced army; loading it up with any one unit type won't work in the long run. Thankfully, the manual gives you a complete run-down on the unit classes, exhaustive tables listing all the unit types and their characteristics, and appendices outlining each spell, special capability, and magical artifact. Like many such games, correctly managing these numbers and statistics seems to be more important to winning than does implementing wise strategy or exhibiting strong leadership characteristics, and causes the game to become a tad dull for me after extended playing. Of course, this is a complaint I have with the more historically-based wargames, and one that isn't shared with a lot of the hard-core wargamers I know, so take it as you will.
Overall, I find Fantasy General fairly entertaining, although I do question its long-term replayability. There's nothing outstandingly original here, just a nice reworking of a solid game system. Of the three games in the Five Star series, Fantasy General is my favorite - because of the fantasy setting, the historical and game scale complaints I had about the earlier two games don't apply here. Will this occupy my time the way that an X-Com, a C&C, or a Steel Panthers did? No, probably not. However, if you're a fan of the other games (or even if you liked Panzer General but not Allied General), you'll definitely want to consider Fantasy General (or at least try out the demo). Other strategy gamers looking for a new game with a strong beer 'n' pretzels wargame-feel may also be interested, but hard-core wargamers will probably want to pass.
