Difficulty, individual scenario construction, the light (but still fascinating) strategic layer (which I would like to see expanded in the hypothetical Fantasy General 2 that exists in my head). The unit leveling system in Fantasy War is somewhat interesting, but not an ideal fit in a game like this IMO (or maybe I should say: I’d rather have other Fantasy General mechanics present/possibly expanded on than this). Fantasy General’s advancement system was simpler but still elegant.
The 4 generals added interesting and varied strategic and tactical choices. I don’t recall anything like that in Fantasy Wars, but it has been awhile. Fantasy General had a lot of underrated mechanics that tied into that strategic layer. You couldn’t rush up one or two research trees without suffering but there was still leeway. Newer versions of units were not always a better choice. The system for delivering free stuff to the AI was pretty reasonable (but unfathomable unless you had the hint book or got the information from someone online. That’s not something I care for).
And the hero units had character out the yin yang, not to mention interesting gameplay implications.
If Elven Legacy didn’t reliably CTD on my machine whenever an airship levels up I’d like it more…
I actually own Fantasy Wars and Elven Legacy, but I’ve yet to play them. I really should. Fantasy General though…ah, peacedog hit all the points, but besides that, FG hit a sweet spot that, for me, few games of its type have hit before or since.
There is certainly a factor here that is not quite nostalgia. It was the first war game I got seriously into. When I initially began playing FG, I thought I’d roll over everything with Cavalry (because, you know, Tanks == cool!). Boy did I got rolled. So I read the hintbook (I purchased this as a game/hintbook combo. The hintbook was exceptional, just really amazing) to get a feel for the strategies I needed to be employing (it had several excellent sections detailing general play methods and discussing some of the under-the-hood mechanics). And I fell madly in love with the game. Fantasy Wars has some of those core mechanics at work and that’s great, but it still doesn’t capture the FG feel for me.
And, those additional mechanics are important. Money in FG was to be preciously horded and then carefully spent. The strategic layer was really wonderful, as was the cleverness in each campaign’s design (where you could affect how later battles progressed based on what you did in the short term). I think I secertly didn’t like any RTS post Dune 2 (And I retroactively stopped liking it) until RoN because they tended to have campaign based single player games that ignored the strategic layer.
Panzer General II for 9,99$
Ah so that’s where that cover with the green guy which I vaguely remembered was coming from!
Yeah, Fantasy General is one of my favorite games of all time. I replay it every few years or so (I haave it installed right now), and it holds up extraordinarily well. Easily the best of the General series (though I have a soft spot for the original Panzer General, too).
Fantasy Wars did nothing for me. People sometimes talk about how Advance Wars is a lot like the General games, and I just shake my head and sigh. It’s not.
Ugh. Don’t get me wrong, I like Advance Wars. But any relationship to the general games is entirely superficial (they are both TBS).
Well, I never played any of the PG games. Is PG2 worth checking out? I’ll probably buy it no matter what. I wonder if I am being too optimistic that this might be a sign of other General games appearing, FG in particular.
It’s worth checking out, but I liked the first round of General games a lot better. The pseudo-3D look made the map harder to read and the units harder to identify.
Just picked up PG2, was curious if it was possible to play in a window or if it had to be full screen black with a small res in the middle.
vyshka
2771
[quote=“Demorve,post:2124,topic:45651”]
If I remember right it was one of, if not the first real time game. The other I mentioned was turn based.[/QUOTE]
Bunten’s Modem Wars game for EA did real time prior to his Command HQ game. Modem Wars was also the first game I remember to save replays of games.
I picked up Arx Fatalis a couple of weeks ago when it was on special at GOG but I haven’t been able to get the game to work (I just got around to starting the game up today). The opening video is broken, a jumbled mess, and tends to crash a few seconds into it. If I skip the video, I can make it to the menu and I’ve set up my options to the proper resolution, etc. I took some advice and turned off my AV and combined with the proper settings could make it through the entire video (although it was still a graphical mess of partial images). I noticed some advice to get rid of the video entirely from the game directory so I’ll try that. However, the last time I started the game it BSOD’d Win7 x64 immediately (looks like a video issue, according to the report). Also noted discussions about making sure to set core affinity to a single core, texture fixes to download (got it), and other random troubleshooting tips.
Depending on how much troubleshooting I have to go through, I may just leave it be and move on. It was only about $5, so I don’t feel I lost out on much if so. One of the dangers of buying old games, I guess, is that it’s a gamble to get them to work properly on modern systems sometimes. Just turns out in this case I got the bad roll, but it does tend to make one wary.
Did the issues with GOG’s version of Interstate '76 ever get fixed?
Mostly, I had to use a third party utility to soak up CPU time but it played fine after that. The music was still wonky though, it’s not synchronized to the game at all.
Warren
2775
Sorry I have no advice for you regarding getting the game to work, but I did want to chip in that keep giving it some effort. I’m finding that Arx Fatalis is a fantastic game. Easily the best $5 purchase of recent memory for me.
Decided to take a break from troubleshooting and bought Dark Messiah ($6+) and Puzzle Kingdoms ($1) off a Steam sale. I think those will satisfy me for a bit before getting back to Arx troubleshooting later.
Chuck
2777
Journey Man Project 2 is available now.
Edit: Dammit, there’s an issue with saving and loading: like it crashes the game. Quite a few Windows 7 users (me included) are bitching about it on their website.
GOG has gotten sloppy.
Journeyman was amazing at the time, but having reviewed some video lately, I’m not sure i could handle the interface, emotionally-speaking. I think I’d lose it.
Does the sequel do that better?
Independence war II is now up. I remember playing this and getting constantly beat up on the 2nd or 3rd mission. You have to steel some stuff and I got blown up every time after picking up the stuff. I feel I might have missed a good game there.
As much as I love space sims, I could never get too far in this one either. I’ll give it another whirl though.
IWar 2, one of the best space sims ever.
Putting together the best of two worlds: the sandbox galaxy concept with autonomous traffic and economy with handcrafted missions that gives you more variety and advance the plot. Great graphics for the time, very well done feeling of being a space pirate assaulting convoys, takng the cargo and running away to your base, and some interesting concepts in ship management and upgrades.
