Star General

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PanzerGeneral
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Joined: Wed Oct 14, 2020 7:10 am

Star General

Post by PanzerGeneral »

There was a time when SSI gave up with going only for historical-related strategy games. First one was Fantasy General and it was quite a surprise for all fans used to play games like Panzer General or Allied General. And suddenly there was new strategy with fantasy oriented world, full of unusual creatures, spells and magic artifacts! Well, regarding that next step of moving all the action into space was not very surprising! The only question was: can rules, created for panzer battles, be succesfully applied space with huge battleships? Well, unfortunately answer is nope, it can not... But let's start from the begining.

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Star General is battle strategy that take place on two levels: first one is galactic space (in fact it is just preparation for main game) where we can command starships - and second part is battle on planet. This is actually more typical strategy and we have here typical land army like tanks, infantry, aircrafts... so it is more like Allied or Panzer General. But in this game before we actually start invasion on the planet we need to do some preparation steps first: build up star fleet (including transport ships), creating units we will use during land battle, doing all the transport to target planet... And quite interesting idea is we play on this two levels: space and planet. It makes all game faster or more dynamic.

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In the game we can choose to lead among 7 different galactic species that are competing to rule galaxy. Each of it has some unique abilities and
skills, have access to some special technologies and units that are unknown to others. Units (there are many, many units in game!) differs from each others by its appearance. We have access to 16 types of commons units, in space and 14 land units. We have also some number of units that are special and uniqie to every race. But... well, not so fast. To build up units and create big and powerful army we need to have some economy background and technical infrastructure. You have to establish shipyards and factories in space, research and development centers, military facilities and on planet surface - mines. Everything cost money (here called Resource Points) and to build army you'll need lot of it!

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I have impression that in this game SSI wanted to add as many new ideas as possible. We have combat in space, we have ground combat as well. We have many types of units with combat experience. We can do research and develop new weapons. We have diplomacy, trade, 7 races. We have also scenario editor so we can create our own battles. But somehow all together it is not working fine. Maybe all that elements considered itself separately looks good, but when you have everything in one game it's not fitting. In result this game is lacking playbility, and it is most important thing for computer game! So, if you really want to play "General" game, go back to Panzer General!

My rate: 6/10.
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