Panzer General was a major commercial hit: 250,000 units were sold at full price, and long tail sales continued in the years ahead.

The fighter planes must negotiate dual roles: destroying the enemy air force and protecting their own bombers.

The player must carefully observe the road system to speed the advance, or may use Bridge engineers to cross the rivers.

Panzer General has 38 scenarios based on real or fictitious battles from World War II.

If the player achieves a major victory both in Britain and in Moscow, he or she is allowed to carry out an invasion of the United States and reach Washington.

[1][2] The Strategic Simulations (SSI) team had played a Japanese-language version of the game's Sega Genesis release extensively, and were inspired by its streamlined design.

[2] Scenario designer Chuck Kroegel later described Panzer General's structure as "diametrically opposed to the Gary Grigsby type of game that SSI was used to making".

[3] The company's Graeme Bayless later wrote of Daisenryaku: "The genius in this game was the fact that it took the highly complex subject (WWII conflict on land) and boiled it down to the pertinent parts".

[5] The following year, T. Liam McDonald of GameSpot reiterated that the game had sold over 250,000 copies, and noted that 60,000 of these sales came from its PlayStation release.

[6] In 2007, Retro Gamer dubbed Panzer General "greatest-selling true wargame of all time", and SSI's most successful title across all genres.

[17] A critic for Next Generation argued that while the music and battle animations quickly wear thin, the game allows them to be turned off and "what it lacks in style, it makes up in substance".

He made particular note of the impressive depth of the strategy and the ability to control nearly every land and aircraft used in the World War II European theater.

Before Panzer General, wargames were supposed to be complex, intimidating things, accessible only by the anointed few, the grognards, veterans of decades of board gaming and masters of military arcana.

SSI's Panzer General, however, shattered that view, with excellent graphics and animation, and sheer fun that drew in grizzled campaigners as well as green novices.

[22]Bruce Geryk of GameSpot argued that Panzer General resurrected the computer wargaming genre.