As I jokingly say - Central NAT was invented to lure Checkpoint admins to the Fortinet world :)
AS a technical feature it does not add much - mainly it separates managing NAT rules from Security Rulebase into its own, NAT Policy (OK, it does add ability to manipulate src port, but who uses it anyway :)). But it does become mandatory when working in Policy-based Mode, i.e. when you configure UTM features directly inside each Security Rule, instead of Security Profiles.
Configuring it, anyway, is just as easy as doing the 'old' way. SNAT means that not only Destination IP is manipulated, but Source IP inside the packet as well. I even wrote post how to do it once - https://yurisk.info/2021/05/24/perform-snat-and-dnat-on-the-same-traffic-in-fortigate/
HTH