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Despite its problems, it manages to replicate what made RTS’ of yore enjoyable with its vast armies and settlement building. There’s comfort to be found in Cossacks 3. This would be fine if the attacks weren’t so often, with longer games resulting in the enemy simply overwhelming you through sheer numbers. The poor AI extends outside of battles as well, as they frequently send wave after wave of units against your settlement with no tactics in order to force you to drop everything and defend. Watching your carefully laid plans fall apart in an instant is depressing, as the AI defaults to free-for-all charges time and time again. Not that this makes the game difficult, as the simple rock-paper-scissors dynamic means that battles can be easily won with the correct unit type. This goes for the enemy AI as well, with large formations becoming giant balls of death with little organization. When battles actually begin however, it becomes readily apparent that for all the tactics and formations that you have planned out, the AI will simply rush forward at each battle.
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As battles are fought between hundreds of units, this can take quite some time. Different formations have different strengths, with the square formation resulting in fewer casualties from artillery due to being more spread out, while arranging regiments in a line gives them an advantage against charging artillery.Īnnoyingly, there is no easy way to form regiments, requiring you to repeat the same process over and over to manage an effective army. Simply group up 36 units of the same type, such as pikemen, recruit an officer and a drummer and select one of the formation options available and you have yourselves a regiment. As a result, battles revolve around a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between the units, as cavalry cut down archers and marksmen but are stopped by pikemen, who in turn tend to die very easily from getting shot.Ĭombat is based around forming regiments with your units and arranging them in the proper tactical formation. As a result, you can play as any faction with little fear of being at a disadvantage, though it is disappointing that they are not more distinct from one another. That said, the difference between nations is minimal, as there are only very slight differences between the units. This is made more enjoyable by how good everything looks, from the environments to the buildings to the soldiers themselves. It’s fun to plan each new town or outpost, and there a number of options to choose from when researching new materials or buildings. You select villagers to perform various tasks, such as gathering resources or building a new mill for food, while managing your growth and making sure you have enough defenses in case of an attack. My favorite aspect of Cossacks 3 is undoubtedly the building up of your town and army. It is so straightforward, so simple, that I couldn’t help but become drawn into its trappings. Single player is designed around different campaigns that are framed around different European wars in that time period, though it lacks characters or story. Set in the late 17th and 18th centuries, the game is an old-school RTS through and through, with its base building, resource management and combat evoking games of old. It’s straightforward and to the point, yet ultimately becomes hobbled by its inability to innovate.Ĭossacks 3 is less a sequel and more of a remake of GSC Game World’s first title, Cossacks: European Wars, originally released in 2000. You build a town, send peasants to gather resources, recruit an army and throw it at the enemy in the hopes of defeating them before they conquer you.
#COSSACKS EUROPEAN WARS REVIEW PC#
Playing Cossacks 3 is like stepping into a time machine and experiencing what real time strategy games were like before the genre slowly declined into the annals of PC gaming.