Let’s give a brief introduction for those of you who’ve never heard of Cossacks. It’s a RTS game that for once lives up to its epic billing. It’s set between the 16th and 18th centuries and sees you taking control of one of the abundance of civilizations on offer in order to fight your way to the top. Oh, and did we mention it’s epic.
As well as the huge battles, which often see more than 8000 units on screen at a time, there is also a thriving economy that needs to be built up to provide you with the units needed to fight your battles. Resources have to be gathered, materials traded, and troops well fed.
This is the second expansion pack for Cossacks but this time the game is stand-alone meaning you don’t need to own the original game to play it, which we like. As you’d expect it features the usual smattering of gameplay tweaks, bug fixes, along with tons of new missions, a couple of new civilizations and some new units, all for £20 which is rather good if you ask us.
Hungary and Switzerland are introduced as the new civilizations and both have unique new units. In total there are also 100 new maps to play around with along with new terrains and a user mod pack that has another 30 or so units.
However, don’t forget that essentially this is still the same game that was released last March. It’s heavy on the micromanagement and to be honest slightly scary when you first begin to play it, although this does mean that it has a wealth of depth to it. The AI is still a little tedious and refuses to move units out of the line of fire of your artillery preferring them to just stand there and be killed. As usual with this type of game, victory comes from constructing the right buildings and units quicker than your enemy rather than through your own tactical prowess.
Despite it’s ageing engine the game still looks quite good and the game moves at a quick enough pace, whilst this also means you won’t need a mega PC to be able to run it. There are some new online options as well such as a rating system and the chance to form alliances with the computer controlled players.
And this is about it. Those of you who enjoyed the original Cossacks will probably find enough here to justify the price and it’s credit to CDV that it only costs £20 but ultimately it still inherits the problems from the original game and those of you who never got on with the original won’t find anything here to make them change your mind.
74%
For the hardcore Cossacks player only
INFORMATION ABOUT THIS CONTENT:
Originally posted: thediscworld.co.uk (LINK) (ARCHIVED)
Date of publish: 12.2002* (exact date is not known)
Author: unknown
Language of publish: english