Cossacks:Back to War Review - My Experience the Consumer
What I like about this game is how creative you can be. For example, You can make yourself a very powerful fortress that your enemies can't even destroy (unless your playing Multilayer) You can set up defensive positions of towers walls and gates as well as unit formations. You can pick almost any state in Europe in those times including Russia and Ukraine (thus the name Cossacks) also Algeria and Turkey or rather the Ottoman Empire. Each State has there own unique buildings and units. You will see yourself building the Notre Dame if your France or a Mosque if your Turkey. There is a lot of landmarks or historical buildings you will get to build for each state. What confuses me is if your in a valley map of green and your Turkey or Algeria, you build a building and it comes with sand... so your base is sand patches all over the valley floor I find it a little strange because a lot of Turkey isn't sand and major cities in Algeria back in the day didn't have much sand near by...doesn't make sense to bring it with you...
All the serfs or villagers sound the same. units don't say anything when you click on them the only sounds you hear from Villagers is them chopping wood or gathering stone and sometimes making pointless noises that not even a universal translator can figure out what hes saying. troops or Cavalry don't make any sound unless fighting someone or dieing. Pretty much sound is terrible and it's a complete turn off, however the music is good but you will find yourself in 2 hours of playing that you went over the play list 100 times. Since the sound is really bad in the game I turn it all off and put my own music on so it's all not that bad.
Unit Formations are a bit stupid though unless it is for defensive purposes or if your using pike men for offensive. Even in Cossacks II Formations are somewhat limited and it can be easily destroyed and can have a few programming glitches (like one of your units runs away from the line and goes straight to the enemies base to die then another one will do the same, or they all freeze and won't attack. The only thing good about formations is the extra bonuses they get to attack and defense. If you stand ground your units they get a +9 to defense and a +3 to armor for some reason and its good..again for defending a marching army or Calvary trying to soop in and capture your villagers. Having formations is like having human walls pretty much.
Calvary units is the most enjoyable because they move fast and have amazing attack. Don't put them in formations they become very dumb if you do and vulnerable since they are all tight next to each other. There is lots of different cannons too (with poor sound though) but if your playing the AI maybe put the setting to making them expensive since the AI loves to use Motars on your base when it finds it hard to reach, and it gets really annoying seeing pieces of your base flying all over the place killing everyone (and they never stop doing it either, you'd come in and kill them off..oh look another 6 waves of the same unit formation and motars on it's way...)
The thing I love most about this game is the sea battles. Battle ships are amazing and almost realistic for shots and movement. There are somewhat slow moving and expensive depending on size and how many you build (increase in price the more you build for most of ships) not all your cannons hit your target. So if you have little ships running around your enemy, you will find it amusing to see cannon balls splashing into the water missing your little boat as you do a few sucker shots at them and high tailing it out of there towards your fleet. In this expansion you get a massive ship called the Victoria. It fires at one time 64 or some shots per vally. A slow reload but having 2 of them defending a sea way can mean you own the sea way; ships get wiped out from these bad boys. There weakness is close combat since they can't shoot too close and they are SO slow.
The game would be a lot better if the AI was better and made real Formations and defensive capabilities. I find myself murdering them whenever I feel like attacking. I'm not an expert player don't get me wrong but I can kill off 4 AI all on the same team against just me. And I'm very confident ANYONE who plays Strategy games will know what I mean you can see how easy they are on very hard lol.
I hope my review was helpful. This game makes a good "I'm really bored and I got a laptop or decent PC and I have 2 hours to waste" this game is perfect. I'd play online with friends. Have little LAN parties or whatever. I'd stay way from the public because everyone has different versions of the game which will be difficult in finding someone with your own version. Also a lot of players don't speak English since its a Euro game, friends makes it easier and more enjoyable anyways