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Fighting units are split between melee, ranged and cavalry, with cannons in the mix in order to break down city walls and boats to schlepp your guys across the ocean or pummel buildings from afar. You create the fundamentals of a city and have workers to keep resources coming in, all in the name of recruiting bigger and better armies. I'd love to see Cossacks' tech applied to a full-on city management game, but hell, that's my problem, not its.Īge of Empires is the best benchmark, in terms of the spit between bricks and blood. #Cossacks 3 factions skinWatching the gradual construction of churches and ports and barracks is a treat, because while this is very much a 2000s-era game underneath the skin, that skin is high-fidelity and packed with tiny details and pretty shadowing that it arguably doesn't really need. It is a game about warfare first and foremost, which is entirely its perogative - it's just that its peacetime is so satisfying and I'd love the opportunity to have more of it before opting for a swift bout of genocide to bring proceedings to a close. The major bummer for me is that, though Cossacks 3 leans heavy on building a town in the early stages of a mission or battle, this stuff reaches its end fairly fast, shrugged off in favour of those big battles. It's not simply that it's scratching a neglected itch, but also that it does so deftly, never struggling under the weight of its massed battles and almost illustration-like appearance. I won't go so far as to say 'fresh', but I've had a good time with Cossacks 3 despite its inherently familiar nature and limited amount of variety. My point being, what might have felt weary in 2007 feels sweet and welcome now. And so it was that I bought a Greggs' pastie and a can of fizzy pop as I played Cossacks 3, to better transport myself back to my younger days of less pressure and terrible diets. #Cossacks 3 factions fullThe pace of publishing was such that I could spend a full week on a review rather than dash through as fast as possible. I am almost certain I reviewed at least one Cossacks game during that period, though I can remember nothing of it. #Cossacks 3 factions PcIt takes me back to a time when, working for PC Format magazine back in the days when magazines were something other than an expensive way to pass a train journey if your phone battery was running low, games like this would arrive on my desk every week. Cossacks 3, which in a sentence is a traditional build and bash RTS with higher unit counts and a little more focus on formation, is a comfort blanket, and I regret nothing. ![]() It's so thoroughly unreconstructed as an RTS, a straight-to-the-point rarity in changed times, like a visitor from an alt-timeline where strategy games never gave up on the Age Of Empires formula and were still the same in 2016, but slicker and flashier. It's a demi-remake of the 2001 original, in fact. ![]() #Cossacks 3 factions seriesGSC Gameworld (they of STALKER fame, at least in name) are behind this 17th- and 18th-century Europe-set real-time strategy game, which though it bears a 3 in its name does not present any particular barriers to series newcomers. Cossacks 3 is not PC gaming's norm in 2016 any more than Mario or Sonic are consoles', but I must admit that I found it to be something of a balm. I sought, somewhat in vain, to defend myself, because in truth it has been many years since I played a historical RTS. Our interests and stereotypes had not changed since 1997. This, these tiny men, those cod-historical serif fonts and that expanse of terrain - this was what PC gamers played all the time. He didn't say anything when he glaced at my screen didn't have to, for his face said it all. Whilst I was playing Cossacks 3, a console-focused journalist of some reknown (TV's famous Simon Parkin, since you ask) popped his head into the rotting cupboard above a coffee shop that I attempt to call an office. ![]()
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