Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars

"Do it like Napoleon"

Cossacks 2: Napoleonic Wars is a real time strategy game, which takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. This is a game about the musket and the bayonet, you won't find any futuristic laser guns here. The game also requires a good deal of tactical sense, as muskets can take up to a minute to reload.

Gameplay

8/10

The gameplay is on many fronts very straightforward, but on most fronts, it's really tactical. For instance, the city building and technology researching is kept down to a minimum. This is logical because this game only takes place during a few years in the history of the world, and not much new technology was discovered in the then war-torn Europe.

The game lets you play as one of the great powers of the time, namely France, England, Prussia, Russia and Egypt. The game revolves heavily around the tactics that were used during this time period, in that the armies marched slowly towards each other, drew their muskets, and continued to fire at each other with about a minute of loading time in between, until one of the armies fled or was totally annihilated. The battle also sometimes ended in a spectacular bayonet charge. You get to do both in this game.

The battles themselves are fairly simple, you march your armies into firing range of the enemy, and fire away. But this is where the tactics steps in, cause during this time muskets took minutes to reload. So, around your army there are various fields of different colours, green, yellow and red. These stretch out around your army, with green being farthest away, while the red zone is closest. If you fire your guns while the enemy is in the green zone, he will take little or no casualties. If you fire while he is in the red zone, however, his army will most likely get most of his army killed, and the rest will most likely flee. But then again, if your enemy fires first, then your in trouble. This can create a real tension sometimes, when your considering if you should fire our not while your enemy is slowly advancing upon you. you know that if you fire too early, he will not take many casualties, and is free to fire upon you from a much more effective range, but if you wait too long, he will shoot you first, and if too many of your men die, the rest will either flee or be too few to launch a real threatening counter attack.

Resource gathering, city building and upkeep is kept to a minimum. When it comes to resource gathering, it's built in the standard "send your people into a gold/coal/iron mine and forget about them" method. Most of the technologies you can research are too increase the speed in which you gather resources, the rest is some small upgrades to your soldiers. As for refreshing your ranks, the game uses a rather smart option. Put your formation close to a recruit center, and peasants will stream in, get a uniform and a weapon, and join your formation until it's full. This makes you really care about the formations that you create, since the can be replenished for free.

Speaking of formations, there are 3 of them: The standard line formation, which is most effective for shooting and charging the enemy, the column formation, which makes marching on roads much less tiresome (if your armies get tired, they shoot worse). And then there is the Square formation, which is your defence against cavalry charges. To create a formation, you simply build about 120 unites of one type, one officer, one flag bearer and one drummer, and then you can merge them into a formation, which fights much better than just 120 soldiers roaming around by themselves.

The fun of the game is rather short-lived, however. Once you've tested out the various units in all their formations and such, there really isn't much different to do.

Graphics

8/10

The graphics are bright and good, but nothing above standard. Though you can have a huge amount of units on a map at time, a staggering 64.000, these are in 2D, and the game very rarely comes down to actually having 64.000 units fighting each other, plus the framerate just says bye-bye whenever such a situation occurs.

Sound

7/10

This games sound is not bad, but the soundtrack is rather annoying after a while. It's mostly consistent of 17. Century symphonies, which can get extremely annoying after a while. The sound effects on the other hand are quite good, especially the gunfire effects, which really makes it sound like there are thousands of muskets being fired at once.

Value

7/10

The campaign is long enough, and the skirmish games could keep you entertained for a while. While the multi-player isn't directly bad, it's not really likely you'll stick around for a long while. Nothing to complain about really, but nothing special to note either.

Buy or rent?

Well, if you're not to fancied about multiplayer and don't really want a dozen skirmish matches against the AI, then this game could be rented and the campaign beaten in a good weekend gaming, So it is possible to rent it, though you won't get the full package.

Overall

8/10

This game starts of excitingly, but goes a little downhill after you've explored most of the games depth. You could play it a good while if you really like the style, but most people will play it for a week or two, and then be done with it. Could be recommended to strategy fans, and fans of the Napoleonic era should definitely check it out.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/05