Cossacks Anthology

There’s a very good chance that your first thought upon loading Cossacks will be: "haven’t I seen this somewhere before?" You certainly have – this game bears striking similarities to the Age of Empires series, as well as various other historical RTS titles. While it does have some nice touches, and a flash of inspiration here and there, the generally derivative nature of the gameplay prevents Cossacks from being particularly noteworthy. The game also hasn’t aged that well – the real time strategy genre has come a long way since this game was released over half a decade ago.

Cossacks Anthology comes with the original game and its two expansion packs – Art of War and Back to War. They are all set around the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the various campaigns you can play through dozens of different wars, siding with over 16 nations. However, you’ll soon find that the differences between these sides are almost purely cosmetic – besides a few race-specific units, everyone has access to the same buildings and troops, albeit with a different coat of paint.

The actual gameplay mechanics will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever played an RTS. Just imagine a dumbed-down version of the Age of Empires resource system, and you’ll have a good idea as to how Cossacks operates. Food (solely in the form of wheat), wood, stone, iron, and coal must all be gathered, but because mines never run out and fields never need to be replanted, it’s pretty easy going. Basically you just need to get everything in place so you can start pumping out large armies.

And this is where Cossacks is at both its best and worst. On the one hand, you can build armies made up of thousands of units, engaging in huge battles against your opponents. The epic scale never fails to impress. On the other hand, the combat mechanics can be extremely tedious, mostly due to some less-than-stellar AI. This isn’t so much of a problem when playing against another human, but the enemy AI can get very annoying – it seems to exploit your own troop control troubles with ease.

It’s this sort of thing that really shows how aged Cossacks feels. While there is some fun to be had, the fact of the matter is that there are dozens of better RTS games out there. Pretty much anything you find in Cossacks will have been done better in something like Age of Empires III or Empire Earth II. Still, the newly-released Replay version of Cossacks Anthology means you at least get a huge amount of bang for your buck – you can pick this game up for a mere $10. If you’re new to strategy games, and don’t want to spend much money on one, you can do worse than Cossacks Anthology – but if you don’t mind spending a bit more, you can certainly do a lot better.