Cossacks 3

The spiteful removal of local LAN, replacing it with needles dependence on developers servers (that didn't work when trying the game with friend!) is bad enough, but removing nations and units from the original game just to sell them back peace by peace via artificial DLCs are too much for me to support this remake of a beloved clasic.

Three hours and I'm out of patience. Lots of great ideas -- though it's annoying that the game pretty much requires you build as many barracks as you possibly can to keep up with the attrition your armies will face -- but a *lot* of problems. Some of these issues are purely technical. The biggest and most consistent ones I've encountered have been the game's graphics suffering a breakdown if I alt-tab to another screen rendering the entire game virtually unreadable and requiring a reload, and said reloading suddenly making any and all unit and building markers disappear from the minimap so I can't see where even visible enemies are at a glance. These both happen literally every single time the situation comes up without exception. And some issues are design. Namely, screw artillery. Not because it's powerful, but because it is functionally indestructible at range. Artillery pieces (particularly cannon) have a *ludicrously* massive HP pool, to the point where I can literally order 10 other cannons to fire on 1 enemy cannon, and even when they manage to hit they do negligible damage -- think less than a hundred out of 9-12.5 *thousand.* Which makes absolutely no sense and removes even the concept of artillery dueling from the game. The only way around this is to attack and seize the cannon with infantry or cavalry, which *will* lead to high casualties even when the artillery is undefended. Except that infantry takes far to long to do so, so that leaves cavalry. Good of one of the first campaigns to decide then that you don't get to make any while fighting and AI that loves to spam cannon. Maybe the game gets better, but I'm not sticking around to find out when I could be playing something that doesn't piss me off with bad design and programming.

Compared to the excellent Cossacks II the game has been dumbed down considerably. Officers can only command units up to 15 men, artillery is completely unmanned and has the habit of switching sides immediately when an enemy grunt manages to get closer to it than own troops. There is also no possibility to switch from round shot to grape or cannister. Cavalry has no officers at all. Infantry formations like line, column or square can only be ordered to units of 15 men with an officer and a drummer. There is also no possibility to fire in ranks or full volley. Everyone blazes away at will. So while you fiddle around with your microunits the AI approaches with blobs of 30, 40 or 50 foot and cav plus a few cannons and gives your men short shrift. Even if you manage to wipe him out, he reappears almost immediately with the same number of troops at your doorstep, all supported by a meager windmill and a few mines, while you have to deal with famine and other shortages to fill the losses in your ranks. Battles lack any tactical finesse and usually look like a big heap of men and horses kicking the living daylight out of each other, and even the winner most of the time suffers 80% or more casualties. Artillery will also fire on enemy targets even when mowing down own troops to do so. Fortifications merely impede movement and offer no other protection as infantry can shoot through the walls. Cannons on the other hand refuse to fire from behind a wall, apart from howitzers. Towers can`t be connected with the walls and while expensive and time consuming to build, are no match for enemy cannons who have a longer range and dismantle them fairly quickly. The whole game is a tedious slog against an AI which, no matter what you throw at it, can throw twice the amount back at you - and will. (Played on normal difficulty)

In general, it´s Cossacks so if you like the previous games you will like this one. Can`t recommend it however due to Online DRM. The option to play this game LAN was one of my main Buy reasons. Conclusion: If you are looking for a Singleplayer game you are good to go, if LAN is your thing, don`t buy it.

My multiplayer key does not work no matter what i do or how i input it... Copy paste or manually, with the right cases. Why sell a broken product? WTF