Battle of Waterloo
So now it’s time to sum up Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe and try and make a decision about whether this is worth your hard earned cash or not. If you’re used to fast paced strategy games such as Warhammer 40K or Total War, you might find the slower, more detailed pace of Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe not to your liking. While the resource collection isn’t a key element of the game, there’s a bit more of that in here than in contemporary RTS games and the unit building is painfully slow.
However, if you’ve hankered after something with a bit more depth, something that actually makes a stab at tactically challenging you, then Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe is worth a look. The fatigue system makes the usual ‘build and rush’ tactic obsolete, and the skirmish mode even features a unit number cap, forcing you to play historical battles with the number of troops available in the original fight.
Click for larger imageHaving put in roughly 20 hours of play in the single player campaign alone, there’s still plenty left to do with all the different armies to command, including the French. But as I’ve been far too busy kicking ‘le derrière du Français', I’ve not yet bothered assuming the role of the short-arsed dictator and tried to reverse history at Waterloo.
The oddest thing about Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe is that although the subject matter might seem massively uninviting to many, the slower pace of gameplay is actually quite appealing and likeable once you actually get in the game. The front end options screens are just awful and remind me of those old paintings of pompous blokes on fat horses but get past those and there’s a complex, highly tactical game to be had. Sure, there’s no lasers, no rockets and no dropships but instead of these you get a far more tactical wargame that really will make you think and as an added bonus, if I haven’t made it clear enough already, you get to fight the French. Huzzah!
Pros
Superbly tactical
Realistic units and weapons
Simplified but expansive resource management
Plenty of replayability
You can fire cannons at the French
Cons
Graphics are nothing special
Battle for Europe can be insanely long
Multiplayer games can be hard to find
More fun than a day trip to Boulogne.
HEXUS Awards
Cossacks2: Battle For Europe
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HEXUS Where2Buy
Cossacks 2: Battle For Europe is available now, click the following links to order:Play.com
