User Reviews (1 - 11 of 71)

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Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: May 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is definetely the most overhyped game I have ever purchased. While the game has several good points, including excellent graphics and challeging AI the actual game play is extremely frustrating and simply not much fun in single player mode (I've not tried multi at all and won't be bothering after my initial exdperience). In the week I've had it I've had multiple problems with it suddenly crashing. Unfortunately that is the least irritating problem. The tutorial was pathetically bad and the written documentation is a joke. Yes, there are 196 pages of it, but could the pages get any smaller (4" by 6") and most is used up detailing various unit types. The basic concepts of the game are poorly explained and it took hours of play to catch on to how things work. Also, the technology "trees" are nearly illegible due to the small format. Plus those "trees" are more like shrubs. Sure, there are hundreds of upgrades to make, but most are the same attack and defense upgrades done over and over again with each type of unit. National differences do not really seem to matter very much either. Once you get into the actual play the problems continue. Units do not reliably move to the locations you order them to in a fair number of cases. Naval units hanging up on coast lines is a frequent problem. I found managing battles be more frustrating than fun due to a number of problems with the interface that made it hard to identify units and give orders once you were engaged. The "campaigns" provided seem devoid of strategy and instead revolve around mastering tricks to pass each stage. The "scenarios" weren't much better, but revolved more arround mass production of units and carnage rather than any real strategic effort. One of a very select list of games I wish I had never bought.

mm

Cossacks is a rip off!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: November 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Being an Age of Empires junkie, I bought Cossacks thinking it would be similar. I give credit to the designers and people who made the game. Cossacks has gorgeous backgrounds, beautiful buildings, and units, unfortunatly I was disappointed with how it played. The game played very slow and it takes forever to build things. More than anything I was frustrated and recieved no satisfaction from playing it.

AOE 3rd rate clone

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: August 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I cannot believe the reviews I am reading about this game! How anybody can rate this piece of you-know-what above a 2 is beyond me, unless the game's marketers and designers are rating it.

The game design is obviously a direct copy of Age of Empires. Only not as much fun and with a far-far-far more kludgey user interface. Game design rating: 1 star

The sound is atrocious, rating: 1 star

Graphics: On a scale of 1-100, give AOE a rating of 90, Kossacks rating: 1 star

Fun rating: 1 star.

I read through the thick manual when I bought this game and was a little disapointed in the lack of professionalism inside the cover (the cover was great).

Then I eagerly installed the game. I lost some enthusiasm during the install since even the installation program was a little amateurish.

Then I ran it. It did not run. I tried again. It did not run. Strangely on the third try the thing slowly took off like a old lumbering sea-plane.

The opening graphics were ok. Then I played a game. All enthusiasm quickly zeroed out to nil.

20 minutes of painful playing of this game greatly raised my enthusiasm...

FOR UNINSTALLING IT!

The uninstall worked pretty good and now I have my 500megs of disk space back and am searching through my old dusty cds looking for AOE.

THE VERY BAD GAME

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: November 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Cassocks barly lives up to its expectations. It does not teach you to play.The built in teacher and manual don't teach.Im sure if I knew how to play I would like it,but let's face the facts, it stinks.I may be 10 years old, but I know a good game from a bad one.So it derserves a 1 star rating.

Not enough time to enjoy it

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: August 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I used to be an addict player, especially spending time on strategy/warfare games, but being a father now, I donýt have enough time to spend on the game anymore. Iýve bought this game because it sounded like a terrific war game. And I think this game is a great for somebody can spend hours and hours to play it and enjoy it. I have only a couple of hours a day, and some times thatýs not enough even to build all your necessary facilities to start really playing. The game has plenty of stuff to do: build houses, municipal buildings, factories, mines and so on. You need to raise armies consisting of different troops, train them, elevate them to different level, and lead hundreds of units to the war, or defend your own territory. You can change landscapes, use battle ships, conquer castles. I think this game has a fantastic potential for people who have plenty of time on their hands. I wish I could enjoy it. And by the way, this game loads very slowly, sometimes messes your system up, and creates lockups or freezes. And it is not because of the system I have. I have a brand new PC overloaded with everything one need to challenge the professional work schedule these days.

Not a worthy competitor to AoK II

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I got Cossacks because I was tired of AoK II and wanted a new game in the RTS genre. I am not impressed. The big advantage that many people cite is that you can have larger armies, up to 8,000 units in the game. Unfortunately, this decision has two negative results: 1) The cannon-fodder mentality, instead of throwing dozens of units at an opponnent, you can now throw hundreds. As an example of how the game caters to this mentality, you can create 5 units in a click by holding down shift. 2) Graphics obviously must suffer as the computer is drawing 10 times as many objects. I'd say stick with AoK II.

So much work equals so much defeat

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: August 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When I first got this game I thought it would be just like a pre-colonial version of Age of Empires 2. One brutal defeat after another told me one thing: that this game was not nearly as good as AOE2. I consider myself a very good AOE player, (I can beat 4 hard enemys in less than 2 hours) but this is simply an hard. The main reason is that it's simply unrealistic. I build a whole army of soldiers and they get gunned down before they get half way to the enemy town. At the beginning this game can be fun building and gathering. Some of the missions are good also (including combat ones.) But like another reviewer said, "This isn't strategy it's a race." And I couldn't agree more.

Great game .... if it worked.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: May 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The demo was great, and so I bought the US version. Unfortunately, many people are having problems getting the US full version to work at all. Check out the discussion groups on (...) for more information.

I had to install a CD crack just to get the stupid thing working. I'd suggest waiting a couple weeks before you buy (hopefully they'll have a US patch by then).

Would be great but BUGGY

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game has so much potential, but it is filled with fatal bugs and no patches have yet been announced to fix them. It constantly seizes and freezes, forcing you to reboot your whole system each time so saving often is key. However, in one hour of gaming, it froze 5 times on me, making it hardly an enjoyable experience. It is a shame that it does this, for it looks like it will be better than AOK. Nevertheless, the constant reboots are infuriating and will make me question ever buying a game from this company until I see the patches are out.

For those who wonder... I have a 700 Mhz Athlon with the latest 3dFX and 128 Mgs of ram. It is less than year old and is able to easily handle such games as Baldur's Gate II, Deus Ex and Mech Warrior 4. Hence, I can only blame the game.

Frustrating

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I get frustrated playing this game. I have problems with the game locking up, or fatal errors occuring alot and ruining my game. It wouldn't be so bad if you weren't two or three hours into the game when it happens and usually only if you are winning. I have had this game for about three weeks and I have only beat one campaign level without the game locking up or fatal errors occurring. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to win to get to the next level in the campaign. If you press the pause button it locks up sometimes. The game moves pretty slow so you don't really have to use the pause button. And if you save a game it locks up sometimes too, and then you start from where you saved the game and it will lock up in the same spot. I have had better luck with the Random maps games though. I don't know it might just be my computer but I have unloaded and reloaded the game around five times and it still locks up sometimes. I would suggest spending your money on something else or waiting for them to fix some of the bugs before buying it. Unless you are stubborn like me and like banging your head against the wall when you have been playing a game for a couple of hours and then the game locks up just when you think you have discovered how to win. I like the concept of the game and you have literally hundreds of units and a large tech tree and the mines are cool, you can upgrade them and fit more units inside as you go along. And I like the idea that your resources of gold, iron, coal, stone, and wood are unlimited and you don't eventually run out and have to go find more resources(you just have to add more peasants if you are running low). They need to fix some of the bugs before it is a five star game. Maybe you will love to hate this game as much as I do?

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