This a good game. I remember the early 2000's and before when this type of game was the 'golden' time if you like. This game is better than those games because the technology has improved and the best economy methods, unlimited ( I think ) number of units and sea battles have been brought together.
The AI looks to be goods as well, even on the normal diffiiculty. If you take too long to prepare or attack the AI will find away into your bases. This is well worth trying and enjoying.

note: plenty of bugs but at the time of writing this review the devs have already fixed some of them. i've crashed/froze twice in 13hrs of gameplay but luckily the game autosaves frequently. also i've only played the singleplayer campaign and random maps against bots on normal & hard difficulties.

IF YOU'VE PLAYED COSSACKS BEFORE:
like other reviews have said, it is basically a remaster of oldschool cossacks. for $20 it's not only a great nostalgia trip, but also still a good solid RTS game, which is rare these days (and the campaign so far is much improved). the only disappointments are that there isn't much innovation at all besides the graphics upgrades, and the rough launch it has had.

IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED COSSACKS:
at it's core, cossacks is a unique RTS which is easy to get into but very difficult to master. you can play this casually, sitting back and building up massive armies and growing your economy, or viciously, conducting tactical strikes and capture raids. the economy and tech tree (if you can even call it that) is quirky compared to streamlined starcraft and C&C games. getting a handle on moving your units in formation and using their strengths & weaknesses can be a bit tough for new players, but very satisfying once you figure things out. this RTS is not about having an apm of 9999999 and building as many units as possible, but rather about maintaining a balanced army and economy, and using tactics and smart formations to decisively crush your enemies.

will update later when i try out MP and harder singleplayer.

Still has some small bugs to be fixed but devs are producing updates very frequently. Multiplayer is very addicting and has a pretty high skill cap

Great game, quite representative of the old Cossacks. I mostly (99% of game time) play singleplayer so I can only vouch for that.

A lot of people complain about performance but then immediately say their computers are from the previous age... pfft
I play on i7 2600 and gtx980, the game runs at 100+ fps with drops to around 60 at times of intense fights (that is on max settings).

It lots of fun in multiplayer. I bought it like a week ago, so can't "enjoy" all lags and bugs were there at first. Single player campaign maybe boring, but good place for newbie to get experience. If you are fan of real time strategies - you should like it. Some minor bugs are still there, but for time I spend in game - nothing critical. Also its pretty well optimized - runs well on laptop and on PC with 60$ Pentium CPU.

That game is an unnecessary joke. It's Cossacks 1 without noticeable improvements(maybe excluding graphics). Still you can play it and have fun despite of countless bugs and AI's intelligence being on the level of little toddler one's, but I suggest buying it only during some sales, for the half of the current price. In fact it's cossacks:european wars remastered, with more pretty graphics, and the same bugs(ok maybe there are even more bugs)

examples of annoying things and bugs(noticed after just 5hrs !)
-some of my navy got stuck on the shallows, and i had to click zyllion times to get them back into the sea
- one of my general decided to desert and went to the second island through the sea on foot (seriously! jesus is real !)
- you have to build zyllion of houses manually, pretty boring
- no options for patrollling,
- transport fleet is completely unusable
- & many more

Totally undeserved rating, the vast majority of negative reviews are because of the horrible bugs in the release ( fixed in a week thanks to the developers that were releasing patches everyday) and now that the game is fixed they don't even edit their reviews. And the other minority of negative reviews are because of "the game it's equal to the previous cossacks titles" and that makes them sad and write a negative review although they keep playing this title. So, as you can see, the 90% of negative reviews must be classified in technical problems (fixed) and personal disappointments, totally different from the game analysis.

However, regarding to the gameplay the game is really really good, different from others RTS, immersive and so funny, specially in multiplayer battles. It's like the previous cossacks but with very good graphics considering the huge amount of troops that can fight in a single battle. So if you like RTS games like the old ones (AOE, Rise of nations) with a soft different gameplay (soft enough to be different) in the genre, don't hesitate and get it!, it's ridiculously cheap considering the amount of hours this game can give you and comparing to other remastered RTS titles. I think this game can make the RTS industry as popular as it was years ago with appropriate community support.

Buckle up, buttercup, and over the next few glorious paragraphs, I'mma learn you a thing I only myself just learned yesterday about this little thing we call Cossacks 3. Tl;dr at the end. I think we'll start smartifying you by explaining what kind of game this is.

Cossacks 3 is several things. Not the least of which is a reboot and 3D evolution of a classic real-time strategy game called Cossacks: European Wars. Yes, European Wars. That one. Not Back to War. Also known as the standalone expansion for European Wars. There are only 12 nations (not 20) and the the nations involved have maybe one or two unique units instead of...well, two or three unique units. The year 2000 wasn't really known for its asymmetrical strategy titles. Sure, that had been all the rage since Star Craft was released a couple years before, but we all know what a flash-in-the-pan fad that garbage was. It certainly didn't have the staying power of Cossacks: I Forgot Which One I Played Now That You Mention It Wars.

No, it was definitely European Wars. I remember fondly getting off the triceratops I rode to and from school, in a blizzard, uphill both ways, and eagerly going to the computer in the family room. I would get out the Compact Disc (that's what we called downloaded content in those days) and popping that sucker into my computer. Which was basically an electric shaver powered by a hamster wheel and stapled to a Wheaties box. I would play for hours as I raised hundreds and hundreds of colorfully animated sprite soldiers to do battle against my friends or the AI. Most of these soldiers would die needlessly in frontal assaults so ill-advised that the ghost of General Robert E. Lee himself would slap me in the face and tell me I wasted the lives of that division charging up that hill "Like I did that one time."

Cossacks takes the winning formula of proto-Napoleonic tactics: standing shoulder to shoulder and firing at the enemy point blank and...well, it just takes it. It faithfully reproduces the tactics of the period. Watch in fiendish glee like the Antedeluvian god that you are inside and recruit hundreds if not thousands of now 3D rendered men. Put them in a rank and file, column, or square formation, and tell them to advance ever forward, firing and stabbing everything in their way. The battles are less bloody than I remember. Come to think of it, this version has no blood. That's kind of disappointing. But oh well, it's been a long time since a game of this age has come close to reproducing the feeling from European Wars.

Speaking of games of this era: A lot of people say this game is like an Early Access version! Well, that's probably because it is. Unless they are selling the Cossacks 3-Just In The Nick of Time Edition, it's pretty clear what you are getting, numb nuts. I can hear you now: "Hey handsome, why is the game not in Early Access officially then?" Well, Short Round, that's probably because it doesn't qualify as Early Access. For example, most games in Early Access aren't 99.9% of the way done, with all promised features in a basically functional state. Emphasis on basically functional for this one.

Sure there are bugs. But it wouldn't be a release from our favorite Eastern European developers, GSC Game World if there weren't any. And if you spot a localization error, that's not an error. That's just an inside joke. There's nothing funnier than an inside joke 16 years later. Sure, hundreds of people could have corrected that sentence. But gosh darn it, it brings a smile to my face seeing my Musketers try their hand at Musketeering.

Since getting the game just one day ago, there have been three updates, one of which enabled multiplayer. Total time without multiplayer: 16 hours. Most of that time I was kickin' it with the AI and sleeping. Or was I working? Oh my.

Speaking of bugs, some people seem to be under the impression that this game just don't plain work. Well, let me ameliorate and co-mulgrify that situation for ye right now. The game runs fine. Assuming you aren't using the same electric razor powered by a hamster wheel stapled to a Wheaties box that you used back in the day. A toaster should do just fine. Just make sure you installed the latest drivers, and popped open the side panel to clean out the blackened crums of a thousand departed Pop-Tarts before you play. I have played for just about three hours (which in fairness is only 2 complete matches the way I play) and I haven't had one CTD, crash, graphical glitch, or super-volcano eruption resulting in the extinction of mankind yet.

The game experience is much like the original. It even retains many of the same balancing values for units and costs for tech upgrades. So that's right, McGillicutti: you can advance to the 18th century in under 15 minutes and immediately purchase a tech that reveales the entire map, thus robbing yourself of the surprise and wonder you are supposed to feel when 50 Janissaries show up in your camp, kill everything and capture all your crap. I only do that rush to see the look on your face, and that darn balloon tech spoils it each time. Too bad there's nothing that can be done about those Janissaries though. Probably should have bought some Pikemen or something. But oh well.

Aaaaanyway, what else is there to say about this game? Lack of blood...recaptures the original in full 3D...nails the classic formula for warfare of the period...massive gratuitous battles...cheap teching strategies meeting up with cheap rush strategies that will keep the forums lively with debate about what exactly is OP for decades to come...yep I think that just about covers it. What's that? You want to know if it's worth getting? IS that what I was supposed to be flapping my gums...er...clattering my keyboard about? Well, shucks, son. Maybe it's best to explain it this way:

Tl;dr

Pros: It's basically everything that the original, vanilla Cossacks 1 experience was.

Cons: It's basically everything that the original, vanilla Cossacks 1 experience was.

And quite frankly, I can only recommend that experience.

My only real gripe is naming of this game. These are NOT Cossacks 3 or any such nonsense.

This is Cossacks 1 HD Remake (with maybe different campaigns nobody really cares about in the first place.) And, actually, this is not at all a bad thing.

Smoother, more modern (but not entirely, tbh) throwback to the days of more complex games with less twitch and more strategem. Now go buy it and ♥♥♥♥ your buddy off with Russian pikemen spam. Or abuse a hell out of warship firepower. Or... you get the idea.
--------------------------------
So, couple of days later I must add some points - to be fair.
This one packs a lot of bugs. Some you may never see, others... well, came right from old cossacks games. That`s after 15 years of dev hell - sad really.
Other sad point is multiplayer - it works, but if you got no patience to deal wich technical issues you better skip this game, at least for now.
I still like it and will recomend it to RTS fans everywhere, don`t get me wrong, but i must admit - GSC managed to screw things we take for granted a lot, especially in quality of life departament.

Cossacks 3 = Cossacks 1 HD

Is this bad?

No, not at all. For a Pricetag of 20€ you get a solid Cossacks 1 HD.