Cossacks: Back to War
Worth it · Strategy · 2010
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $4.99.
- Length
- 24.2h
- Value
- $0.21/hr
- Reviews
- 89% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, Intel GMA 950, 553 MB of storage. Windows only.
Cossacks: Back to War contains all of the gameplay features of Cossacks: European Wars and Cossacks: The Art of War, this is a complete care package for all current and future Cossacks fans. This add-on contains two new nations: Switzerland and Hungary.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
January 2013 is where it bottomed out, at $1.24. It has been discounted 79 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 5 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 1 percent of its genre. It is better reviewed than 93 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Knights of Honor ($9.99, scores 86) beats it on value, while it beats Blitzkrieg Anthology ($4.99, scores 67).
Critics scored it 60. Players sit 29 points higher at 89 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
4 of the 473 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 70 percent of the 429 reviews written there were positive, against 89 percent overall, and those are 16 percent of everything written about it.
Players
124 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
So nostalgic for me, still thinks the music and the navy in this game are better than the new one.
To play the game on modern PCs, you need to copy a file to the game directory. You can find that file in the community tab. I played this game when I was a kid and at that time, the campaign seemed impossible to play. Not being able to understand English, I assumed it was my issue. But playing the game right now, I can tell you it wasn't. The campaign is extremely difficult and you can proceed only if you play the...
Cossacks: Back to War is a classic real-time strategy game developed by GSC Game World. Released in 2002, it is an expanded standalone version of Cossacks: European Wars and is known for its large-scale battles, historical setting, and deep economic systems. The game is set in the 17th and 18th centuries and allows players to control different European nations. Each faction has unique units, buildings, and...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Cossacks: Back to War scores 78/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/4850/cossacks-back-to-warThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 3, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.