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INTRODUCTION
Partisans 1941 is a tactics-focused, real-time strategy game and the first game developed by Alter Games. You find yourself in World War II as part of a Russian rebel group, fighting the Nazi war machine. Build your base of operations, expand your group, and execute your missions. For the Motherland!
Return to the trenches of World War II in Alter Games' first creation, Partisans 1941. This RTS game will test your strategic prowess as you execute seemingly impossible missions in an effort to take back your homeland from the Nazis.
You will not find any base building and mass production mechanics here; instead, you command a small group of specialized troops and take on the full might of the German forces. Those who were gaming in the '90s might remember a little game series called Commandos. If you do, you'll have a very good idea what Partisans 1941 is like.
Please note that we received a pre-release build of the game and we encountered a few bugs. The developers are still hard at work and might have these sorted before release.
STORY - RAISE A REBELLION
The backdrop for the story in Partisans 1941 is set in World War II on the Russian front line. Germany has invaded your country and the Red Army is failing to drive them back so your little group of freedom fighters has decided to do what you can to help. You start with an ex-military man, a farm boy, and an athlete, not the most convincing uprising. As you play through, you'll recruit new soldiers to join the cause each with their own backstory and reason to take up arms.
The campaign missions are completely built around the story and every time a new part of the story is revealed, you receive a new mission where you'll inevitably have to kill a bunch of Germans. It's surprising how difficult it is nowadays to find a game where the dialogue doesn't make you cringe but I had no such issues here and found the dialogue very well written. I won't say that the story does anything revolutionary, but I do think it will become more interesting as the game progresses. I'm over 30 hours into it and it feels like I've only scratched the surface.
GAMEPLAY - BLEND WITH YOUR SURROUNDINGS LIKE A NINJA
As mentioned, this is not a base-building RTS like the Starcrafts and Command and Conquers of the world. In each mission, you command a small band of people and will inevitably be greatly outnumbered by the enemy forces. Stealth and tactics are some of your best tools but the biggest weapon in your mighty arsenal is... patience. If you are the type of gamer who rushes out units and steamrolls your enemies by sheer force, you will not get far here.
Each character to join your group has their own unique skill tree and specialty. Some will specialize in fighting with rifles, others will prefer shotguns or pistols. Some might be a better medic while others will have skills suited for some stealthy ninja work. Of course, it's completely up to you how you complete your missions. Sometimes running in guns blazing seems like the only valid option but usually, you will need to sneak around and pick off the enemy soldiers one by one.
To this end, the game offers you various tools. You can see the vision of each enemy to help you avoid their gaze, you can also drag the dead bodies you create into bushes to keep them hidden and not raise the alarm. Then there's the Tactical Mode which slows down the game and allows you to plan a number of orders to be executed in unison when the game speed goes back to normal. This allows you to set up ambushes and take out large groups of enemies at once. You also have a quick save and quick load option, and the high difficulty will have you pressing these hotkeys way more often than you could imagine; unless you play on the highest difficulty level, which doesn't allow any saving. Needless to say, I would not recommend this mode for novices, or even veterans, only those who have truly conquered everything else this life has thrown at them should consider this.
You will pick up countless supplies while performing your tasks. You'll find new weapons and ammunition along with other strategic items like trip wires, mines, grenades, and medical supplies. These items can be carried over to future missions so you don't need to use an item now for fear of losing it. There are even different types of weapons in each class, each with their own stats and ammunition requirements.
You also find miscellaneous items that cannot be used on a mission but instead turn into resources when you return to your base camp. These resources can be used in a variety of ways including adding new structures to your base, upgrading your weapons, healing your people, and much more. This brings me nicely to your base camp where you'll spend time between missions. You can perform various tasks from here such as building and resource gathering but you'll also receive various other tasks that may provide you with additional weapons, experience, food, or supplies. You don't actually need to perform these yourself, once you've assigned everyone to a task, you let the day play out and see what the outcomes are. Every few days, however, you will receive your next campaign mission which is fully hands-on.
There is a quick tutorial that is helpful but I found navigating around the battlefield incredibly intuitive. My biggest gripe in this regard is that, in order to view any info on an item in your inventory, you need to right-click and open its stats window. Having a popup with this info when you hover over an item would make a huge difference. I also got frustrated by soldiers swapping to their primary weapons after loading a game which often resulted in me shooting an enemy from 1 foot away and alerting the entire compound instead of slitting his throat nice and quiet as I intended. There turned out to be a setting that disabled this which I switched immediately, but it was only by chance that I found this setting.
Let's talk about the bugs, there aren't many, but they need to be addressed. I had the occasional AI glitch where an enemy soldier got stuck walking into a wall. This made it easier to assassinate them though. I had an issue while at my base camp where I couldn't perform any tasks. I suspect this may have been due to the low morale of my troops, but it wasn't clear if that's the reason. Finally, occasionally, the quick save feature didn't seem to work and I'd load to a previous save. I saved constantly so this would only cost me maybe 30 seconds of gameplay but you'll discover in this game how valuable 30 seconds can be.
DESIGN - RUSSIA IS FULL OF BRITS
Voice acting is usually the first corner to be cut when a game isn't built by a giant studio but Partisans 1941's entire campaign is acted out by some fantastic voice actors. In some instances when German soldiers spoke in their native tongue. Their voices would fade into the background, and the English voiceover would play to let you know what is being said, I really enjoyed this. However, there is one thing that puzzled me to no end. If the German soldiers speak German, why oh why, do the Russians all sound like Brits who attended boarding school? Not only do they sound British, they also use British slang. This is a major miss for me in the otherwise spectacular voice acting.
The rest of the audio is pleasing and does a great job to set the dark scene of a world war. The sound effects are also incredible. I really have no complaints here.
I do not have the same to say of the visuals I'm afraid. Looking at this game you'd be forgiven for thinking you're looking at something that was released in 2010, not 2020. The game models feel outdated and for a game where you are usually zoomed out, I was seeing way too much pixelation. Despite the subpar visuals, I found the game very sluggish and was forced to reduce my resolution below 1080p for it to be playable. Color me confused.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rtyzcZ-XG8&ab_channel=DaedalicEntertainment
We received the review key from the friendly folks at Alter Games.
I loved playing Commandos and Commandos 2 when I was younger. I've tried similar games through the years but none of them have been able to measure up. Partisans 1941 has finally brought me that same joy that I found in Commandos all those years ago.
That said, the difficulty in Partisans 1941 is much higher and will require infinitely more patience. I often found myself doing nothing for minutes at a time but monitoring the enemies' patrol route to find a way to assassinate them one by one without raising any alarms. I would wait for what I thought was the perfect moment only to be seen as soon as I moved out of hiding. I can't tell you how many times I loaded the game, gave one move order, and reloaded immediately because it was the wrong move.
Some of you reading this might think that this sounds tedious and frustrating, and for some of you, it will be. However, there are those who will take the greatest pleasure in surveying the enemy compound and finding just the right time to slit each throat until the entire Motherland is washed clean with Nazi blood. The outdated visuals and one or two other annoyances aside, I take pleasure in recommending Partisans 1941 for the strategy connoisseur among you.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| A strategy experience like no other | Outdated visuals |
| So much variety in units and items | Confusingly sluggish performance |
| Great dialogue with fantastic voice acting |