Partisans 1941

I'm somewhat hesitating about YES or NO here. If there was a 10-score system, I think I'd give this game a 6.
As a big fan of Action Puzzle games, as I call them (Commandos, Desperados, etc.), I was quite excited about Partisans 1941. It seemed like the devs wanted to try a different approach to the genre, but after 100% the game I'm not sure that any of the core changes worked out well.
TL;DR. The game is really unpolished with dozens of small issues of all kinds popping up here and there. Also, the game provides no real challenge (I’d say no challenge at all) or incentive to combine the skill of partisans to achieve the mission goals. Instead of several distinguishable characters with distinguishable abilities, we have 8 semi-Jacks of all Trades, only three of which can be taken on a single mission at once. I can still recommend the game, but only if you haven’t played other similar games (especially the modern ones like Shadow Tactics or Desperados III). Otherwise you will most likely find the Partisans 1941 experience subpar.
The game is thematically very close to Commandos series — same theme (war vs Nazis), similar objectives (kill leaders, destroy a huge artillery gun, etc.), no complex storyline (just go kill this or destroy this), etc. The game tried to move away from a time-proven formula by introducing new mechanics, but I personally think that none of them worked out great.
- Looter shooter system. There are guns of different types and different qualities. Ammo, throwables, mines, medkits — everything is an inventory item now and must be looted instead of being usable skills. Therefore, each character has a limited amount of space. To my mind it added nothing of value to the genre other than a need to sort the inventory mess after sorting another mess while trying to pick items using an awkward and sometimes glitching UI. You can’t actually go permanent gunz blazing, so all that system seems to be applicable only under specific circumstances that are somewhat rare.
- Intermission camp. Instead of playing one mission after another, we now have a camp where all partisans sit around the bonfire and attempt Global Map tasks. There are Food and Materials resources which can be gathered during missions by looting dead enemies or various objects and then spending time sorting the inventory mess. Food is spent to feed your party. Materials can be used to construct various buildings that provide access to makeshift consumables, weapon upgrades, healing as well as additional sources of Food income. Again, I’m not sure what value this adds to the game – I’ve completed the campaign on Normal difficulty and I never ever had a situation when I needed any of the buildings except for the Food ones. And I only needed those, because out of eight people you can only take three on the main missions while others are just sitting there eating the food reserves and participating in secondary tasks that grant experience points.
- Skill Trees. Instead of a predetermined set of usable skills each character has a predetermined Skill Tree which can not be reset! As you gain experience (there is a certain incentive to kill every enemy on every map) you can move down the Skill Tree to unlock 1-2 usable skills and some passive ones (running speed, body carrying speed, melee / grenades / weapons proficiency, more inventory space, etc). And again, I don’t see any benefits here — passive skills are often duplicated between characters and even usable skills are somewhat similar (AOE damage in a circle or AOE damage in a cone, pacify with a slingshot or pacify with chloroform, etc). So instead of a shorter roster of distinctive specialists with distinctive skills and personalities, we have almost a dozen similar 3D models with different voices.
As far as other aspects of the game are concerned, they remained pretty much the same. But, man, this game is EXTREMELY unpolished. Small issues of all kinds are literally everywhere! Review limitations won't allow to mention everything that I encountered, but here are some:
Sometimes the partisans won’t complete an action, especially if you order them to place a mine — they simply stand still with the mine outline being visible.
The cones of enemy sight are really unprecise at times and they might detect you outside the visual color zone. On top of that, some of the in-game objects seem to be blocking the cones, but the enemies can still see and even walk through them (especially noticeable with truck cabins). By the way, a very useful mechanic of placing a mark on the ground to detect enemies that can see the mark is not available in the game at all.
There were multiple UI issues throughout the game: more than dozen of times I wasn’t able to loot dead enemies until I rotated the camera under a very specific angle. Inventory sometimes vanished and I needed to close the inventory window and open it again. Some of the Global Map secondary tasks always showed twice in the completion window although clearly only one was completed. There is a tooltip missing for the amount of Materials you will get from a Global Map task.
Several mission-related examples: there is a brief cutscene introducing the prison guy, where he uses a Tanuki whistle to lure an enemy into the bushes and then perform a knife kill in the face with the special skill. Well, guess what? You can’t do this sequence in the actual game! Because every such attempt will result in an immediate red exclamation mark and alarm — you can only use a knife in the face skill from behind which is pretty much useless in most cases. At the same mission Zorin explains that blowing up AA Guns is a loud undertaking, so we need to destroy the Comm Center first. This is clearly not the case, because I’ve blown up the guns before going to the Comm Center and nothing happened — nobody sounded an alarm or anything.
Or take the AOE skills of any of the four partisans who have them (the sports guy, the tough lady, the grandpa and the one-eyed commissar) — their efficiency is very questionable, because partisans can be easily wounded or killed while using these skills! It does add to the realism of the situation, but this realism takes away any practical uses (in other similar games all AOE targets die at once).
Inventory auto-sort function is awkward to say the least. It can’t automatically sort items of different shapes (you have 4 empty spaces in a straight line, but found an item with 4 spaces as a square? Sorry, please sort the inventory manually). It also can’t sort identical items close to each other, which is a real pain in arse at the Intermission camp warehouse.
Another thing that I didn’t like personally — the game provides no challenge. As I’ve mentioned a bit earlier, 80% of my playtime was controlling Zorin, the very first playable character available in the game, to eliminate everything and everyone with a knife. There is no incentive to use your characters skills in combination in order to overcome a difficult situation, because there are no difficult situations to begin with (I was playing on Partisan difficulty). Back to Battle DLC introduced those one-time missions and with all modifiers turned on, the maps became quite challenging, but unnecessary annoying because of how enemy reinforcements work.
Why do I still recommend the game in the end? Two main reasons:
1. There are only a handful of games of this Action Puzzle (ok, ok, Real Time Stealth Tactics) genre available (both from 2000s and the modern ones).
2. At the very core, Partisans 1941 is an OK game. It’s highly unpolished and has some questionable mechanics, but the game can be safely played and finished. So if you haven’t tried any of the similar games yet, Alter Games creation could be a decent acquaintance. But if you played and enjoyed titles from Mimimi Games, chances are that you will find Partisans 1941 too different and of subpar quality.

It is impossible to give a definitive answer to what makes an artistic product good, but it seems to me, tonal coherence of various components is a good starting point. This is the most important reason why I can wholeheartedly recommend this game. Right from the opening sequence Partisans 1941 is very clear in what manner it is going to depict the partisan activity, and not a single component here disagrees with the others.
When it comes to Soviet World War II Cinema the existence of two different camps is quite evident. On one hand there are war movies, such as Ballade o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier), or Jariskatsis mama (Father of a Soldier). Soviet war movies are slightly revanchist, but still hopeful of rebirth with an optimistic outlook on human psyche, even during one of the most barbaric invasions of recent history. On the other hand, there are partisan movies, such as Voskhozhdenie (The Ascent), or Idi i smotri (Come and See). There is an irremissible sombreness in partisan movies, usually depicting the barbaric actions of the Nazi war machine fully and we see that not even the Soviet people can be defined as "good".
Partisans 1941 takes partisan movies, depicts the barbarism like they do but also adds optimism and revanchism of war movies to the mix. This works very well from a narrative standpoint, considering Alter Games are on unbroken land here, with their debut game as well. It is refreshing to have hopefulness, determination, a leader that you can look up to in a work about partisans. It fills the player with a sense of appreciation towards the countless partisans operating during the most horrifying and oppressive invasion in recent history.

The gaming medium is perfect for this. Characters can talk about taking the war to the Nazis in any other medium, but player agency, the manner in which you will carry it out, especially with the various special skills and varied partisans this game offers is what makes it so satisfying. Having a choice between rushing a Nazi with a knife in your hand (Morozov) or picking his head from distance with a fully upgraded AVS-36 (Valya) or making him eat lead through a wall with your buckshot (Trofim) and many other options that benefit from different abilities complementing each other massively differentiates this from other media.
Even then, the first thing that grabbed my attention was not gameplay mechanics, but how good our main character (probably inspired by real life partisan commander Simcha Zorin) looked. He is clean shaven with hair like he just left the most fashionable barber shop in Byelorussia five minutes ago, with a determined look in his eyes that says I will eliminate every single Nazi from Minsk to Staroe Selo. The thousand-yard stare, the downtrodden look, the desperation from hunger and cold so associated with the partisans does not have a place here. This goes for every character. They look, talk and act like they have the hindsight to know these days will pass like any other and they will emerge victorious.
As I said, Partisans 1941 is a game where nothing is out of place tonally, and this extends even to the colour scheme. If you have played one of the numerous WWII FPS's taking place in the Eastern Front, you will already be accustomed to the yellowness of wheat, greenness of pine trees and brownness of the earth. How the game changes this well established formula is subtle, but effective. Brightness and intensity of every colour is slightly increased in comparison to usual, and a small amount of shading applied to borders of every object makes them more pronounced. These small changes give the usually depressing Soviet countryside a much more humane appearance.
As a final layer of finish, the OST is composed with the same design perspective that is present in other areas. The music you'll hear the most, guitar track that plays whenever you're in camp is in the same vein. It's slow tempo, but the notes are crisp and distinguishable, in contrast with the melancholic vocal accompanying it, fully embracing the duality.
Of course, as both a debut game and an indie game, Partisans is far from being perfect. UI is sometimes buggy and unresponsive, especially in inventory and picking up items/bodies. It is obvious to see the game was designed with stealth options as a priority. The enemy AI can get really stupid and there will be no way to predict if they will function or not in a firefight. Camp management starts out interesting for one or two missions, but gets repetitive fast. If you have a completionist streak, you'll find that scouring every map to remove every Nazi from existence gets tiresome in larger levels, especially when they start to call in reinforcements.
Nevertheless, when it works, it works really well. The excitement and subsequent relief of a well-executed stealth attack with combined partisans is a feeling that is rarely replicated in gaming and usually passes as a high point of a game, here these opportunities are dime a dozen. The planning it takes to silently kill a dog and its handler, usually a mid-tier enemy in most games, is rewarding thanks to the multiple approaches you can take. If you can handle some minor jank (and nothing good ever happens without some minor jank), Partisans 1941 is a game that exactly knows what it wants and achieves what it wants and this is nothing to be scoffed at in these times.
Punch a Nazi out, stab a Nazi in/10

Just finished the game and it was quiet interesting experience. If you like Commandos, Desperados, etc.. you should buy it and give it a try.
I believe that if devs release another game and fix the mentioned issues it could easily be a 9 or a 10.
Pros:
- Interesting setting and story
- Variety of maps and objectives
- Camp system (build buildings, go to missions for certain resources,etc..)
- Hero system (skills, upgrades,etc..) - you also get to select which ones to bring into battle
- Inventory system which allows you to equip whatever you want to suit your gameplay
- More action than similar games (maybe that's not positive depending on point of view)
Cons
- Various small annoying issues/bugs that could have been easily fixed with some QoL fixes
- Inventory system has some really annoying issues and the whole "extra" stuff you find it makes game really annoying to manage at times
- Camp system although it's a nice addition compared to others, I think it could have bee really great. After you build the basic buildings there's really not much else you can do
- Weapon upgrading ; again a nice system but could have been easily improved to be even more great and offer more customizations
- Skill system; again a nice addition but many skills are similar to others
- Moral mechanism; seemed like a nice idea but you tend to forget as you progress the game. Maybe if it could have been more complex e.g. with consequences on missions it would have been better.
- You can select 3 heroes in each missions (with some exceptions) which imo is really bad, cause certain characters are left unplayed
- Last mission (wayyy too easy and small for final one) -> also it's final mission you should have been able to select the whole squad!

Similar to Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, but in WWII from a Russian perspective this time.
I quite enjoyed the game, especially the stealth missions. You will constantly cheer for your comrade to move faster while carrying a corpse with Nazi patrols behind his back. It is fairly easy to get all achievements with the base game.
More details about the game will be posted later...
I encountered a game-breaking bug. be aware while you play it:
One mission where you need to rescue a teammate stranded on an island, even though you can finish the part of the mission in stealth, you should complete it with guns blazing. (if you do not, the next objective won't be triggered. And you will be forced to replay the whole mission again)
There are a few other minor issues with the game:
Sometimes enemies and your character will get stuck on furniture in a building. Reloading the game will solve the issue.
When your inventory gets bigger towards end-game, the game will lag when you open storage in your camp. Framerate will drop to 15 FPS for a few seconds.
Overall, I recommend this game and will buy the DLC to see what the DLC offers.

Man, i love it when games force me to use stealth for a mission and have the enemies alert themselves of my presence 0.02 of a second before i executed them. As if that wasn't bull-shit enough, IT WAS THE LAST FUCKING ENEMY OF THE MAP.
WHY DO I HAVE TO BE STEALTHY AGAINST THE LAST ENEMY ON THE MAP???????
Partisans is a commando-inspired RTS with elements of management of a russian insurgency in german-occupied USSR. What i said above is a good enough taste of what kind of "BULLSHIT!" moment you will experience playing this game. Sadly it is full of them. The game runs like absolute dogshit turd. No, really, my computer aint too nice or anything but the game looks like shit and it cant hit 30 FPS on the main menu. Its seriously strange.
That being said i stil strongly recommend this game, i think its fantastic, i never intended to refund it even when i got frustrated with it and i plan to play it to completition.
Before you decide to buy it or not, however, i believe that if you work on UI or UX design you -HAVE- to play this game
This game is the PERFECT example of how NOT to design an UI. No, graphically its fine, it looks pretty, simple, and its functional, menus aren't hidden, there are nice audio cues for anything you click.
The issue is the "interactive" part. "What weapon is that?" "What ammo is that?" "What's that item?" You think any logical rational human being would just let you hover the mouse above the icon, maybe if they were a bit mean they would make you leave the mouse there for a few seconds before the info menu would pop up. But no, you have to right click every item- No. You dont JUST have to right click on them, that would be too nice, you have to right click on them to open up the popup menu for the item and click on "information" to get even the fucking nametag. If that doesn't sound annoying, similar weapons of different factions like the Kar98k and the Mosin nagant have an almost identical symbol (no, not identical, but close enough to mistake them) some bullet symbols for different calibers are the very fucking same, and having to click on "information" all the time just to see WHAT THE FUCK did you just pick up gets annoying quickly.
The game is FULL of weird awful UX design choices like that that just make the experience an absolute annoyance, even 20 years ago many games knew better than to do some of the things Partisans does. It also has some bugs here and there.
You CANNOT drop items into the ground for some reason. Once you pick them up, if you want them out you MUST destroy this. You can, however, trade itemsbetween characters, but this still presents an issue; you see, characters have 2 weapon slots, and weapons are big and occupy a ton of space. If a character with an empty weapon slot has a full inventory, and another one with 2 weapon slots has the gun in his inventory, you end up in this retarded situation where you would love to re-organize the inventory of both characters, but you cant, since you cant drop items and you cant transfer items directly into the weapons slots, only inventory slots, you are screwed out of picking up more items OR you have to destroy them to move the weapon.
My last complaint has to do with the hitbox detection for the mouse, i pity whoever has to click somewhere in a space between objects, or click on a crate next to a door, because you will have to play with the camera a fair bit just to click on what was obviously an open space for the game to recognize what you wanted to do.
Is this the best commando-like game? No, i think that shadow tactics is a frankly better one, but if you still want the part where you ambush a bunch of nazis in a firefight, i dont know any game that does it better, and even with all the bullshit that you have to go through sometimes, i still think that the game is a blast.
The game is also not getting updated anymore. If you see the update history the last one was in december 2020... And that was an announcement for an upcoming major fix patch that never came.

It's a good game and lots of fun. Remember commandos? or how about Men of War? well combine the both and you'll get Partisans. Lots of stealth looting and sneaking around. Some really good combat and grenades are very satisfying. A few bugs and glitches I noticed but nothing game breaking.

i highly recommend this game for anyone who likes stealth tactics
overall its a solid game
i'd say give it a shot because im not gonna be able to put much here cuz i cant express how much im enjoying it and i just got it to so..
8/10