Partisans 1941

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

So I'm giving a thumbs up even though I absolutely s### at this game. I am abysmal when it comes to stealthers... I bought it during a bender cuz the graphics looked great- game play reviews looked fun, said "I'm gonna love this!"
So after... recovering; I'm sitting in front of my PC going "What the hell?" This game reminded me of the earlier versions of this type of stealth game- (I bought those also for the same reasons) On the verge of begging for a refund I decided try to get into it.
The game is fun, graphics are decent, story line and dialogue .. a bit awkward. Much is lost in translation... kinda stale.
But the challenges are where it's at with Partisans. I was somewhat successful in my 3rd play thru. You've got to have the patience to sit there and map enemy movements and time your assault carefully. This I can respect. But some scenarios have very few options, and perfect timing becomes the focus of all your efforts. A game I wish I could change a few things in you know? I love the atmosphere, the music score, the combat, but the dam sneaking around goes on and on. So, ok... you alert an enemy or two in your immediate area- I mean you gotta move at some point.. but that's it - mission over. Either that or the entire 3rd Reich comes down on you. Sometimes it lets you play on after alerting enemies. That was a hoot, trying to flank 16 Germans with a crew of 3- One of them with a single shot - shot gun. But after a while I found myself wanting more ways to win. More balanced gun fights. The ability to loot, fight it out till the last.. But that's not in the game.
Character leveling is weird... I mean I've seen skill trees like this before- but these skill choices are so narrow- they have little to no real punch....and it's little wonder... I mean you only need one skill in this game- Invisibility. Characters are also weird, old man, young kid .. I get it, part of the story and the struggle. Their story- my struggle....
But I keep trying because it has a certain rewarding euphoria - be it ever so short... when you pull off a mission. Combat mechanics are a bit clumsy and lack luster. But the game functions well, I've had no bugs. Load times are rapid ... and believe me; unless you origami your gonna be re-loading. Not sure if there's an RNG element in the program- but sure feels like it some times. Maps; though well done, have many static items, very little interfacing with environment.
I found pushing my concealment to the limits of the guards view cone, waiting for his cone to turn, then advancing the only real strategy here. But I bought a stealth game... when they're not my favorite games... so to be fair, the game is very well done. I've watched other players plow though missions and it is fun to watch. For it's genre I need to give it a 7/10. But you've gotta love stealth games if you're considering..

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.

Game is REALLY GOOD!!! but use 2 - 3 saves as you play due to odd bugs
'A machine gun company' is recommended when playing this game!!!!!!
Very fun and satisfying when completing areas
Very save and load heavy cause you will make mistakes

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.

Finally, a game about Soviets without the all too common anti communist propaganda fluff, true and real, the stories of each partisan are totally believable and the athmosphere of the game is perfectly balanced between the peaceful days between missions, the intense moments of combat and the sneaky operations, I 100% recommend, if you get it at a discount it's almost a steal for how good this is.

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