Partisans 1941 (Steam)

Partisans 1941 is set in the completely unused era of World War II and hopes to get on board with the revival of real-time action strategy games, does it do enough to win the war? Read on to find out!. 

Partisans see you take control of a Russian resistance group, taking the fight to the Nazi threat during the Eastern Front conflict. It’s far from the most original of story settings but it is effective in bringing the horrors of World War II to players.

Partisans have you working with a well written and compelling crew married with some fantastic voice acting. It is a little bit of a slow burner but when it gets you, you’ll be gripped until the end of the narrative. 

Visually Partisans 1941 has a rather “grey” art design, coupled with the isometric viewpoint giving it that retro mid-90s look from its genre counterparts. 

The Grey and Red contrasts in the art design are a good standout and fit perfectly within the WWII theme, the environments while doing their job aren’t by any stretch of the visual imagination “impressive” but there is nothing here that you would class as truly hideous. 

Partisans 1941 is a game of two halves, one is the real-time strategy/stealth em up while the other half is base and resource management. While the base building aspect isn’t quite as expansive as the real-time portion it does directly affect your playthrough and provides that little extra incentive to keep you playing. 

Now if you have played any titles such as Commandos, Desperados, Robin Hood, or more recently Shadow Tactics, you’ll know exactly what to expect with Partisans 1941. 

You take a squad, made up of different specialists ranging from combat to stealth and head into enemy territory and tackle overwhelming odds, you’ll employ every distraction technique, every quick shot, and plan attacks to minimize an outright gunfight in hopes of completing your objective and getting your guys and gals back to base. 

You’ll find your crew creeping through the enemy encampments, trying to draw troops out of their patrol route using bottles of water or just attacking them at the opportune moment. You have to remember to be quiet when doing this, I got caught out often due to bad habits from other games, and remember that a bush is a good but noisy place to hide in, especially when in a pickle. 

Where Partisans 1941 really separates itself from its kin is that if you get spotted or make too much noise, that isn’t a Quick Load situation, there is a good bit of wiggle room to go to ground and partake in a gunfight. Don’t get me wrong this doesn’t mean you’ll always come out on top but it certainly has better chances than other games that I have mentioned!. 

While you’re out on missions any of your team that hasn’t gone with you stays back at the base and it’s here where you manage resources to keep yourselves equipped with the best loot and give yourself half a fighting chance. On the other hand all your team members in the field gain EXP, fortunately, a kill grants everyone in the squad the exp so you don’t have to force units to level up.

There are skill trees for all the characters in the game and these allow you to customize the units to your liking and what you feel you need them to do, it’s a nice addition and something I think more of the games of the genre could have done with. In fact the amount of freedom within Partisans 1941 is amazingly refreshing when compared to the tighter confines of its kin. 

Partisans 1941 doesn’t quite have the high level of polish from more recent titles it is similar too, stuff like the environmental kills don’t really have any impact and the guard reactions can sometimes be quite jank and unexpected. Graphically it isn’t pushing any boundaries and it’s not that original of an idea. 

On the flipside Partisans 1941 is a good time, it’s not an essential time but it’s a good time for fans of the genre, it has enough heart and a brilliant amount of flexibility in its mission design and all that really lets this title down is the jank and the painful loading times, they are long and in a title where you’ll be quick saving and quick loading, quite frequent. 

If you are a fan of World War 2 games and love a bit of stealth with your strategy games, you could do far worse than Partisans 1941.