izigame.me

I've been thinking for a long time how to write a review for this game.
As a game, on its own, it's actually okay. As you already probably know from other reviews, it's quite buggy, and the UX is clunky at the least. But if you like the RTT genre, you're going to like it anyway. But that's not what concerns me for this review.
You see, the game is one of multiple games on Steam now that tries to build up nationalist sentiment of a specific country, in this case, Poland. And I get it, Polish people got the short end of the stick plenty of times in history. But it shouldn't be done at the expense of accurate history.
If you play this game, you'll notice that it tries very, *very* hard to equate Nazis and Soviets. In fact, at certain points in the game, the whole Holocaust seems almost like a backstory to the real villains - the Soviets. Now, I'm not here to defend Soviet atrocities and war crimes - quite the contrary. There is no doubt that they acted horribly towards many of the "satellite" states and peoples. But they sure as hell weren't worse, or even the same as the damned literal Nazis. If you look up actual history, most of the war crimes done by the soviets were done for political reasons. There certainly wasn't any industrial scale killing the likes of which can be compared to the Nazis.
But, you don't have to take my word for it. When Poland was occupied in 1939., it is estimated by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance that the country suffered almost six million deaths. That's over 20% of the population, and one of the most horrible atrocities in the history of the world. In includes Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian victims (and others, of course). It is also estimated that around 150,000 people died due to soviet occupation, versus the ~5,500,000 people who died due to the Nazis. Yes, you will find different numbers than those depending on who you ask, but the ratio doesn't change much. For example, Rudolph Rummel (political scientist and statistician) estimates ~328,000 Soviet victims, and ~5,400,000 Nazi victims. That's more than a doubling of Soviet victims, and it's still not even close.
So, does this game give a clear picture of these numbers? Does the Soviet side seem ~36 times "less evil" than the Nazis in this game? Or even "just" ~17 times, if we take the higher numbers? I personally don't think it does. I think the game tries too hard to make them look the same, which is some cold war era style propaganda. It shows a very one-sided story, with some nationalist mythology built in.
As a side note, I got the same feeling from the demo of Last Train Home, where the Soviets are basically cartoon villains from the beginning - acting evil for absolutely no particular reason but to advance the plot.
And you know what - that's perfectly fine. This was a fun game to play, I can't complain. You should probably play it too, in spite of all the bugs, it's a decent game, even though the theme is grim and dark.
But, don't take your history from it without some scepticism. It would be unfair to those Soviet men and women who fought and crushed the Nazi war machine, without committing crimes. Their story is important too.