Welp, finnished the demo, took me almost 6 hours, which is p. gud playtime for a demo.
In general, I would characterise the game as a low budget DoWII with added survival and management mechanics. The management and survival parts are p. decent, the tactical part is barely OK with some poor design decisions/omissions that drag it down - quite needlesly I have to say.
The whole point of the game is to drive your train across the rusniggeria to reach the pacific shores. Your train can have multiple types of carriages (artilery, barracks, kitchen, hospital, workshop etc) which can also be upgraded. There are multiple types of resources, the most important being coal, which serves as fuel for the train and for heating (which becomes necessary once winter comes), you also need food for your troops, other resources are needed for upgrades and crafting.
There are various points of interest across the map that you can send your troops to for various interactions (hunting, trading, scavenging etc) and sometimes tactical missions.
In general, I got no complaints about this part of the game. It is somewhat similar to This War of Mine in some aspects, decent survival stuff and train simulator.
All the soldiers (of which you can have several dozens), are characters with some background and stats. The RPG elements consist of stats (usual fare like INT, DEX and such) and roles (both combat such as rifleman/sniper etc, and noncombat such as engineer/worker etc). You need to have some people assigned to operate the train in various capacities, while others might be made part of squads that can be send out on missions. Its nothing special, but it works.
The tactical missions are RTwP. Much like in DoW2 the stealth is usually better option than actual combat. Characters can be switched into stealth mode in which they do not fire unless fired upon and make melee kills, if they can sneak up on enemies. Enemies have Commandos style vision cones, they should register sounds too, but I didnt notice that much. You cannot change stances, which sux, what sux even more is that you cant carry/hide bodies. Enemies can and do notice corpses, but for some reason they do not raise alarm when they see them (baaaad!). Enemies can raise alarm by ringing bells (which can be sabotaged).
Combat itself is of CoH/DoW variety - soldiers can take cover behind light or hard cover and get special abilities depending on their role (grenadiers can throw grenades and place mines, machinegunners can cover a sector, riflemen can make a bayonet charge etc). There are heavy weapons such as Maxim HMGs that can be taken over, there are even various vehicles that can be used (though enemy has them too), including trucks, armored cars and tanks. Again, serviceable, but dont expect to be blown away.
The game is "based on historical events" rather than historical, so yeah, there are stronk wahmin (though in the demo they are all medics, which aint that bad...). At the end of the demo it is implied that you can interact with both Whites and Reds and perhaps some choices will be there to make, though the part showed in the demo has no moral ambiguity whatsoever - you have to be a goody twoshoes who always helps out the local people agaisnt evil commies... w/e I guess.
Anyway, from what I have seen I would say this is 7/10 gaym at best. Unless you are interested in the subject matter, you can find better things to play for sure. I will still get it to support the domestic industry, but it really aint as good as it could have been.
