In case someone visits here before visiting protondb, there is a solution to this problem. You need to add 2 files from Windows to the game prefix - icuuc.dll and icuin.dll . They are in the system32 and syswow64 folders...
I never really had given this game a go, but after last changes I wanted to have a look, after confirming on ProtonDB that it runs fine. It seems, also per this report, that this is not true anymore, game does not start ...