Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a beautifully made story that also happens to play out as a video game.

For good reason, not many games choose to cover the first of two World Wars. Why should they? The second World War lends itself more towards action and excitement (I tread carefully when I say excitement) while the first is all about dreary trench warfare and seemingly pointless conflict. Ubisoft, however, utilizes the dreadful environment of WWI to its advantage in order to create an emotional and impactful game.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War beautifully encompasses the environment of the first World War through amazing animations and artwork, a chilling soundtrack, and grim narration that makes you really feel the horrors that were taking place.

The plot follows the lives of four distinct and playable individuals (plus a good ol' pupper) and their experiences in the war, thus illuminating the setting at a small-scale that aims to illustrate the variety of ordinary people that were thrown into the war either by choice or not, and their struggles. The characters also roughly follow the events and battles from WWI which are further explained by the narrator in cut-scenes between levels or by information pieces which can be read at appropriate intervals. Hidden items that are littered throughout the game also reveal facts about daily articles used during the war from helmets on the soldier's heads to what kind of pipes were crafted to smoke tobacco. I enjoyed these educational pieces as I felt they helped paint the larger picture of the unpleasant conditions and overall suffering that occurred.

The characters themselves don't have extensive dialogue, but you learn about and become attached to them through the narrator, their diary entries, and of course by playing with them. Because the game focuses so much on these characters, and you don't necessarily develop this attachment until you've been playing with them and experiencing the war through their eyes for some time, the beginning of the game can be hard to get through. However, by the end, the journey feels more involving and is well worth the time it takes to connect with them.

The actual gameplay seems like a backdrop or an afterthought to the story, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, Most of the game mechanics are fairly simple, to include the puzzles that are riddled throughout. While clever at times, none were very complex or challenging and occasionally lent themselves to being more frustrating scavenger hunts than rewarding enigmas. Some levels are definitely more fun or engaging than others, but overall I'd say the gameplay is not up to par with the amazing atmosphere the game is set in.

Definitely an enjoyable game/experience for anyone.

Kinda a poor game, and definitly a big stepdown from the other Ubiart games. Its an puzzle adventure game, but the puzzles presented in it are really dumb, with very little logic thinking behind them. Its not satisfying as a puzzler, and the animations are quite janky that actually playing it is frustrating. Its extremely linear from beginning to end.

Visually it is good, as well as its sound. storywise its kinda poor, and really not enough was put into the characters for me to care for them. You can pet your dog, which is the highpoint of the game for me.

Overal an okayish game, i dont think there is really any reason to beat this unless you really want to play a game about the first world war.