Valiant Hearts: The Great War Reviews
Valiant Hearts works from a novel concept, and is loaded with brilliant ideas—hell, it's great just to see a war from the perspective of a country other than America—but Ubisoft's lack of self-control ultimately makes it less impactful than it should have been. It's still a worthwhile experience, though it could have been so much better if Valiant Hearts left us wanting more.
Valiant Hearts may get repetitive at times, and struggles to find its tone, but I'd be hard-pressed to name a game that better explores the complexities of war. In the end, we're reminded that lives are valuable regardless of their banner. It's rare to see a video game explore conflict with such nuance, and this one deserves commendation for that.
Valiant Hearts is a confused game, but also a brave one tackling difficult subject matter.
A surprisingly sensitive, if flawed, retelling of a harrowing time in human history.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a fantastic tale grounded deep in actual and awful history, history the game has no problem sharing with you as you play.
Adventure with an artistic section at a very high level, with an interesting narrative, but with an excessively low difficulty, which can be exhausting if what you are looking for is a playable challenge.
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Visually stunning but mechanically lacklustre, Valiant Hearts gets in the way of its own storytelling.
Valiant Hearts isn't necessarily lacking in quality or polish, just that perhaps we're looking at one game that feels like it wants to be three.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War is an extremely linear, extremely easy, and extremely… okay adventure game that deals with the real, non-romanticised side of the first World War. Sadly while a product that's deeply engrossing, technically flawless, and simply beautiful to look at, its core, the story and characters, doesn't manage to ever become the riveting war drama that it is supposed to.
And so it's a good try, Ubisoft Montpellier, but ultimately in your failure to commit to your high concept, Valiant Hearts is ultimately the same as every other pretty good game: flashes of brilliance countered by nonsense tropes that are inserted just because these are the things you do in video games.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War doesn't do enough with its puzzle-solving gameplay or its story to make the trip worthwhile.
I give Ubisoft Montpellier a lot of credit for taking a level-headed look at a period of history that usually gets overshadowed, but the gameplay didn't get nearly as much attention as the aesthetics. If the puzzles had been more unique or interesting they could've propped up the story instead of dragging it down to mediocrity. Instead Valiant Heart turns one of the greatest conflicts in human history into a dull, repetitive chore.
There's no other war, or game, quite like this.
Valiant Hearts gets most of it right. In the end, it's just an incredible relief—if a decidedly un-American sentiment—to play a memorable war game that isn't some Rambo-inspired revenge fantasy. Well, that's not exactly right. It's a memorable game that just happens to be set during a war. And that makes all the difference.
You may find the title music serene if not melancholic when you first load up Valiant Hearts. When you return weeks later to replay favorite sequences and find collectibles you missed, you may find the same music moving for the way it tugs at the heart strings. You will know, as you're returning to the game, the music is a reminder of the tragedy and the beauty that lies underneath the cartoonish art and puzzles of Valiant Hearts.
If you are like me and missed out the first time around, Valiant Hearts: The Great War is an absolute must-play for puzzle-adventure games and history enthusiasts.
Valiant Hearts is a rarity: a game from a massive AAA publisher that plays out a personal and intimate story in a largely untapped historical setting. More of that, Ubisoft.
