Valiant Hearts: Coming Home Review

thesixthaxis.com:

It took Ubisoft nine years, but they finally gave us a sequel to Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Debuting on Netflix Games last year, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home has now been released on everything a video game can be released on in 2024. Finally I can at last finish the narrative adventure that so moved me back in 2014.

The original Valiant Hearts followed the adventures of four civilians as they become inescapably drawn into the First World War. Coming Home continues the tale of some of the surviving characters, as well as some new faces. It also maintains the same gameplay mechanics as the original, whilst developing the themes of friendship and sacrifice that made its precursor so memorable. As such, the visuals are of the same charming and deeply evocative 2D cartoon style that proved so striking in Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Rather than dialogue, conversations with NPCs are carried out by pictograms in speech bubbles.

It’s a credit to the animation and strong characterisation that every emotional beat can easily be interpreted and understood. Indeed, the lack of dialogue results in a simple efficiency of communication that cuts through unwarranted exposition and fluff to get to the heart of the matter: the relationships between people. It’s easy to become fully engaged with the exploits of Freddie, James, Anna, George, and Ernst, as they attempt to extricate themselves from the barded-wire-wrapped mess that was The Great War. The storyline is, as you would expect of a Valiant Hearts game, both moving and tragic, exploring complex themes of racial segregation in the military, racism, and intolerance, so you’d better get those tissues ready as the narrative hurtles along to its uncompromisingly downbeat ending.

Less effective is the gameplay itself. Intended to be accessible fodder for mobile gamers, the actual game side of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home can too often be entirely ignorable. Most levels see the player character run from left to right, solving some