Valiant Hearts: Coming Home

The game follows the style of its older sibling, and once again you'll be treated to absolutely stunning graphics, a compelling narrative style, tons of historical facts and your old friends. These are backed up by new heroes, and although some take different sides, they let you live their wartime lives through stories. [Issue#326]

It’s the Valiant Hearts storytelling that you’ve been looking for, but without the gameplay to match it.

Arrived like a bolt from the blue, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home can only embellish the Netflix Games portfolio, even if we would have expected something more from the sequel to a rare pearl like The Great War. It's not about creative gaps, because what Old Skull Games did with the supervision of Ubisoft is in all respects a deferential recovery of that stylistic figure, updated and integrated also with the deepening of new themes. It is the excessive debasement of the playful component that sometimes makes it difficult to fully immerse yourself in an otherwise visceral and well-constructed story. In short, this "homecoming" is bittersweet just like the story - or rather, the stories - it wants to tell us: pungent and imperfect.

Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is essentially a direct continuation of The Great War, almost an appendix. There's nothing new in gameplay terms, but its irresistible storytelling is still effective and its representation of war could have an educational result for young gamers.

It’s really a beautiful thing that Valiant Hearts: Coming Home exists today. It’s a blessing because is both the sequel-conclusion to one of the most beloved and didactically valuable games ever produced by Ubisoft, and the opening ram for a different way to publish games. However, this must not blind from evident flaws like low duration, low difficulty and some plot issues, such as the excessive dependence to its prequel.

Valiant Heart: Coming Home’s limited release strategy is a self-inflicted wound, but this beautiful WWI side-scrolling sequel is a fairly fun, lightly educational little three-hour engagement free to those equipped to play it.

The second instalment repeats what we’ve seen in the first one and does so successfully. There’s no hint of the original surprise, though. Are you a Netflix subscriber? Then this is a very nice bonus to all the TV shows.

The Hellfighters' story is one worth hearing - even if Valiant Hearts hits a few bum notes in its telling. [Issue#382, p.112]

When viewed through that lens, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is a success story. It tells an emotionally resonant story through multiple episodes, each with simple gameplay mechanics and a difficulty level that's welcoming to many players. That being said, seasoned video game veterans will notice the lack of substance in gameplay, even if they're moved by the story being told.