Review for Valiant Hearts: The Great War. PC game, | , iOS, PlayStation Network, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 25/06/2014 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 08/11/2018
The human being lives on memories. Whether they are beautiful, ugly, exciting or sad, our life is based on memory, on remembering what happened, what we did, how much we could have done better or worse and, from this foundation, build ourselves as people. The whole of society, consequently, rests on the concept of "historical memory", a testimony of the past that should allow us to live the present while avoiding the same mistakes, the same tragedies, the same massacres. It should.
Four years after its release, after receiving countless awards and landing on virtually every console you can think of, Valiant Hearts: The Great War by Ubisoft Montpellier returns to excite us with a port (certainly not very generous in terms of additions) on the Nintendo Switch.
War, war never changes ...
Valiant Hearts is a puzzle adventure that lets us follow the stories of four different protagonists, firmly and indissolubly intertwined. Karl is the son-in-law of Emile, a German forced to leave his French wife and son to enlist, ironically, on the French front. The same fate, but on the opposite side, will be up to Emile, who, at the end of a difficult training (our tutorial), will meet Freddie, an American who voluntarily enlisted with France and seeking revenge. The fourth and final star of this large cast is Anna, a promising young veterinarian, now a volunteer nurse at the front.
Let's start with a necessary premise: Karl, Emile, Freddie and Anna are not heroes. They never try to be and are not written to be elevated to that rank, they are mere human beings: fathers, husbands, children. The war in Valiant Hearts is not described as the fruit of great minds, but with the sensations and emotions of four civilians who are chained, by fate, to something greater than themselves. War destroys not only houses and buildings with bombs, but also people's minds and emotional stability. And Valiant Hearts destroyed ours.
We add to the group of protagonists a very faithful dog, Walt, who will help us in solving the puzzles and you will understand that, as far as the emotional side (and related crying) is concerned, we have reached a rather high level. At various times we found ourselves with a tight stomach so strong that it hurt. The human reactions of the protagonists and their emotions transpire from the other side of the screen as if it were a completely natural thing, although there are no proper lines of dialogue (the characters will mumble small phrases and communicate mainly through gestures).
The swan song
In the four chapters that make up the story of Valiant Hearts we will be able to alternate the four protagonists and their different abilities. While, for example, Emile is able to dig with his ladle, Freddie will be able to free his way from cables and barbed up with the pincer. Anna and her great skills will be able to help the injured and sick to obtain key objects, while Karl will use numerous disguises to get out of the most complicated situations. Finally, the faithful and sweet Walt will be able to slip into bottlenecks and channels to pull levers or retrieve objects.
The alternation between the various mechanics makes everything more varied and fun, despite the situations being repetitive and perhaps the puzzles a little too simple. The average level of difficulty is in fact very, very low, also due to the presence of timed clues and the on-screen highlighting of interactive objects (both features not present in the "Veteran" mode), all characteristics that attest to the overall duration of Valiant Hearts between six and eight hours.
And if you want to recover all the collectibles present, the number of hours will certainly increase since some of these will not be so immediate. Our advice is to do it absolutely, given how much every single object recovered adds in terms of depth: each description reports facts, data and statistics on the period of the Great War, creating a real guide inside the game that is always updated and very interesting.
Our fullest applause goes to the aesthetics and art direction: the desire to tell terribly tragic and unfortunate facts and situations with a comic style is tremendously spot on and well studied. Let's add super smooth animations, both on the laptop and with Nintendo Switch connected to the dock, and excellent overall stability, along with an impactful and very inspired soundtrack and you will get, overall, a little gem that anyone, both history lovers and those who are never interested, should play.
Valiant Hearts follows in the wake of those historical games that try to tell complex, dark and terror-filled periods. The difference with many other colleagues lies in the fact that Valiant Hearts fully succeeds. With incredibly human and well-characterized characters, combined with an impactful artistic direction, the Ubisoft title manages to hide a tremendous ease (and banality) in terms of gameplay, elevating itself to a video game that has managed to make us cry over and over again. Without considering how good Walt is.
► Valiant Hearts: The Great War is an Adventure-Indie-Puzzle game developed and published by Ubisoft for PC, | , iOS, PlayStation Network, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 25/06/2014 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 08/11/2018
