Ubisoft may have fumbled often in the past, but they at least deserve some credit when it comes to letting their various development studios make new things. Such is the case with Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Made by Ubisoft Montpellier, Valiant Hearts is a wonderful and heart touching little adventure game.

The game’s plot is set around the earlier events of World War I. Franz Ferdinand has been assassinated, and Germany declares war on Russia in response. As a result of this, a young man named Karl is deported from France and separated from his wife and child. Supposedly men are being deported because of paranoia within the French government casts suspicion on German immigrants. Karl is then summarily drafted into the German Army. Likewise Karl’s father-in-law Emile is drafted into the French military. While the game’s story largely focuses on Emile’s journey, you will often switch perspectives with other characters that Emile meets. They all have skills used to traverse the levels and clearing the puzzles within them. There is voice acting, must most of the time the game uses grunts and icon related bubbles to communicate hints and objectives. If you get stuck, the game will give you hints about puzzle solutions after about a minute. The puzzles themselves are fairly easy to solve though.

There are also collectibles to pick up and read about. In addition, there are diary entries for the main characters to fill in back story. There are also journal entries about the real-world locations and objects you will be visiting or interacting with. In an effort to keep the basic 2D exploration based puzzle solving, the game also has some action bits, where you fire cannons, run, or evading traffic while escaping from danger while driving a car. But you can also make use of the German army dog, Walt. Walt is the best dog ever. The Call of Duty dog has nothing on him, truly man’s best friend.

The game’s pacing is great, even though some people might be turned off by the rhythm-based sequences that Anna does as she performs medical procedures on her patients. These sequences could have been improved by making it more apparent when the player needs to press the on-screen button prompts, rather than showing the entire group of face buttons and a button popping up in its respective position. Also, the general lack of a musical beat makes it hard to gel with the on screen prompts. Some of the prompts also call for pressing multiple buttons, which makes it hard when the prompts transition between each other quickly. At least the escape sequences are easier to handle, and could have the movement speed to increase, as the car is pretty slow to makes turns at times. The rhythmic beats at least work there, in a fashion similar to Rayman Origins and Legends.

Aside from these minor annoyances, Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a great little download title, and should be highly recommended to adventure game fans and newcomers alike.

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