Valiant Hearts: The Great War™ / Soldats Inconnus : Mémoires de la Grande Guerre™
One of the best all around adventure story games released in the last few years. A mix of a beautifully composed musical score, stellar artwork, great story, impressive puzzles, and real life historical content. This game actually made me think about the collectibles and ponder the historical facts as much as I did the story at times.
Set during World War I (The Great War), Valiant Hearts gives you a look at individuals in war and how this particular group of individuals finds themselves connected. A German man married to a French woman who is forced to go back to Germany and fight. His father-in-law forced to fight for France. An American who befriends the Frenchman. A female doctor that finds herself crossing paths with all of them. Then there is Walt, the war dog, who becomes their ally, friend, and savior at times. While they all may battle for different reasons, countries, or leaders, they all care for one another. They all find ways to help one another overcome struggles, support one another in troubles, and connect to one another as humans rather than enemies.
– Real player with 26.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best World War I Atmospheric Games.
It seems only natural that since we are in the midst of the centennial anniversary of the war that was to end all wars, a game should be released. In the gaming world, it seems that almost every war has been covered. Sadly, little to no recognition has been given to the war that launched the world into the modern age and changed how we live today. Valiant Hearts proves to be one of the first games to give a great picture of the struggles of World War I as well as a satisfying gaming experience.
In Valiant Hearts, we follow the stories of five heroes: Emile, a Frenchman; Hans, Emile’s son-in-law who is deported from France because of his German origins; Freddie, an American who volunteers and fights alongside the French in his quest for revenge; Anna, a nurse searching for her father in Belgium; and Walt, a German first aid dog that comes across the path of each of these heroes and helps any way he can. While it may seem highly coincidential how these five individuals continually come across each other’s paths, their backgrounds and motivations are very believable. The friendships that they build are genuine and felt by the players, without dialogue. Most conversations in this game are done by comic book bubbles and short distinct phrases that are spoken by the characters.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
Aggression: Europe Under Fire
Das ist gut.
The Peaceful Roman Catholic Territory of 20th century Europa was thrown into disorder, mayhem, chaos and Anarchy when their elected Government, The Imperial Royalty, was Assassinated by a Yugoslavian Revolutionary; the assassination started ww1 and ww2 and the financial stability collapse of monetary currency along with the fall of the heavens. the US Government is a smol Terrorist Faction and is not important compared to the Reds that control the East… Fascism is taking root above Royalty and anything else, So it is left to the Fates to decide the Future of the Chosen People and God’s Kingdom. Will they all become Capitalists or Fascists, or will the Royalists Rise Again… you decide here in the war to end all wars spanning ww1 and world war 2. u will need to hire ur Generals, and raise armies but first u must upgrade ur technology and factories in each territory. u r the decider u decide. send ur men forward to die or send an armoured coloumn to pave the way to victory over europa fore whichever faction it doesnt matter their all unique. u can has bombers and armoured cars, tenks artillery horses and balloons and men and u will need all sorts of units to stop rebellions which ruin the game and conquer each point and level on the map. its a nice strategy map but its live real time paced not turn based so watch out the computer might overwhelm u. the computer can be set to different difficulties but usually they will attack u, but r easy to beat, the harder it is the moar technology they will develop and the moar armies u will encounter… over all its kinda a good fun game, some suprises but mostly its slow house to house fighting with mass enemy charges
– Real player with 82.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best World War I Strategy Games.
I had to fight this game for more than a week before I could start effectively playing it. In the beginning I suffered crashes on every battle which made the game virtually unplayable.
Despite that, with a lot of patience, trial and error and tweaking I finally made it work and I have to recognize it is a great game. It has that mix of grand strategy with tactical battles that is tipical of the Total War series, but spans from before WW1 to after WW2, which is a period that very few games explore.
– Real player with 78.9 hrs in game
Battle of Empires : 1914-1918
-Recommended Title-
I have followed BoE since it first appeared on Greenlight, and have been eager to get my hands on a copy. Well, my eagerness has not been dulled since purchasing and playing this early access ww1 game.
The gameplay is the typical MoW style, with objectives to be completed in order to progress. The models and overall graphics are well suited to the era - and should look quite amazing with the rtm version. No performance issues running on a Windows 8.1 laptop (..mine has 4GBRAM /500GB HDD/Intel HD &Radeon 3670m 2GB (Hybrid) graphics with the settings all maxxed out).
– Real player with 146.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best World War I Strategy Games.
Update: the British Empire so far is the best campaign, until the other DLC get reworked try the British Empire
This game is very interesting but, there is a lot wrong with it and it needs some of these issues fixed before it becomes fair and fun. I will say right now that you should not buy this game until it gets fixed. And I also want to add, I don’t want to get a refund for this game, I want it to be improved in the areas that it needs it; I want it to work in order to be fun and fair when you play. In this list of complaints I will not list the DLC as I personally don’t have a problem with it, and in my personal experience with the DLC it enriches and extends the single player which is something that I like, I didn’t buy this game for multiplayer … but I would like to see something for American campaign in the future …
– Real player with 121.7 hrs in game
SGS Heia Safari
The game has a campaign game and four campaigns which start in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 and run to the end of the War. I have been playing the game for over a month and am greatly enjoying it. It has good period feel and the game captures well the asymmetric nature of the conflict with lumbering large Allied forces chasing the German forces, made up almost entirely of native askaris, who wage an effective campaign of raids, cutting Allied supply lines and overpowering isolated Allied garrisons.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
It has always been my belief that games can succeed in two ways. The first, through the intricacies of its systems, how they relate to one another, and the opportunities they present for players to express themselves within its world. The second, thorough the novelty of expert explorations of its setting. Sometimes, but not often, we’ll be presented with games that manage to do both. Heia Safari’s iterative design doesn’t stray far from its established formula, and I’m assuming, the reason for that, is the existence of an already established fan base and the recently well-received SGS Afrika Korps. I’m hesitant to call this an all-out review, per se, because I enjoy doing reviews properly, going in-depth with every little detail, something I can’t afford to do with SGS right now, but I’ve spent a long couple of hours in the game, so I should be confident enough to share my opinion on it.
– Real player with 8.3 hrs in game
Tactics of World War I
Tactics of World War I puts you in the role of a military leader on the Western Front. Lead your men through some of the fiercest battles in history. But only if you plan your attacks thoroughly, and react smartly and quickly to your enemies actions you will succeed.
Two Single-Player Campaigns
The game features two single-player campaigns set on the Western Front. A German campaign about the invention of the famous “Sturmtruppen”, an elite infantry unit founded to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare. And a British campaign dealing with the deployment of the very first tanks to the battlefield.
The campaigns extent over the entire conflict from 1914 to 1918, including decisive battles such as the Battle of Flirey or the Battle of Passchendaele.
Realistic Small Unit Tactics
Tactics of World War I focuses on the tactical aspects of the battle like cover, suppressive fire, and flanking maneuvers. Resulting in a fast-paced gameplay loop accompanied by truly innovative, streamlined controls.
With more than half a dozen individual units per faction, from light infantry to heavy weapons, such as mortars or tanks, Tactics of World War One provides you with a variety of tactics.
The Entente Gold
This is a quite challenging but still fun game in the old “Command and Conquer” RTS vein, but with the level of historic detail it should be compared to the “Cossacks 2” series. The interface is fairly simple as are the graphics, but the visuals maintain the game’s historic accuracy (the differences between national uniform). It can’t be compared to the “Blitzkrieg” series for graphics, and it’s somewhat behind the “Battle of Empires” mod for “Company of Heroes”, but for the price there’s quite literally hours (if not weeks or even months in the campaigns) of game play with thankfully little frustration for the junior leader or even the veteran RTS player. A well-trained AI is built into the game to manage your civil or military war effort for you so you need do very little, unless you really want a challenge. Then you should fully expect General War in all his aspects! Finally and thankfully the game doesn’t just park itself in trench warfare-you should expect what really happened in 1914; the dawn of twentieth-century warfare with all the associated horrors. Good luck, everyone.
– Real player with 16.7 hrs in game
The Entente is a old-styled RTS based on rarely-used WW1 setting. It was released in 2003-2004 and was made by same people who made Cossacks, on same engine as well, unless I am mistaken. And now it was rereleased on Steam.
You will notice that while in Steam it’s called Entente Gold, in the game itself it shows “v2.0” and intro was edited to say “Entente II”. It’s not clear what was changed. I remember somebody on Steam noticing it and saying that some sprites were changed. Like they were working to remake it, but then gave up.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
World War I
Worked fine on Win 10. Played this a year after another Blitzkrieg variant. I like preserving my units even though there is no in game benefit to do so. It’s a shame you don’t get any core units to play with. I usually used a spotter to find enemy units, mortars to take out said units, armored vehicle to protect them and a lot of time. The AI sucks, they don’t react to anything when you are not in there zone and they have no spotters. So it was easy for me to find them and shell the hell out of them. I got a glitch on one map where an infinite amount of my cavalry would spawn, but sending them against the standard enemy defense got a lot of them slaughtered. So on a non glitched map, cavalry are really useless. I would trade all my infantry, Calvary, and cannons for 1 sniper, because basically those units are useless and the sniper is OP, which seems to be true for all Blitzkrieg type games. Also since this is WW1 you don’t get the fun of playing with tanks. There are 30 missions, plus 4 extra. I got this game for $1, but I don’t see any reason to get this “dlc”, unless you have time to kill. I rate this game 4.99/10.
– Real player with 95.4 hrs in game
It’s like Blitzkrieg 1 on a smaller scale.
Gameplay
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Infantry, tanks, machine guns, AT-guns etc. pretty much share the same firing range.
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Artillery range has been decreased in order to fit smaller scale battles. ( ex, a 152 mm howitzer has the same range as a mortar).
You cannot use artillery to fire across the entire map like in other enigma engine games ( BK, M.Kursk & Barbarossa, Stalingrad etc.), although the game has some heavy art. pieces (fixed, cannot be moved/towed) that have the biggest firing range, very useful in defending positions.
– Real player with 65.0 hrs in game
Comrades and Barons: Solitaire of Bloody 1919
Fun Solitaire game with a couple of offbeat game mechanics relating to the story of the gloriously messy situation in the Baltics in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of the Great War. Unique setting provides for some fun story elements that are integrated into the gaming levels. If you like Solitaire, give it a try. If you like Solitaire with a unique theme, try it as well. If you like to learn more about the Baltic Wars of Independence and the personalities and insane heel-face-heel turns involved, play as well.
– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game
5.5/10
I initially snagged Comrades and Barons because 1) I dig playing Solitaire games while I’m listening to music and 2) I dig the Russian Revolution-era aesthetic of the game. The game tells the story of a communist uprising. There are 6 different locations, and each location typically consists of 3-4 battles. Each battle consists of 10 levels, with the exception of perhaps the first introductory battle. Each battle has its own set of objectives you must complete in order to “win,” which might include something like attaining a certain card combo (perhaps removing 7 cards from the board in a row) or flawlessly completing a number of levels (perhaps removing all cards while playing 5 different levels). Unfortunately, there isn’t really a way to seamlessly mesh Solitaire gameplay with fighting a war. Although the cards themselves were thematic and the in-level obstacles were things like barbed wire, the “story” is told through simple in-game text boxes. I read the first few, but it was difficult to maintain interest when I was given no protagonist to follow and was unable to connect my in-game actions to anything war-related.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
11-11 Memories Retold
achievements
overall, it is not a bad pick for achievement-hunters: no bugged or glitched achievements, no grind, everything is tight and simple (and achievements themselves are vary in goals), but the whole hunting is tedious. without a thoughtful detailed guide you will replay the same stages again-and-again with unskippable cutscenes. also various collectibles are hard to see because of artsy graphics. so, in a nutshell, good hunting overall, but it will be more irritating than fun
– Real player with 25.2 hrs in game
For some reason, I decided to play both “11-11 Memories Retold” and “Call of Duty: WWII” simultaneously. Now, these games might be drastically different: one is a poetic tribute to the fallen of WWI, and the other is more of a straightforward, gritty representation of WWII. But in my playthroughs, I actually found out some odd similarities between them:
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They make you control different characters interchangeably;
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They both have rather unnecessary flying sections;
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They both try to educate gamers about the wars with collectables;
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
Commander: The Great War
Ok. I have played this game for a while and got the hang of it.
It is a great game of WW1 with a couple of frustrating imperfections that you only really appreciate when you have played quite a bit. So while i might say negative things at the end of this review this is a recommendation.
For starters it feels like WW1.
The graphics look the part. The map covers everything and there is plenty of open ocean for the naval campaigns to unfold. The opening turns also develop in a very similiar manner to the actual war as long as you play even modestly sensibly as either side.
– Real player with 1715.3 hrs in game
The designers did many things right. I really have only two complaints. One of those complaints is pretty serious, but the good points outweigh that big negative.
My background: History is my passion. I’ve had a particular interest in WW1 for thirty years. I’ve been to the best museums, and one of the battlefields. I’ve been playing hex-based wargames for even longer. When I was in college I was frustrated by the lack of WW1 games (apart from air combat). I wrote my own game, loosely based on squad leader and researched it thoroughly.
– Real player with 477.7 hrs in game