This War of Mine stands out for addressing the often avoided topic of the plight of civilians during armed conflicts. This is often ignored, not only in video games but media in general, likely because it's harder to glorify pointless suffering for propaganda purposes compared to conventional warfare and the current world superpower considers bombing civilian settlements a valid strategy they still practice to this day. This War of Mine seems to be inspired by the Breakup of Yugoslavia, but many may draw parallels to more recent Syrian Civil War which is still ongoing as of October of 2021.
The game starts somewhat promising, but it only takes a few hours for This War of Mine to become a regular survival game, and I can't help but think this goes against the original intent.
A lot of people mention different set pieces that elicited an emotional reaction from them, but I personally believe the game gets downright cheesy at times. The color palette is mostly comprised of different shades of grey and there's always sad music in the background, it feels forced rather than interactive.
Also, the cyclical nature of the gameplay plus the long duration of the campaign means that by the end of it most players will be thinking about moonshine economics rather than morality. You can only shank an NPC so many times until you become desensitized to it and I highly doubt that's the message they were going for because the sad atmosphere is maintained to the very end.
However, I find it morbidly cool that your survivors can become so traumatized they basically become catatonic, now that feels like a worthy consequence for some of the awful acts you can commit.
To conclude, This War of Mine has a very interesting and provocative concept, but the execution is more conductive to a fun survival game than an emotional exploration of said concept. Still, it's a fun survival game and I believe that's pretty good too.