Valiant Hearts: Coming Home manages to capture a lot of the charm of its beloved predecessor but unfortunately plays it a bit too safe to step out of its shadow. The game has some great location variety and some fun new sequences, such as a musical rhythm game with some fantastic sound design and controlling a plane to survive an A to B flight which takes good advantage of touchscreen controls. However, these new elements are too few and far between, with there being too much gameplay repetition and there being too many elements that have simply being copied and even simplified from the original Valiant Hearts. On top of this, I experienced quite a few performance issues during my playthrough. On a more positive note, the story itself has quite a few impactful beats and a strong ending that resonated with me even if I wasn’t that invested in the characters themselves.

While overall I’m pretty lukewarm on Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, I think fans of the original will still enjoy this sequel and feel some nostalgia playing through this experience. It doesn’t make the innovative steps that a sequel should, but for what is essentially a free game I can’t complain too much about Ubisoft giving me more of a game that I enjoyed. I only hope they continue to bring life into dormant franchises of theirs such as Rayman and Child of Light…