izigame.me

An underwhelming sequel to a 10/10 masterpiece

That is what I would sum up this entire game as...
When I read the subtitle "Coming Home", I had assumed that this game would cover the end of the war and the post-war period after World War 1 where we'd see soldiers and citizens alike cope with the aftermath of the Great War, seeing humanitarian work, the clean up of battlefields or the economic and emotional toll it took on people.
Instead what we got was more of the same in all 3 Chapters, and the effects of the post-war are only covered in the last 10 minutes of the game. Which is incredibly disappointing.
Also, this game introduces some new protagonists alongside the old cast, which, while nice, was entirely unnecessary and I found myself entirely disinterested in the stories of two of them (Ernst and George).
This game, while it aims to wrap up the story of each characters entirely neatly, gives two of the characters an unnecessarily and cruel ending that seems to be purely done for shock factor.
The gameplay also saw little to no changes. There are no new mechanics, no new puzzles or anything to write home about other than you no longer being able to control the character using the D-Pad on a controller anymore and the menu being significantly worse, clearly having been made for mobile phones first and for PC and Consoles second.
All in all. While this was still a neat extension of the story told in the first game, a sequel was unnecessary, nobody asked for it, and it only ruined what was a perfect and neatly-tied together ending in the first one.
If you still want to play it, do so. But just pretend that they all get a good ending instead of the contrived nonsense they pull out at the end...
Spoilers for the Ending:
Freddie and Anna deserved so much better than the writers gave them. Seriously...
I get that they wanted to show the senseless cycle of hatred and cruelty when they added the whole sub-plot of black soldiers facing racism and segregation in the US, but to then have Freddie just get stabbed Post-War by a bunch of racists and have Anna fail to revive him is unnecessarily cruel. This is a terrible ending and yes this review is mostly negative because of the way it was ended.