War is brutal. It disregards human life and circumstance cruelly. Many video games have tackled this, and Letters of War is the latest. Focusing on a family of three during World War II, what Letters of War does quite uniquely is tell the story from multiple perspectives. The player will control both Liam, a dotting father who goes into war with a sense of obligation and duty, and his young daughter Rosy, who wants her father home safe and sound. The idea is great, as they send letters to each other through Katherine, the mother and wife of the two leads. I’m sad to report that the game’s potential hasn’t been realised just yet due to a litany of technical issues.
Let’s tackle the positives first. Letters of War switches perspectives over multiple years as Rosy and Liam cope with war from different perspectives. Rosy misses her dad, and whilst she does chores to help out her mum, she’s living for the next letter from the front to keep her hopes of dad returning home safely alive. Her scenes are largely contained to the family home, doing fetch quests, choosing artwork, or doing errands for Katherine. She is voiced in such a saccharine way that it is almost too much cuteness. The family home seems so idyllic and polite, I felt immediately like it was a set-up for maximum emotional manipulation and within five minutes I was placing bets on which character would die. That said, Rosy’s scenes are the quiet, cosier side of things and mostly technically competent and playable.
We spend most of our time with Liam. He is already war-worn from The Great War and feels an obligation and duty to go to war to protect his family. This translates into an awful lot of chase sequences where bombs, machine guns, tanks, or planes are firing at you, and you have to move Liam faster or slower to avoid the fire. These sequences are often a bit too long for their own good, and one wrong move sends you back to the start. Elsewhere, Liam has to avoid spotlights, cut wires, turn off tripwires and attack enemies or objects. These are performed by using the space bar or shift button to perform an action. Make sure to turn off sticky key notifications, as you’ll be pressing shift multiple times quickly! Whilst these actions work well, there are other actions involving grenades or tank missiles which require you to throw things in an arc. Sometimes the arc doesn’t match up correctly, and with limited ammo, sometimes you’ll need to play and fail minigames to work out what the trajectory vaguely is, and then try properly from attempt two or three onwards. Things are quite rigid and nowhere near as fluid or as involved as the similarly themed and styled Valiant Hearts series, but then this is a new indie games studio releasing a game at half the price. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
That said, Letters of War has varied settings, voice acting, some lovely backdrops, and some heartfelt setpieces that work well. The narrative works best when it moves into the more emotional, introspective moments. The letters have a bare honesty and British “do your homework” vibe to them that works well, too. At times, the voice acting is a little wooden and slow, and the music or sound effects drown out the voice work. These are little issues that you get used to.
What is far more egregious is the number of unique softlocks and game-breaking bugs I came across. I was able to replicate 14 different issues that broke the game during my playthrough. All 14 required multiple attempts to progress through and this turned playing Letters of War into a slog. Minigames wouldn’t trigger. Cameras would get stuck, leaving my character wandering off-screen forever. Objects would appear, disappear, and reappear. Collectables would spawn multiple times or not at all, locking you out of progression. These issues are so fundamental to the gameplay progression that I cannot imagine how they did not come up in any kind of testing. Thankfully, the developers do seem to be fixing these bugs with post-launch patches, so I hope your experience will be smoother. It is being fixed so quickly, though, that it makes me wonder if the early buyers are acting like playtesters by proxy.
I feel like Letters of War will be a much better experience in 6-8 weeks time. Hopefully, most of the bugs will be squashed and you’ll be able to enjoy the narrative for the emotional rollercoaster it is attempting to deliver. There is a 7/10 game in here if the technical hiccups are solved, and there’s a lot of game for the price point, too. Until then, wishlist it and watch for patch updates before going fully into battle.
Review copy provided by the developer. Letters of War is out on PC.
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