When comparing Valiant Hearts: The Great War vs Strider, the Slant community recommends Strider for most people. In the question“What are the best PS4 (PlayStation 4) games?” Strider is ranked 77th while Valiant Hearts: The Great War is ranked 91st. The most important reason people chose Strider is:
Strider is a really fast-paced side-scrolling hack and slash. The enemies will never stop trying to shoot your or end you in any way possible. This could easily become punishingly difficult, but is avoided thanks to the very responsive controls. You'll scale walls and kill groups of enemies within seconds, which truly makes you feel like an assassin with inhuman reflexes. The boss fights increase the tempo and may seem really cheap at first. Luckily, you'll learn their abilities over time, which will allow you to predict and counter them all. Defeating a boss without taking a single hit feels incredibly satisfying.
Specs
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Pros
Pro A game about war where you don't kill anyone
Valiant Hearts tells a story about war, but you're not the one spreading death and misery. Your character simply journeys through battlefields, trenches, and various other locations. You meet other characters and solve puzzles along the way. This is quite refreshing because most modern titles about war always have a gun toting player character.
Pro Simple but satisfying puzzles
The puzzles in Valiant Hearts aren't exactly the most difficult, but they'll often require a little more thought than you initially believe.
One type of the puzzles you'll have to solve is fixing a pipe system. You just have to turn sections of the pipe system until it all fits together.
Even solving something so simple is very satisfying and leaves you with a feeling of achievement.
Pro Striking artistic style
The style of Valiant Hearts appeals to most aesthetics. It's simple and clean, allowing you to spot even the tiniest details in character designs and backgrounds. You'd occasionally spot interesting things like a flute attached to a soldiers backpack. Or even spot a very detailed Cathedral in the spaces between the rubble.
The colors are very dim and blend quite well, giving you the sombre feeling of war. There are no random mashups of colors or effects like in many recent games.
Pro Fast, fun combat
Strider is a really fast-paced side-scrolling hack and slash. The enemies will never stop trying to shoot your or end you in any way possible. This could easily become punishingly difficult, but is avoided thanks to the very responsive controls. You'll scale walls and kill groups of enemies within seconds, which truly makes you feel like an assassin with inhuman reflexes.
The boss fights increase the tempo and may seem really cheap at first. Luckily, you'll learn their abilities over time, which will allow you to predict and counter them all. Defeating a boss without taking a single hit feels incredibly satisfying.
Pro Tons of collectibles
You can find new upgrades, concept art, story info, character info, and costumes during the game. There are also hidden challenges such as Survival and Beacon. Only the upgrades are marked on the map, so the rest can be difficult to find, making 100% completion a tough goal to reach.
Pro Big game world that rewards exploration
The world of Strider is massive city where you'll be climbing a lot of high walls and tall buildings. It also hides a lot of upgrades that will help you clear a level or beat a boss a lot easier. Most of these can only be accessed later when you have the right type of weapon (similar to Metroid Prime). So you'll be spending a lot of time exploring (backtracking) if you decide to access these new locations.
Cons
Con Short
Valiant Hearts takes about 6 hours to complete and there's not much to do afterwards. While the collectibles give this game some replay value, not many players will be interested in finding them.
Con Historical facts may become annoying
There are historical fact boxes that will pop up during gameplay. They are optional, but can be annoying because they disrupt the flow of the gameplay.
Con Cannot skip pre-boss chatter
This is not an issue if you don't die to a boss, but if you do, you have to sit through their introduction and banter every time. You cannot skip talk scenes you've already seen. The final boss, in particular, is quite the chatter-box.
Con No "Fast-Travel" really
It is a big game world, and most of the time you are stuck exploring it all by foot. There is something that lets you travel between areas, but they are few and far between and not really all that helpful. Plus, it is unlocked fairly late into the game. If you know there is something you need to return to on the other side of the game, you are in for a good hike.
Con Story is not explained
Strider has a very simple "good guy defeats evil tyrant" type of story, but none of the characters are truly fleshed out.