This War of Mine: Final Cut – Review

For those who are unaware, This War of Mine finds you surviving in the fictional country of Graznavia’s war-torn metropolis of Pogoren. You don’t play as one of the warring parties; instead, you play as citizens who must scavenge, craft, defend, and survive until the ceasefire arrives. It’s a Rogue-like in the sense that you only have one attempt and if all of your civilians die, the game is finished and you have to start over from the beginning.

You’re given a random group of civilians and start in a random base when you initially start a run. Each civilian has a distinct personality and skill set that will enable them to perform a variety of tasks in order to live day to day. The game is divided into two sections. During the day, your characters are at their base, where they can craft items, eat, and rest in preparation for the second phase at night, when one person can go out in the dark to collect materials, food, medicine, or weapons, while others sleep or stand guard in case people come to your base looking for easy loot.

During the day, you can switch between each character and control them manually, causing them to run around the base and interact with various items. You begin with a crafting table, where you use materials to produce simple items such as beds, metal working benches, and a stove, and then go to making heaters for cold weather, animal traps, and moonshine stills. Everyone has the ability to do anything, but some are more efficient than others. So you might have someone who was a craftsman before the war and can build with fewer materials, while others are better at cooking or bartering with strangers that come knocking. There’s also a benefit to sending different people out scavenging because they travel at different rates and can carry more or less stuff or defend themselves better in combat.

You can choose from a variety of destinations on a map that grows in size as the days pass. When you hover over each place, a description appears that gives you suggestions as to what you’ll find and what stuff you might be able to claim. It’s up to you whether you want to opt for a safer scavenging or risk getting hurt or worse in exchange for a larger bounty. You also have the option of becoming a looter or being respectful to your fellow man. Stealing from the elderly couple is simple, but you must consider not only your own conscious, but also that of your characters. You must consider your characters’ morale in addition to exhaustion, hunger, and disease, and, depending on the character, stealing or killing innocents will have a significant affect on their self-esteem, which might have far-reaching consequences.

The game’s loop is as follows. Spend the day making anything you can to aid in your survival while preserving the health of your characters, and then head out into the night to acquire what you require, whether it’s food or materials for your next craft. During the day, various persons knock on the door, which are random occurrences with which you can choose to interact or not, however the locations you visit at night can vary slightly in terms of what events can occur. You may need to juggle various things due to an unforeseen illness or a mistake that causes a character to need rest or get disoriented, but if everything is going well, you’ll find a rhythm.

As a result, everything can get monotonous. Although you can choose all sorts of different variations on repeat playthroughs, whether it’s the characters you start with, the length of the war, how long and cold the winter months are, and how dangerous zones are, this War of Mine isn’t a short game, so even though you can choose all sorts of different variations on repeat playthroughs, you’ll still fall into a similar pattern each time. You’ll need to build the same things to survive, so the day sections’ aims won’t change between playthroughs, and then it’s up to you which zones you target, so you can take risks or play it safe, but you can get into a rut.

The controls might sometimes be a stumbling block. You have a time constraint, so you want each character to accomplish something during the day, whether it’s construction, cooking, or resting. However, because you have to control each character individually, you’ll waste time bringing them into position and getting them where you want them to be. It would be more convenient if you could choose a character and then cycle through to a station to direct them to do anything, but that isn’t possible. It’s not a major problem, but it does feel inefficient, and the controls in general may be awkward, with stairs always being a headache and selecting which item you want to interact with when possibilities are close to one another fiddlier than it should be.

Even if you’re playing against the clock, it doesn’t have much of an impact on what is normally a slow-paced game, but it might add a little aggravation and take you out of the moment, which is where This War of Mine shines. There is little variety in the action, and the controls should be improved, but the game’s strengths are the unique storylines, which are often depressing. This is also true of the DLC, which focuses on certain characters and their tales in shorter scenarios and is accessible separately.

My first playthrough, for example, was a steep learning curve. There is no official tutorial, so you’ll have to wing it and try different things. I didn’t know what to make first, and I hadn’t given any thought to having people sleep during the day for a long, so I had to decide who to send out at night. I would also hop around because I didn’t pay attention to the descriptions of the locations. I just showed up at an old couple’s house and started taking things because I didn’t realise items were labelled differently depending on whether they were owned by someone else or were free to take. The spouse then began following me around, which I took as an opportunity to practise combat. Nobody was pleased when my character returned to the base.

I then dispatched another person to a grocery. They came upon a soldier who was attempting to take advantage of a woman. When I stepped in, my character’s crowbar couldn’t hold up against the man’s knife, and they died. My base was down to two people, and one of them had been injured defending it from an attack due to a lack of weapons and defences. I dressed him up and sent him out that night, but when he returned, my other character had committed suicide. Another figure arrived seeking refuge, but things did not turn out well for either of them.

It’s an emotional game, so it’s worth playing, but despite the variants, I don’t think there’s much repeat value. Because the gameplay and targets aren’t varied enough, and the game is lengthy, I was done after one successful run. At least for the time being. The PS5 isn’t heavily promoted, yet it is a compelling game. All of the colours are muted, and there’s a lovely textured overlay effect. To provide that extra attachment, photos are used for the characters, and there is just a small amount of loading each morning.

This War of Mine: Final Cut is an intriguing title with a sad message, especially given the current political climate. The randomness and range of alternatives you can choose don’t make as big of a difference as you’d like to promote repeated runs, therefore the gameplay is just okay. It’s definitely worth a look, but make sure you’re mentally prepared for it because, unlike many other games, it doesn’t glorify war in any manner. In fact, the opposite is true.