During Joe’s recent “Next Fest” streams, where he played demos of games that stood out to him during Steams recent Next Fest showcase, one game that stood out to both of us, was Valor Mortis.
Valor Mortis is a first-person souls-like, made by One More Level. The team behind Ghostrunner 1 and 2, a first person slasher, action-platformer set in a dystopian cyberpunk world, where “one slash equals one kill.”
Valor Mortis takes the souls formula, and marries it with a touch of Elder Scrolls and Bioshock. Popping you into the bootstraps of fallen Napoleonic soldier, William *something*. An Englishman turned Grand Armée scriptee, infatuated by Napoleon, and also a convenient way to keep VA costs low with an English voice actor.
Upon starting the game, Ol’ Bill is brought back from the grave, to an alternative war-torn 19th century landscape; plagued by grotesquely transfigured undead comrades, and a world seemingly raptured by some kind of apocalyptic terror – from body-laden battlefields, to towns fractured and flooded by the sea, with some supernatural shenanigans rearing it’s head along the way.
The premise is great. The set-up draws you in immediately once you start playing. I mean, look at Joe – a 30 minute taste test on stream, turned into a 2hr session. No other games hooked him to the same degree during his Next Fest coverage. It interested me enough to give it a shot too.
The first person perspective adds a unique twist on the ever growing Souls-like catalogue. It’s refreshing to be honest. A perspective complete with your FPS atypicals like sprinting, dodging, crouching, parrying, magic, off-hand shooting etc. But more on this later.
So yeah, with that premise and perspective, the potential and curiosity upon starting the demo was tantalising.
A tantalisation that only grew upon starting the first of the two levels, or “chapters,” included in the demo, “Revival” and “Witchhunt”
Upon loading in, Revival plops you down in the bloody aftermath of some 19th century battle somewhere in Eastern Europe; fallen comrades that once fought, and died alongside you, now stand undead against yo. Revivified and seemingly possessed by some unnatural entity. All whilst pondering how you got yourself in this mess, you’re gradually introduced to the game’s combat, transmutations/shooting, parrying/posture damage for ripostes, and traversal mechanics. Baby steps on the battlefield, but it’s nothing new for the seasoned veterans among us. All very simple stuff.
The second level, “Witchhunt,” gives you a taste of how the game develops a couple missions in – offering you 2 new weapons to try out, a new transmutation, and showcases a couple more enemy types, and more of the game’s parkouring features. Yes you read that right, parkouring in a souls-like. Think Titanfall and its wall-running style parkour, hopping between sunken buildings, and this weird vine-like flesh that seems interwoven among the debris of both stages.
Both levels offer a fair old taste of what the game has in store, with level design between the two being pretty linear for the most part, which makes a change to be honest. Personally, I’m long tired of these mega open worlds like Elden Ring. Here though, Valor Mortis manages a blend to blend the souls formula, in the style of a Battlefield 1 or V’s story missions. And it works to be fair.
The two levels do have some branching paths too, leading to treasure chests and items dotted about for those willing to explore or backtrack. With a couple chests guarded by slightly harder enemy variants. There’s even side quests too you’ll pick up mid-level too. They’re nothing major, and easily completable if you take some time to explore, but I guess they add somewhat to world building as you make your way through the level.
Honestly, both levels are okay. But just that.
Out of the two, I think the first level is slightly better. Even if it’s more “segmented” in terms of pacing when it comes to introducing mechanics to the player.
The latter level suffers from what I call “Dark Souls 2 Jank.”
With the level taking place in a flooded town, it has more of an emphasis on traversal; navigating narrow ledges, jumping between buildings and generally featuring more parkour elements than the first stage. Of course, naturally the devs decided to supplement those narrow ledges, with enemies ambushing around corners you can’t peep round, due to the first person perspective. Knocking you off into the water, and feeling like an incredibly cheap way to take damage. Granted this happens occasionally throughout the level, but it doesn’t weaken the cheapness in a way. Not to mention, the sudden swarming of groups of enemies occasionally too during indoor sections, and them always knowing where you are, even if you break line of sight.
Speaking of enemies, their designs are pretty distinct. Sticking in theme with the whole “Grand Armée conscriptee” thing, but the variants get more and more twisted as you progress. Due to whatever supernatural element is at play with their revival here. Going from your standard soldier, to ones that arch over backwards and come at you feral style. Valor Mortis’ version of the Dark Souls dog essentially. To Brutes that tower over you, marksmen that pepper you with musket fire, to some that have grotesque blobs you shoot and deal a chunk of damage too. Nothing feels particularly out of place, and they go some way to make you want to understand more of what’s going on.
The bosses, or “Abominations,” aren’t too bad either.
The first is a hulken abomination of corpses, almost similar to that one boss in Elden Ring; you know the one, that scion of arms and legs that lash out at you. Imagine that, but tall, on two legs, with weak points to shoot. The first phase is pretty simple, build up posture damage by parrying, trying to get off DoT burn damage from your fire transmutation, and riposting. Second phase; rinse and repeat. Except he summons enemies now.
The second is just a dude. One much more in tune with the blade and parrying, who then grows a big ol’ wanking arm, his second phase.
The biggest boss of them all however, is the performance.
I struggled to get anywhere near a stable framerate, even on 1080p, with textures set to Low, and Ultra Performance mode turned on. There isn’t much else you can tweak besides that, compared to other games where you can go all in and tweak individual settings like shadow quality, anti aliasing etc. But I imagine that will be sorted in the full release. Still, the performance issues seem to be a common critique amongst feedback related to the demo, even from people playing on 5000 series GPUs and all that.
The already unstable framerate dips further too when enemies get closer to you, for some bizarre reason. Which for a souls-like, especially when parrying is such a core concept of the combat experience and you need to be near your enemies, is simply just unacceptable.
And that sort of sums up the problems with Valor Mortis; it’s inconsistent.
Parrying straight up feels like it works sometimes, doesn’t work other times. It’s off. And I can’t tell if it’s performance related, or if it just doesn’t work occasionally?
In all honesty, combat ultimately boils down to just standing in front of an enemy, and trying to preempt an attack with a parry. You can of course be more aggressive and go for a “stab and strafe” approach if you want, paired with shooting and transmutations, and that’s all well and good, I mean you avoid the whole parry problem that way entirely. But you kind of need to adopt parrying in the boss fights, which makes them a breeze.
Weapon wise too, you start off with the Sabre, Pistol and Fire Transmutation. Expanding to the Rapier, Shield Transmutation and Musket, in the second level.
The Rapier has the unique quirk of being able to destroy weak spots on enemies, though honestly, it doesn’t make any difference as to if you stuck with the Sabre and shot them instead. Rapier parrying deals more posture damage, so I did stick with this weapon in the second level, which coupled with the posture damage increases in the skill tree, made taking out enemies and the second abomination, even more of a breeze.
Honestly, even without the skill tree specs and rapier, the overall difficulty of the game is “c’est facile,” as Napoleon would say… or “it’s easy,” as I would say.
For a Souls-like, it’s probably the easiest Souls-like I’ve ever played. Healing vials are plentifully stocked by default, and refill at Lanterns which are dotted fairly along the level. It’s just the damage taken when you can’t tell why you’re failing a parry, tarnishes the experience.
Again, it feels like a cheap hit.
A cheapness that’s exaggerated when you’ll occasionally be rushed by an enemy, and still take damage from them, despite you moving away from them to the point you can see the weapon doesn’t hit you, but you’ll still take damage. Not to mention, the annoying wind-up attacks that just swing out of nowhere, at the speed of light. You almost have to pre-empt the parry, rather than react to the enemy. Telegraphing is obvious, but then occasionally they’ll just follow up with a flurry of attacks, and you literally can’t react quick enough. Or you’ll dodge in time, to get stuck on the geometry in the level.
And that’s where I feel the first person perspective is both a blessing, and a curse.
Again, it’s great to have a first person souls-like, but it feels like how combat in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle played; robotic.
It lacks the fluidity first person games tend to have, and if you lock onto an enemy, and they circle around you, well… keeping track of them feels you’re more medieval knight, than a Napoleonic soldier. More often than not too, the lock-on will disengage if an enemy attack animation sends them above you, or past you. Which in a boss fight, often leads you to being hit if you can make distance from an enemy you have no idea how far you’re from, because of the first person perspective and lack of spatial awareness. There were occasions too when I couldn’t hit the second boss, due to him being knelt down below the characters’ height, when in slow-mo mode after executing a perfect dodge.
Levelling up too is a little different than your conventional souls game – instead of popping a point into a particular stat like Strength, Dex, Stamina etc., Valor Mortis presents you with a skill tree.
At first it feels like there’s a lot of potential in the skill tree, but when you play the second level and take another look at it, the latter skills are just disappointing repeats of earlier branches. It doesn’t go anywhere. And the “catalysts” acquired from killing enemies, Valor’s version of souls, are so easy to come by, it doesn’t feel like you need to really grind as you do in other games in this genre. Even in boss fights, you get them from whacking bosses, so you’re almost rewarded for dying to a boss, as you can collect your souls from outside the boss arena and go level up at a lantern. Plus you’ve got relics you can equip as you level up and unlock slots, that further buff your character.
As I said earlier, the game is easy.
From the abundance of catalysts acquired from enemies, bosses and item drops, to explosives you can lob at enemies to knock them out of animations, to the insane posture damage you can build up from specing into that skill in the skill tree, it makes the game a breeze.
There’s no real challenge presented. But maybe, that’s not a bad thing?
More often than not, devs try to emulate the greatness of the Dark Souls games, but fail because they can’t get the balancing right. Sometimes they make games that feel just too difficult all of a sudden, and maybe Valor Mortis has a higher skill ceiling as you get further into the game. From what I’ve played though, that skill ceiling is a lot lower than what I’m used to. So I feel like this almost could be a stepping-stone entry, for people wanting to try Souls-likes, but are worried about some of the more iconic titles being too hard.
That’s of course if they stick with how the game is now, difficulty wise. They could ramp it up for launch, depending on the feedback received from questionnaires that pop up at the end of the demo.
I tried filling it out, but it didn’t work. Oh well.
With that said, the potential is there for this to be something quite unique in the souls-like genre. The setting is great, the set-up endearing, enemies are pretty cool too. The combat, while simple, has potential to be much more satisfying if they solve the inconsistencies in parrying, game performance and general in-game jank. It just needs a lot of polishing, and if they find the right balance, I can easily see this going down a storm with Souls fans.
I mean, I’d love for it to be a success. I really enjoyed what I played, despite the performance issues. In a dream world, I’d cream myself if they made a WW1 themed sequel to Valor Mortis, down the line.
But the foundations that they’ve laid in the meantime, have the potential to be something special. But it’s just that, potential. Potential means nothing if the devs don’t take the feedback on board, and truly realise the greatness they could have on their hands here, with some serious TLC, optimising and tweaking.
To them I say, merci et bonne chance.
Valor Mortis releases on Steam, PS5 and XBOX Series X/S, October 13th 2026.
If you want to give the demo a shot yourself, here’s the link to the Steam page – https://store.steampowered.com/app/4641840/Valor_Mortis_Demo/
VGT-Joe