Valor Mortis
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Valor Mortis
Ghostrunner studio One More Level returns with a Napoleonic alternative history Soulslike that fuses fluid sword- and gunplay with exhilarating parkour, and it's a delight.
Valor Mortis is a novel soulslike packed with interesting ideas, even if they don’t always work out super smoothly.
Valor Mortis is still a thoroughly engaging experience that left me more than satisfied with my time going through its story and learning about its world.
A Soulslike with parry-focused combat has to do far more than shift the camera to first person to stand out from such an overcrowded pack. Valor Morris is relatively well-executed and has moments of real character and charm, but the gameplay's more familiar than my own shadow.
There are the bones of a great game here–one that would benefit from a tighter focus on its engaging first-person combat and a trimming of the superfluous mechanics that detract from the ones that work. Instead, it’s an uneven experience that delights as much as it disappoints.
I was skeptical about a Soulslike in first-person, but Valor Mortis proves that it works very well.
One More Level came into Valor Mortis with a bucketload of ideas, spilling them onto the drawing board and seeing what happened. Surprisingly, many of these disparate ideas seamlessly snap together like magnets while others show a bit more resistance, requiring some clever design work to form a unison. The end result is an inventive take on the soulslike genre that offers a satisfying, challenging gameplay loop without the laborious RPG trappings.
As unforgiving as Valor Mortis can be, it doesn’t forget the fun between the frustration.
