《Valor Mortis》评测：野心勃勃的第一人称魂类游戏，却常比乐趣更令人挫败

Game Info

Valor Mortis

October 13, 2026

Platform

PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S

Publisher

Lyrical Games, One More Level

Developer

One More Level

Polish game development studio One More Level is a relatively young studio, but it made a name for itself with the excellent Ghostrunner series, a high-speed action series mixing parkour-heavy action with precise movement and unforgiving one-hit kill mechanics for an experience like few others. Following the release of the second entry in the series, however, the studio began working on a very different project called Valor Mortis, its first attempt at the soulslike genre

Besides standing tood out for its early 19th-century setting, the game really seemed to nail first-person gameplay for a soulslike. When I played the game for the first time during gamescom 2025, I couldn't help but appreciate how smoothly Valor Mortis played. Hitting enemies with the saber or the rapier felt responsive, the parry timings intuitive, and the different abilities that the main character, William, learns as he travels from one battlefield to another gave the experience an unexpected Metroidvania feel that is entirely coherent with the rest of the experience. Playing the game again at gamescom 2026 only made me more excited for it, confirming every positive feeling I had and turning it up to eleven.

After completing the game in 20 hours, however, my opinion shifted slightly. While Valor Mortis starts very strong, its issues become more evident as the adventure progresses, and while it recovers towards the end, the experience has some low points that make it more frustrating than fun.

The Greatest General of All Time

As already mentioned, Valor Mortis stands out not only among soulslikes but also in other genres, thanks to its setting: an alternate early 19th century in which Napoleon Bonaparte actually won at Waterloo. In 1820, five years after the battle, Napoleon continues to reign supreme, the Imperial propaganda painting him not only as the most accomplished general of his time, but also as one of the most caring. Among the people, it is said that he loves his soldiers so much that they were willing to die twice to serve him, coming back to life after receiving deadly wounds, only to continue serving him the best they can. While this is indeed the case, there's a terrible secret behind Napoleon's victory at Waterloo and his soldiers' return from the dead that remains unknown to most.

It will be William Dowsett who will learn the truth behind these mysteries. An amnesiac British soldier who joined the Foreign Legion of the Imperial Guard, William will traverse war-torn landscapes, confronting these undead soldiers, to help other members of the Foreign Legion of whom he has no recollection, and eventually confront The Shrike, a resistance leader who leaves gruesome displays of impaled undead French soldiers to show Napoleon how she is his most dangerous foe yet.

The story is most definitely one of Valor Mortis' best features. Although it is not quite narrated as a typical soulslike as it is far less obscure, it still has the environmental storytelling for which the FromSoftware series is so regarded. The best thing is how the mystery unravels, with some interesting revelations toward the end of the game that work well, especially in this alternate-history context, and a deep reflection on the reality and brutality of war and the consequences it forces upon the innocent. And by making William amnesic, the developer made it very easy for the player to ease into the setting, some of its most haunting sequences (some reminiscent of horror games), and the story's greatest mystery.

Unfortunately, the ending isn't as strong as the rest of the story. Some threads are left hanging with no real payoff, forcing players to wait for the already confirmed story DLC to possibly solve everything that is left unresolved.

Undead Soldiers, Unholy Journey

Valor Mortis rewrites the rulebook for the soulslike genre by going first-person while still anchoring the entire experience in the core features that define the genre: exploration of intricately designed locations, stamina-based combat with an emphasis on positioning, epic bosses, and a generally challenging experience.

For the first five hours or so, the game developed by One More Level delivers on all these fronts. Enemy soldiers have varied movesets which the player has to learn to parry their attacks or perfect dodge them, fill the Posture Bar, and unleash a devastating Critical Hit. Combat options are varied enough, with the Saber offering basic melee options, the Pistol a ranged option to target weakpoints on certain enemies, and the first Transmutation power to set enemies on fire.

Level design also accounts for the different powers and tools William obtains. At certain points, William's abilities, which also include traversal abilities, provide access to previously unavailable areas in true Metroidvania fashion. As such, it is possible to discover new secrets by exploring already completed areas, making exploration even more rewarding, although most of the time, there isn't anything really game-changing to discover, as Valor Mortis doesn't feature a proper gear or loot system. Upgrade items are usually the reward for exploring stages thoroughly or defeating an elite enemy.

For the first few chapters, this gameplay loop holds strong. Although it feels a little unnatural to play a soulslike in first person, everything seems to work well. The incredibly smooth movement, in particular, makes combat satisfying, as does the finely attuned parry window. In many games, this window feels a little unnatural, but in Valor Mortis, it is reasonably easy to parry enemy attacks by relying solely on visual cues.

Sadly, after reaching the mines 5 or so hours in, Valor Mortis loses steam and loses it fast. For starters, the level design and enemy encounter design change significantly, shifting from wider areas to narrower pathways. This means that many enemies are fought within these strict confines, and with the first-person view not delivering the positional awareness required to navigate these tight spaces and enemy damage scaling up significantly, combat soon becomes a frustrating exercise of patience.

Too many times, I ended up dodging into a corner where I met my untimely demise, and things only got worse in this regard as the game continued. In Chapter 6, for example, there's one of the most frustrating combat scenarios of the entire game, where you have to fight one of the bigger enemy soldiers armed with a greatsword with a wide reach at the entrance of a small cave. The problem is that the path to reach it is very narrow, making it frustrating to maneuver properly to avoid the enemy's wide-reaching attacks, which include some that cannot be parried and must be dodged instead! Add in locations where you have to avoid ground hazards that the first-person view makes difficult to avoid, and you get a very frustrating picture. Ultimately, as the complexity of enemy movesets and level design ramps up, it becomes clear how the first-person view is not the best choice for a soulslike game.

The troubles with the first-person view after a certain point are only one of the reasons Valor Mortis loses steam so quickly. Enemy variety is very limited, and after roughly 4 to 5 hours, you have seen 90% of the enemies in the game, sans a few small variants. Bosses fare a little better, as there are some rather creative ones, such as a massive, haunted windmill that feels like something out of a fever dream. However, there aren't a lot of them, and the fact that a few of them get recycled as regular enemies takes away from the uniqueness of these fights.

Echoes of Ghostrunner

With how satisfying the general feel of Valor Mortis is, even with the issues brought by the first-person view, low enemy variety may have been offset by a wealth of combat options, but it's here, much like in the small world with areas separated by loading screens, that the game's compact nature is detrimental to the whole experience.

As already mentioned, Valor Mortis doesn't feature a loot or gear system. The number of weapons is extremely limited and not very varied, with the exception of the three Transmutation powers that require Nepthogoblin to activate. There's no armor or gear to equip, and the only attempts to offer different builds are represented by Embers, accessories that grant different passives, many of them not really game-changing, and each weapon's upgrade tree, which offers different passives.

Similarly, the skill tree replacing the traditional soulslike leveling system attempts to offer some buildcrafting, but its efficacy is extremely limited due to how the entire experience is designed, echoing the Ghostrunner series in a genre that should be, at least in terms of combat options, as open-ended as possible.

Valor Mortis' combat is extremely one-dimensional for way too long. The first melee weapons, the Saber and Rapier, are very similar to one another. The guns offer different ranges and attack power, but the shooting mechanics aren't particularly satisfying. The Transmutation powers are the ones that offer the most variety, but the Stasis and Shield powers are unlocked way too late, leaving you for a long time with only the ability to burn enemies.

What really highlights how one-dimensional Valor Mortis can get are sequences that feel like they were lifted from Ghostrunner. These sequences feature punishing enemy configurations with many ranged attackers that essentially force the player to move quickly, using traversal abilities like grappling and wall-running, to dispatch them before taking on the strongest enemies.

To be fair, these sequences feel good to play as they did in the Ghostrunner games, but I have found them a little out of place for the same reason I found combat to be one-dimensional. In soulslikes, the player is left able to decide how to handle enemies. Here, there's only one optimal way to do so: fail, and the high enemy damage ensures you will be thrown back to the nearest Lantern checkpoint.

Other situations exacerbate this issue. In one of the late-game chapters, the number of ranged enemies and their extreme accuracy forced the use of the Musket gun to defeat them from afar, turning the game almost into a slow-paced FPS. I'm all for spicing up a game with the unexpected, but in this case, I felt it was detrimental to the experience, as it pushed the experience further away from those tight first few hours. After completing the flooded village area and obtaining the final melee weapon, combat opens up a lot more and becomes way more dynamic, but the real challenge is getting to this point.

Depending on your tolerance for this sort of gameplay and your preference for first-person games, you may find these to be smaller issues for you than they are for me. But for me, they definitely did have an impact on my enjoyment of the game. More than once, I just grinded for Catalysts and leveled up to even my odds against every frustrating thing the game threw at me, which is something I never do in soulslikes, although nothing could fix the terrible choice of assigning crouching and interacting to the same button, which makes William crouch instead of grappling at the most critical time. While the final third of the game alleviated some of the issues that make the middle game so frustrating, I was almost exhausted by the end.

Valor Mortis is a rollercoaster, but not always for the right reasons: the constant shifts in quality across the three-thirds of the game are evident, and I fear they will cause many to quit before it reaches its conclusion.

Solid Visuals And Performance, But With Some Technical Issues

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Valor Mortis sports some nice-looking aesthetics that well represent the game's unique 19th Century setting. Dilapidated battlefields and flooded villages appear alongside some fantastical landscapes influenced by the mysterious power Napoleon used to turn the tides of history, and some rather haunting locales, such as the University, resulting in a visually pleasing journey, though not a particularly advanced one (ray tracing, for example, only seems to improve reflections).

On my system (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32GB RAM), the game runs in the 80 to 90 FPS range with NVIDIA DLSS in Quality mode, Frame Generation, and the High preset, with only limited traversal stuttering in some areas, as shader compilation stuttering is very limited by multiple precompilation steps - one at the start of the game, more each time an area is reached for the first time. Not a very elegant setup, to be sure, but at least it works.

However, stuttering issues could be prevalent on your system. Not counting some seconds-long stuttering that persisted no matter the settings, when I was playing with ray tracing on, the game stuttered often and in pretty much every location, with late-game ones being the worst offenders. Turning it off didn't make the visuals much worse, so this was easily solved, but if you're planning to play the game with ray tracing, you should definitely keep this in mind. In addition, the game doesn't shine in terms of stability, as it crashed a few times during my playthrough. Not much progress was lost thanks to the many shortcuts stages offer, but still, one more thing to keep in mind.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I am a little disappointed by Valor Mortis. If the game had kept up the solid quality of its first 4 to 5 hours, we would have had one of the best soulslikes of the generation on our hands. Unfortunately, quality drops after reaching the midpoint of the game, and although it recovers somewhat towards the final third, getting to this point was exhausting, to say the least.

However, while it's not a genre-defining game, there's no denying that Valor Mortis is a solid title that deserves commendation for its efforts to try something new within the soulslike genre. And if a sequel were ever to be made, which I hope it is, I'm sure One More Level will put the lessons learned from the game to good use, elevating the solid foundation they've already laid, which sadly never soars as high as it could have.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

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7.5

WCCFTECH RATING

Valor Mortis

Valor Mortis starts strong with responsive first-person combat and a fascinating Napoleonic setting, but loses steam past the midpoint, only reecovering towards the endgame. Level design not fully taking into account first-person combat, limited enemy variety and character customization options, and technical issues on PC hold it back from greatness, though it remains a solid and somewhat ambitious soulslike that many will like for trying something different within the genre

Pros

• Unique alternate 19th century setting
• Responsive controls
• Solid core combat mechanics
• Clever Metroidvania progression
• Creative boss encounters

Cons

• Low enemy variety
• Level design issues that don't take into account first-person combat
• One-dimensional combat for much of the experience
• Limited character customization
• Ghostrunner-style sequences feels a little out of place
• Some technical issues on PC

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About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.

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