![[REVIEW] Valor Mortis - Parkour Meets Soulslike](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzQZzXjTz7uNzjg2dwn9cvygH8Fqrk6Idcor8YXWsTHGabA5U8ZAE7E5nYXUV3OuqR3fPo59kUwLPXD4mQ_mn96NYy1AdVp4LHQNxhn3sna00caxk0cgKDNMzQ2dRSsD1SeP9KTTg6zqnBst84y5tNlnK08jrMMlAYoXyPaHzpF4ApiqDyIhQCLtCSgM/s1600/image.png "[REVIEW] Valor Mortis - Parkour Meets Soulslike")
Valor Mortis combines first-person parry combat with dark Napoleonic body horror in a bold, 20-hour action RPG. Here is our full review.
Valor Mortis Review: FPS Soulslike
Developed by Ghostrunner studio One More Level and published by Lyrical Games, Valor Mortis presents a bold mechanical pitch: adapting a stamina-gated, parry-centric Soulslike combat loop to a first-person perspective, set against a dark, alternate early 19th-century Europe rife with supernatural body horror. It stands as an ambitious hybrid of fast-paced movement and deliberate defense, pairing high-speed swordplay with black-powder firearms, magic, and dark historical fiction.
Ultimately, Valor Mortis delivers a compelling experience that lands just short of its highest aspirations. While its snappy deflect mechanics, visceral gore, and captivating worldbuilding create undeniable highlights, persistent first-person spatial awareness limitations in narrow choke points, severe mid-game pacing stumbles, and a thin enemy roster keep it from achieving complete genre greatness.
Napoleonic Body Horror
Set in an alternate 1820, five years after Napoleon Bonaparte won the Battle of Waterloo through the deployment of "Nephtoglobin"—a mysterious, corrupted chemical agent—Valor Mortis reimagines Europe as a plague-ravaged wasteland. Players control William Dowsett (voiced by James Alexander), a British volunteer in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard who awakens in a mass grave with amnesia. As William climbs over his fallen comrades, Napoleon’s telepathic voice (voiced by Vincent Cassel) echoes inside his mind, demanding fanatical obedience. As William journeys across war-torn landscapes, he is forced to confront the grim reality of the Emperor's legacy alongside resistance figures like The Shrike (Jennifer English).
The narrative constructs an unsettling atmosphere, relying on grotesque creature design and environmental storytelling to depict how total war reduces humanity to broken, reanimated meat. The world captures a dark, cohesive visual identity through its horrific abominations and haunting locations:
- Mutated Infantry: Risen soldiers with snapped, twisted spines that sprint and pounce like rabid hounds.
- Plague-Ridden Troops: Riflemen whose heads are replaced by massive, swollen red buboes, alongside living masses of crawling corpses fused into flesh monstrosities.
- Desolate Locales: Atmospheric spaces ranging from rain-slicked, burning cities and flooded villages to the pitch-black catacombs beneath an empty university.
Powers, Parries ana Powders
Combat is structured around a flexible loadout: main-hand swords, off-hand black-powder firearms (Pistol, Blunderbuss, Musket), and left-hand supernatural Transmutations (Fire, Stasis, Shield). Main-hand choices impose strict mechanical trade-offs. The default Saber provides a balanced mix of blocking and parrying; the thrusting Rapier deals massive posture damage but completely disables blocking; and the heavy Claymore removes the parry mechanic entirely in exchange for slow, devastating, magically imbued strikes. Defensive maneuvers rely on visual cues to land precision parries, filling an enemy's posture bar to open them up for violent, limb-dismembering executions.
Sustaining this offensive loop requires managing Nephtoglobin, the resource bar that powers left-hand Transmutations. Rather than passively regenerating, Nephtoglobin functions as a dynamic MP meter that actively refills when landing melee strikes and popping enemy weak points. This creates a high-tempo rhythm: firing a pistol shot to pop a distant bubo yields the Nephtoglobin necessary to instantly ignite a group of foes with a Fire Transmutation, breaking their defensive line for a follow-up saber execution.
- Endurance Management: Attacking, dodging, and blocking drain a shared stamina bar, demanding careful pacing to avoid getting guard-broken during long enemy combos.
- Dynamic Weak Points: Target randomized red buboes on mutated models using Rapier thrusts or firearms to inflict heavy posture and health damage.
- Death Economy: Dropped Catalysts (currency and XP) remain at the site of death; dying a second time permanently vaporizes the unspent pool.
- Checkpoints: Hourglass Lanterns serve as hubs to spend Catalysts, socket passive Ambers, and replenish Ferrofluid Flasks, but resting respawns all non-boss foes.
Parkour Meets Soulslike
Leveraging One More Level's movement expertise from the Ghostrunner series, Valor Mortis integrates dynamic traversal directly into its level structure and combat flow. Movement abilities such as wall-running across pale blue surfaces, swinging from poles, and grappling to glowing blue orbs add momentum to exploration, allowing players to launch plunging strikes from high ledges or rapidly reposition during chaotic encounters.
Level design evolves from early linear battlefields into interconnected Metroidvania hubs where traversal tools unlock crucial shortcuts back to Lanterns. Exploring off the main path uncovers rewarding side content, most notably a narrative thread involving "The Mice"—a group of orphaned children living beneath ruined cities. This side quest incorporates a BioShock-inspired moral choice system with obfuscated decisions regarding the children's fate that alter later story beats.
This blend of traversal and combat culminates in several inventive boss encounters. Memorable showdowns include fighting an entire military battalion fused into a single grotesque general waving a shredded tricolore flag, as well as a multi-phase battle against a haunted, sentient windmill that transforms into a high-speed platforming sequence set to heavy guitar riffs.
Where the Game Stumbles
Despite its mechanical strengths, Valor Mortis suffers from a three-phase progression curve that negatively impacts campaign pacing. Following a strong, linear opening (~1–5 hours), the game hits a severe quality dip around Chapters 5 and 6 in narrow mine and cave levels. In these claustrophobic spaces, first-person spatial awareness limitations clash with wide enemy attack sweeps. Dodging frequently pins the camera into tight wall geometry, leading to disorienting off-screen hits before the campaign recovers in its final third through open hubs and a fully upgraded arsenal.
Campaign longevity is further hindered by limited enemy variety across the 20-hour runtime, forcing players to fight basic infantrymen and attack dogs from the opening hours through to the endgame. Balancing issues also mar the early hours, subjecting players to harsh insta-kill damage from standard mobs before essential Endurance and health upgrades can be secured at the Abandoned Church hub.
- Unbalanced Arsenal Incentives: Late-game spell unlocks (Stasis and Shield) mean most players stick exclusively to the default Saber and Fire Transmutation for the majority of the game.
- Punishing Platforming: Scripted, trial-and-error parkour set-pieces enforce instant deaths that feel needlessly punitive within a Soulslike loop.
- Control Layout Conflicts: Dual-binding crouch and interaction to the same button causes accidental crouching when trying to grapple during tight platforming sequences.
- PC Technical Hiccups: Frame stuttering occurs when ray tracing features are enabled, alongside occasional crashes to desktop during area transitions.
Bottom Line
Valor Mortis ($39.99, available day-one on Xbox Game Pass) is a bold, 20-hour FPS action RPG that successfully translates Sekiro-style deflects and BioShock-esque dual-wielding into a dark historical setting. While it stumbles with restrictive cave geometry, repetitive enemy encounters, and early difficulty spikes, its core parry mechanics and visceral combat loop remain deeply satisfying once the full arsenal comes together.
What are your thoughts on shifting Soulslike mechanics into a first-person perspective? Please leave a comment below with your take on Valor Mortis, and be sure to share the article on social media!
About the Writer
Jenny, the tech wiz behind Jenny's Online Blog, loves diving deep into the latest technology trends, uncovering hidden gems in the gaming world, and analyzing the newest movies. When she's not glued to her screen, you might find her tinkering with gadgets or obsessing over the latest sci-fi release.What do you think of this blog? Write down at the COMMENT section below.
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