Valor Mortis is out today, Tuesday 13 October, on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series, and the first reviews landed the day before. The first-person soulslike from One More Level, the Polish studio behind Ghostrunner, drops you into a Napoleonic Europe ravaged by a supernatural plague. On Metacritic it opens at 77 out of 100, based on 40 critic reviews counted on launch morning. Critics broadly agree that the parry-based combat works, and they split sharply over the platforming. It’s a demanding game, so if the toughest soulslikes have bounced you off before, the reviews are worth a read first.
At a glance
Valor Mortis launches on 13 October on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series.
It holds a Metacritic score of 77 from 40 critic reviews on launch day.
Shacknews gives it 8 out of 10, GamesRadar+ 3 stars out of 5, with doubts about the platforming.
77 on Metacritic: a solid launch, short of universal praise
Valor Mortis averages 77 out of 100 on the game’s Metacritic page, from 40 critic reviews counted on the morning of 13 October. For a game the studio describes as a story of around twenty hours, sold below full price, that’s a solid start. Scores range from enthusiastic to lukewarm, and almost every review comes back to the same pair of topics: parrying and platforming.
The story, covered on Hitbox when this Napoleonic soulslike got its release date, follows William, a soldier of the Grande Armée who fell in battle. He rises from his grave with no memory, in a nightmarish version of Europe where the plague turns the living into monsters. One More Level developed the game and Lyrical Games publishes it.
Shacknews praises a striking Napoleonic world
The warmest verdict so far comes from Shacknews. TJ Denzer gives Valor Mortis 8 out of 10 in his full review, and admits he had doubts going in, unsure how a studio known for fast parkour would handle a slower soulslike. His answer is clear: One More Level’s experience with first-person combat and acrobatics carries over very well.
His list of positives includes the horror world built on the Napoleonic Wars, combat and platforming he calls exhilarating, the creature and boss design, and a satisfying run of upgrades across weapons, skills and levels.
On the downside, Denzer points to enemy behaviour that can feel unfair or plain daft, oddly paced dialogue and underwhelming music. He also notes that English is the only voice language available. The Steam page confirms full audio in English only, with interface and subtitles in a dozen other languages.
GamesRadar+ is tougher on the parrying and parkour
Abbie Stone, who reviewed the game for GamesRadar+, gives it 3 stars out of 5. She describes “a perfectly functional Soulslike based around swordplay and parrying”, where even basic enemies take several parries before their guard breaks, and she warns anyone who bounced off Sekiro or Onimusha: Way of the Sword to steer clear. Her biggest complaint is the scripted parkour, where a platform can collapse under you and kill you outright.
She still finds plenty that nearly wins her back. The combat can be exhilarating, the pulpy writing has charm, and the pistol and fire powers work as genuine strategies on the battlefield. In her view, though, the game plays more and more like a Ghostrunner 3 as it goes on, and she doesn’t mean that entirely as praise.
Every pistol shot sets up a sword strike
In Valor Mortis, you start out with nothing more than a sword, enough to block, dodge, swing, land a heavy attack and parry. According to TJ Denzer, the toolkit grows quickly: a pistol to deal with distant enemies and hit weak points, flame-throwing magic, and an energy tether that latches onto anchors to fling you upwards before you plunge down onto a foe.
Progression runs on a currency dropped by enemies, the game’s take on Dark Souls’ souls, which you spend alongside scavenged parts to upgrade William’s level, his healing flask, his weapons and his powers. The pistol, for instance, builds up a stack with every shot, which you then cash in with a melee strike for bonus damage. A skill tree raises stamina and health, and even lets you slow time while aiming a gun in mid-air.
Enemies hunt in packs through trap-filled arenas
For Denzer, Valor Mortis is “crazy tough at times”: its enemies rush you together, block and counter if you just hammer the attack button, and anything with a ranged weapon turns into a sniper the moment it spots you. The arenas work in your favour too, with anchors to swoop onto enemies, explosive barrels, oil lanterns to shoot down and hanging crates to drop on unsuspecting heads.
Abbie Stone’s favourite touch in Valor Mortis is the dogs: human soldiers who have twisted themselves into a canine shape and chase you down, barking. Along the way, William hears Napoleon’s voice in his head, meets a mad scientist, a village praying to a mysterious deity, and unseen children who cover the walls with drawings of the monsters you’ve faced. Technically, her PC copy crashed and struggled to hold a steady framerate, issues she was told the launch-day patch largely addresses.
Valor Mortis sticks to the classic soulslike skeleton
The genre’s skeleton is all present and correct in Valor Mortis, Abbie Stone notes: no map screen, shortcuts that open up as you explore, and a single chance to recover your currency after you fall. She adds that the first-person view gives fights a brutal, you-are-there immediacy. The best bosses are parry-offs where a handful of small mistakes is enough to send you back to the grave.
The difficulty curve is uneven in her eyes, with the first boss giving her more trouble than any that followed. She also found a fight against a sentient windmill a finicky slog, and on her PC copy a boss called The Orphan simply stopped attacking. The traversal powers in Valor Mortis mostly serve familiar puzzles, such as stopping time to freeze a cog so you can get through a gate before it drops, or conjuring platforms and walls to run on, but only in set places.
TJ Denzer was most taken with the stretches where the game rediscovers its Ghostrunner roots. Wall-running as a 19th-century soldier may sound daft, he admits, but those were some of his favourite moments: runs of crumbling ledges, projectiles to dodge and tether anchors to grab, finished off with a plunging attack on an unsuspecting enemy across the gap. For every frustrating moment, he reckons there were about three that made him stop and think how cool it was.
One More Level is already planning a 2027 expansion
Valor Mortis is priced below full price, a choice the studio says it made because of a packed autumn, for a story it puts at around twenty hours. According to Sam Sepiol’s piece for Insider Gaming, a Deluxe Edition adds a major story expansion due in 2027, along with weapon skins. The first skin pack gives a good idea of the Grande Armée arsenal: pistol, blunderbuss, musket, claymore, rapier and sabre.
That warm critical reception is a long way from the demo’s. Back in the spring it sat at just 68% positive from 701 Steam reviews, according to GamingBolt, with complaints about performance and about switching between magic and parrying. The studio then pushed the launch from September to 13 October.
Who Valor Mortis is really for
Taken together, these reviews point Valor Mortis towards players who enjoy learning a parry system and grinding through tight fights. If demanding indie soulslikes are your thing, our False Hero review covers another one released in September. Anyone who hates unforgiving platforming has been warned by both reviews, each in its own way. Hitbox Magazine will try to bring you its own Valor Mortis review as soon as possible, based on our own time with the game.
To keep track of what is coming next, check the release calendar.