Valor Mortis Review — Powder & Guts

War is dehumanizing. The horrors of battle can easily cause someone to lose their identity, something made all the easier by military training, which, by design, strips a person of their individuality. Throughout history’s bloodiest conflicts, men have been made into monsters to secure victory on the battlefield. In Valor Mortis, this philosophical pondering is taken a step toward the literal, as the soldiers of one of history’s bloodiest conflicts are turned into actual monsters, stripped of their identities as they are fused into twisted, sinewy hulks à la John Carpenter’s The Thing.

More than just a series of awesome, if rather obvious, metaphors, Valor Mortis is a first-person Soulslike that takes you into one of gaming’s most interesting settings, fighting through the resurrected and mutated hordes of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Steel, powder, and accursed magic are your weapons as you uncover the conspiracy that allowed the French emperor to win at Waterloo and, in the process, curse his entire army.

Yes, you read that right: Valor Mortis is a Soulslike game set in the first person.

This is a mechanical feat that I think the team pulls off quite well, taking the flow of Soulslike combat and translating it so that it works from a far more personal point of view. It does work, too: you can pull off the same amount of split-second dodging as in a regular Souls game, though I feel like enemy attacks are generally a bit shorter to compensate for your reduced field of vision.

Overall, I was a big fan of Valor Mortis’s combat. The game played extremely well, and the mix of pistol, magic, and sword combat felt solid, with each having its own strengths and weaknesses. The game also uses platforming in a fun way that I don’t think would work quite as well in third person, which makes the level design a lot more unique.

If I were to point out one major problem with Valor Mortis, it would be the game’s hitboxes. Admittedly, I never had so much of a problem with them that it significantly changed how I played, but some enemy attacks do seem to connect when, visually, you’d think they wouldn’t. This is something other players have been very vocal about. Personally, it wasn’t a frequent problem for me, but I did notice when it happened and thought it was a bit cheap when I took damage from it.

It is perhaps because of how gorgeous the game’s animations are that this problem exists. Take a moment to watch an enemy strike you, and you’ll see incredibly fluid, highly detailed movements that capture the form of a real fencer. I was actually struck a bit in awe the first time I watched an enemy swing his saber at me. I was left wondering if the developers pulled the camera back a bit further than necessary to capture the full glory of their hardworking animation team, then extended the weapons’ hitboxes to compensate.

Progression in Valor Mortis isn’t the usual Soulslike style of trading souls for direct attribute point improvements. Instead, your kill currency is used to purchase perks that directly affect certain aspects of the gameplay.

While the traditional progression system of Soulslike games is my favorite in gaming, the progression system in Valor Mortis is fine. I wasn’t incredibly thrilled by it, but it felt like a slightly streamlined way to handle progression, at the cost of less customization. That isn’t necessarily a problem, considering how relatively limited your combat options are. You could call all of Valor Mortis a more streamlined version of the Souls genre: you don’t really need meticulously planned-out builds, and there aren’t hundreds of pieces of equipment with different playstyles to collect, so the more straightforward progression makes sense.

While the gameplay is solid, what really shines through with Valor Mortis is the game’s setting.

It isn’t just that combining the Napoleonic Wars with dark fantasy is a pretty fun and original idea; it’s also the way Valor Mortis approaches its setting with a taste for horror. Body horror, in particular, features some of the most impressive examples of the genre I think I’ve seen in gaming. It was a thrill seeing the creative ways the game portrayed its many enemies, from men bent backward and split across the skull to form impromptu hounds to literal amalgamations of twisted flesh and wet bone.

Choosing to arm the player with a flame attack was a smart and welcome choice, as I often felt compelled throughout the game to burn away the horrible creatures I faced, as if trying to purge a sickness while ensuring none of it survived.

When it comes to performance, Valor Mortis shows that you don’t need to sacrifice framerate to make a gorgeous game. I had a solid 120+ FPS throughout the entire game, which made combat and platforming buttery smooth. Even dying didn’t feel as punishing, as the game reloads you at the last “bonfire” so quickly that it is almost like it never happened.

Overall, I found Valor Mortis to be exceptional. It performs great while looking incredible, has one of gaming’s most interesting settings, features chilling horror elements, and executes first-person Soulslike combat remarkably well. While the game could use a bit of work on its hitboxes and visual consistency, I didn’t find these problems to be so bad that they distracted from the experience. Valor Mortis has become a new personal favorite, and I highly recommend you check it out.

Try Hard Guides reviewed Valor Mortis on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Valor Mortis is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.