Since From Software invented the popular Souls genre with Demon’s Souls, many developers have tried to create their own Souls-like titles with varying degrees of success. Now One More Level do a sharp 180 on their cyberpunk action series, Ghostrunner, in favour of a first-person souls-like set during the Napoleonic Wars, Valor Mortis.

You play as William, a soldier in Napoleon's Grande Armée, who's been resurrected to find the world corrupted by a terrible plague. As he begins to accept his newfound powers, William must try to figure out what's happened to him and turning his old comrades into bloodthirsty monstrosities. It's a distinct journey through an alternate 19th century that mixes real-world historical figures with a horrific conspiracy that surrounds the plague and your miraculous resurrection.

Video Review: Valor Mortis

In true souls-like fashion, Valor Mortis uses visual world-building through brilliantly rendered war-torn landscapes, abandoned towns, and derelict cities. But One More Level include a more direct narrative through opening animatics, in-game cutscenes, conversations with dialogue choices, and lore expanding notes and side missions. Yet, the developers understand the appeal of a souls-likes relentless cyclical gameplay loop, and never keep you out of the action for long.

After making two action first-person games in the Ghostrunner series, One More Level understands how crucial moment-to-moment gameplay is, which is even more important when nailing the feel of a souls-like. Fortunately, the bold decision to make a first-person souls-like translates without any major issues. Every detail has been meticulously designed to merge together to create that just-one-more-go feeling.

As a recently revived amnesiac, William doesn't know what's going on, he just hears the omnipresent voice of his commander Napoleon Bonaparte, who keeps excusing the savagery and violence around you - a war apologist in every sense. But William quickly finds a saber and the game begins and never lets up.

The first small area teaches you the basics. You can land light or heavy attacks until your stamina bar depletes and need to recharge. Lock-on to enemies and block attacks, then quickly counterattack to replenish lost health from blocking. Parry incoming attacks to activate a visceral instant kill animation. Choose a direction to dash to avoid red attacks that cannot be parried or blocked. Activate a perfect dash as an enemy is about to land a hit, to deliver a heavy blow.

Valor Mortis equips you with the tools to decide when to defend or go on the offensive. Even if you can't get the hang of parry timings with the saber, which do feel really responsive, you can master dashing to overcome encounters. But as you progress, William will gain new weapons which cater for specific play-styles. Such as my favourite weapon, the rapier, a fast fencing blade that's unable to block. But it has faster parries and is able to pierce enemy pustule weak-points to land critical hits.

Levels also offer an element of verticality to avoid combat or land killer jump attacks. Everything feels natural to land, as it's a simple control scheme on a controller. Shoulder buttons control everything you need to slowly master the twitch based combat.

Yet, One More Level understands the importance of player choice. Outside of head-on combat, William can stalk the shadows to land stealth kills from behind weaker enemies, or take a chunk of health from harder foes. But the developers don't settle for melee combat, you also unlock firearms and powerful transmutations inherited from the dangerous plague.

Sidearms vary from a trusty revolver, a close quarters blunderbuss, and a deadly musket. Opening up wider tactical options that will be the difference between life and death. Sometimes you'll miss a parry or dodge and panic fire a blunderbuss blast to dispatch a weaker enemy. Snipe a flying monster that can deal major damage. Or fire a bullet to burst a red pustule to open the path ahead.

Being alert is vital to survival. Even the weakest creatures can hurt you, and force you into using a Ferrofluid Flask - a limited healing item based on Dark Souls' Estus Flasks. As like From Software's souls games, Valor Mortis uses a lantern based checkpoint system, to save, level up, fast-travel, replenish health, ammo, powers, and respawn every enemy in the area.

You'll also need to keep an eye on your ammunition. With a full arsenal, you can hold a button to activate the weapon wheel, which pauses the action to let you instantly switch weapon loadouts. Necessary when the game introduces more enemies. At any moment, you can turn a corner to fight a generic soldier, get sprayed with acid by a gross entity clinging to the ceiling, or blasted with a cannonball from a hulking rat king looking ball of flesh. This unpredictability keeps you engaged at all times, especially when you're forced to switch weapons to make use of your limited ammunition.

But again, Valor Mortis adds another layer to its combat mechanics. Due to being altered by the plague, William can acquire strong powers from certain incapacitated soldiers. Game changing abilities that can change the outcome of a battle in a split second. At first, you find the fire power to burn enemies, which also incinerates infected webbing that prevents your progress. Then, you'll eventually gain the ability to freeze enemies, and cogs to complete simple platforming puzzles.

Like stamina and ammunition limits, powers also have a purple nephtoglobin meter. So, you need to find a balance between using your abilities, then hurting enemies to drop nephtoglobin to recharge your powers, and using your powers again. Much like ammo dropping on an enemies death, it adds another consideration during battle.

Each power adds to the complexity of the interconnected regions. Environmental hazards like falling rocks and saw blades combine with stasis puzzles to make progressively more interesting levels. Intelligently designed areas with shortcuts just at the right distance to keep you on the edge of running out of health flasks while still at the risk of death. All of the levels feel well-designed and balanced, with enough secrets, harder enemies, and optional treasures to keep it engaging throughout.

Multiple paths encourage players to depart from the main route, to stumble across shining items. These can be temporary weapon boosts to shortcut to the d-pad, or catalyst clots to open when you're wanting to add to your catalyst amount to level up.

You also find another key component in Valor Mortis' character progression: crafting materials to upgrade your weapons and powers. It wisely mimics the souls series, to make a solid power evolution. You're rewarded for exploring off the beaten path, and completing side missions. Sometimes you'll find keys to unlock doors to complete side quests and find a supply of rare upgrade materials. Each action feels intentional to build out the lore of Valor Mortis, whilst making side quests engaging and worth your time from both a story and upgrade perspective.

After defeating the first boss, you arrive at an old church which acts as Valor Mortis' home base. You meet a soldier called James, who claims to be an old friend. After a short discussion, he gives you access to a workbench to upgrade your weaponry. Each new weapon unlocks an individual upgrade tree with multiple paths, to once again, allow you to repurpose a weapon to your particular play-style. The same is also applied to upgrading William's nephtoglobin powers.

You can also trade catalysts to buy a selection of upgrade materials from a store, but once you get further, you need to locate the rarer materials in the environments.

But James and another companion aren't just upgrade terminals. They offer frequent dialogue exchanges about your most recent exploits, and offer their perspective on things. It builds out the world whilst allowing you the opportunity to select dialogue choices that represent how you're feeling about what's happening in Valor Mortis.

As a lower priced title with a 15-20 hour playtime, I was very impressed by the character models of the people William meets and interacts with. The animation work is fantastic and really helps immerse you into the story, if you want to delve into that side of the game.

However, most of the story is told through narration whilst you're exploring and surviving out in Valor Mortis' harsh landscapes. William hears the commanding voice of his leader, Napoleon Bonaparte as he consistently justifies the necessity of his actions that have left the continent slathered in death and ruin. While a mysterious rebel acts as the voice on his other shoulder, constantly questioning the army's campaign of destruction. But it's the casting of renowned French actor Vincent Cassel as Napoleon, that brings a gravitas and self-assurance to every word, and Jennifer English's note perfect performance with an undertone of anger that keeps a necessary ebb and flow of uncertainty around Valor Mortis' main mystery and morally grey world.

But as an appreciator of narrative in games, I enjoyed finding blue wisps around levels. Valor Mortis' visual interpretation of audio logs; story bites delivered in blue silhouettes that tell the events of your current location. Story exposition isn't thrown in your face, it gives players whatever they choose to get out of it.

This continues through the use of notes. Extra story that gives context to the wider narrative. All things that can be viewed in the menu. You can browse your inventory to shortcut useful items or equip power infused ammo in a pinch, examine your building arsenal, read through your mission lists, and look through the journal. The journal is where you can find character descriptions, location information, and reread notes.

However, there's also side quests to find in most levels. While you never see these quest givers, you hear them, and are given dialogue choices to decide how to interact with them. Such as one soldier wanting you to locate his missing squad, or a group of children in search of their mother. This allows you to decide your version of William; whether trusting or suspicious of your allies. His amnesia a constant thematic through line through the story.

But for gameplay purists, there isn't anything to worry about. As I said, One More Level understands souls players like to get straight back into the cyclical gameplay loop of clearing an area, opening a shortcut, and refreshing at a lantern. They even encourage revisiting prior locations after getting new powers to find rare treasures and challenging foes - an added metroidvania spin.

But the heart of Valor Mortis is always the gameplay. It follows the typical souls traits of being unforgiving where a lack of concentration can mean even a basic enemy can and will kill you. This requires you to memorise enemy attack patterns and weaknesses. But obviously, with the choice of one difficulty option, it isn't going to be suitable for everyone.

Difficulty of a souls game is always an area of discussion between creator's intent and approachability, but as a supporter of accessibility, I see no harm in adding difficulty options. Yet personally, I do enjoy the challenge of a harder game as a nice break from easier titles. And like other souls titles, if an area is too difficult, you can spend time earning catalysts to level up. But I didn't ever need to do this, as Valor Mortis isn't the hardest souls game I've ever played. Yet however difficult a game is will always be subjective.

You level up at the lanterns by using catalysts to put points into your preferred skills. There are enough options to create different character builds. One player might spend all their points in upgrading health, another endurance based, while someone else could favour nephtoglobin powers. I went for a build that improved the rapier's parry capabilities and mostly ignored blocking, as I've always preferred the parry and dodge heavy titles like Sekiro and Bloodborne.

You can even find attachments to equip as you unlock more of your skill tree. Helpful perks that can drastically change your skill-set, but sometimes at the cost of a negative function. It's a system that welcomes experimentation.

This was one of my biggest concerns with One More Level adapting the souls formula to first-person. But combat is fair and balanced; every contact or hit you take feels justified. Dying never feels unfair outside of a few traps, and if that was all Valor Mortis had to offer, it'd be a solid souls-like. Yet the developers have taken their experience with first-person combat in the Ghostrunner series to make a more complex system.

The core sensibilities of Ghostrunner run through the foundation of Valor Mortis. It's what makes it stand out from the legion of other souls-likes. As first-person platforming plays a large role in combat and exploration. You can jump and mantle up ledges, swing across gaps, eventually wall run and use a power to swing across previously uncrossable expanses. All of which combines when you gain the power to spawn traversal objects, creating tense and adrenaline fuelled platforming and combat sequences that always keep you on your toes.

It keeps exploration and level design fresh, but also leads to creative boss fights. I won't discuss too many bosses, as they are one of the main attractions of any souls-like game. Valor Mortis features a good variety of smaller and larger bosses. Some fast, some slow. Each one able to deal massive damage with a set of distinct moves that evolve as you enter different phases of the battle. Especially when most bosses have more than one health bar to deplete.

They start off reasonably easy, like a hulking monstrosity that can be defeated by practising parry timings, to fill its stagger meter and deliver a critical blow - a tactic applicable to most bosses. Yet, some can be defeated easier with a change in strategy. Such as blocking attacks to stay in range for a quick counterattack, or using stasis to freeze them in place. But the one that surprised me was an anthropomorphic windmill. It forces you to deal with mobs while jumping over attacks and wall running to reach the windmill. Then, climb inside to attack its core. Although I wish there were more moments like this, it's what helps distinguish Valor Mortis in a crowded genre.

While Valor Mortis is a great souls-like, the need for perfection in the genre did impede one of One More Level's other gameplay mechanics. There's a mine cart sequence that requires a perfect combination of shooting and powers to complete. It isn't hard, but if you make one mistake near the end, it forces you to restart the whole sequence. But when it isn't a skill based combat encounter, I feel a checkpoint would benefit the flow of the sequence.

Playing Valor Mortis on PC, it's a grimly beautiful game with a great use of lighting and reflections in Unreal Engine 5. You feel the haunting atmosphere in ransacked villages and desolate parts of the city - a real contrast between beauty, surrealism and natural horror. The plague's webbing reminds me of the shimmer in the movie Annihilation. Like a natural infection of slowly encroaching fingers.

But for the most part, the performance was flawless with everything on epic settings. But after a while, I did experience stuttering which stopped with a complete restart. Hopefully these issues will be fixed in the day one patch.

The animation quality also elevates every part of Valor Mortis. While I would've liked a few more enemy types, there's still a good variety from contorting soldiers that turn into dog-like pursuers, and tall, slender soldiers that wield massive blades. But it's William's hands that make you feel responsible for every action, and immerse you in a way third-person isn't capable of.

The score also immerses you into 19th century Europe, shifting styles to echo what's on screen. Whether a high intensity boss battle, the isolation of empty libraries, or the horrific remnants of a bloody war. But when it's partnered with exemplary audio design, it engrosses you entirely. You feel every time you dismember a monstrous soldier, or the bloodcurdling groans and yaps of mutated enemies.

With Valor Mortis, One More Level have successfully shifted to the souls-like genre. Instead of settling for strong level and combat design, they've given Valor Mortis a unique identity through its historical setting and implementation of fluid traversal mechanics. Bar a few small issues, every part of Valor Mortis is working in synchronisation to deliver one of the best interpretations of the souls-like genre in recent memory.

*Review Code Provided By Publisher

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