Valor Mortis Hands-On Preview: Welcome to the Grande Armée

Ghostrunner developer One More Level pulled back the curtain on its latest project, Valor Mortis, at Gamescom 2025. It knew how to make an impact because Valor Mortis immediately stood out, despite there potentially being some fatigue around the Soulslike genre. Its French aesthetic certainly helps, especially right now given the popularity of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but it also brings to mind the 2024 Soulslike game Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, particularly its take on Flintlock fantasy.

The Best War Games recently played through the opening prologue of Valor Mortis where its Flintlock fantasy immediately grabbed my attention, but I found myself struggling with the gameplay (albeit in a manner not suited to Soulslike games). Namely, I'm not entirely convinced that Valor Mortis is a Soulslike game; that said, it is a very fun action game at the very least.

For Napoleon

"You served Napoleon. You died for Napoleon. You have risen for Napoleon." Except the world that Valor Mortis protagonist William fought and presumably died for is not the one that exists upon his resurrection. The intro was as barebones as it comes, so I found myself plopped into a battlefield from the Napoleonic Wars. William seemed as confused as I was, but Napoleon's words echoed in his head and guided us through. William seems to be hearing Napoleon in a way that's just echoing his lessons and not actually Napoleon speaking to William. I've opined before that I am a little tired of the "ghost inside my head" trope for video games, so I am hoping my intuition there is correct. Otherwise, that's recognizably just a personal issue.

On the battlefield, we meet former members of Napoleon's Eternal Guard, all of whom are twisted into abominations and monsters by the unknown substance Nephtogloblin. It also grants William new powers, with his first encounter with it giving him a flamethrower. At that point, I had a saber in my right hand while I could swap between a pistol and the flamethrower in my left. We made our way through the battlefields, we met one friendly NPC the entire time, and there were lanterns (the equivalent of Dark Souls' Bonfires). At those we could spend our Catalyst points to level up, but if we were to die, we'd need to recover them or they'd be lost following another death.

Combat is the typical action RPG mixture of light and heavy attacks, dodges, and parries. Performing a perfect dodge against an unblockable attack slows down time, while parrying an enemy opens them up to a strong attack (in most cases). There were no difficulty options in the preview, although I am uncertain if there will be difficulty modifiers in the full game or not, and ultimately I felt too powerful for this to be a Soulslike game. If this were billed as an action game, I wouldn't give its difficulty a second thought, but I went in expecting a challenge and came out confused.

For example, I quickly discovered that parrying was powerful, maybe even broken. If I were to perform a single parry against an enemy, they could be instantly killed with the special follow-up attack. The boss? Two parries combined with a few attacks would break his posture, making him an easy kill as well. And to be clear: the timing windows on parries are quite wide. I missed a couple here and there, but by and large, hitting that parry window was not difficult whatsoever.

At the end of the battlefield is where I fittingly met the first boss, a grotesque take on a soldier who is incredibly bloated and has extra hands equipped with guns. I beat his first form so quickly by parrying his attacks and hitting the Nephtogloblin weak spots that his second form was a given. There's always that fun, daunting moment in a Soulslike game where you struggle to beat a boss and slowly realize that it's not over as it takes on a new form, but this was the exact opposite of that. I needed that second form for this boss to have any real challenge, and while it sped up, summoned allies, and otherwise lasted longer than its first form, I beat it quickly, too. I can't say, to my memory, that I've ever beaten a full bona fide Soulslike boss with such ease.

To be perfectly clear, however, I had a lot of fun. The combat is fun, if not exactly challenging. The world is interesting, if not exactly as mysterious as I'd expect, and this take on a Napoleonic battlefield certainly caught my attention. The dark fantasy elements have me hook, line, and sinker. If One More Level called it an action game, I would have thought nothing about it, but billing it as a Soulslike has me scratching my head.

I'm Not Convinced that Valor Mortis is a Soulslike Game

I feel the need to qualify this statement a lot. The Soulslike genre has plenty of room for experimentation, what with Soulsvania games, Elden Ring's open world, or even Valor Mortis making it a first-person game, but a genre has a few requirements by definition. I maintain that Lies of P is one of the best Soulslike games out there—and that has little to do with it also being one of the most difficult non-FromSoftware Soulslike games on the market. I maintain that Black Myth: Wukong is not a Soulslike game and is just a hard hack-and-slash game. And in that vein, I maintain that what I've played of Valor Mortis reminds me more of a fantasy action game than a Soulslike; in fact, there's no way I would even be bringing up Soulslike games in discussing Valor Mortis had One More Level not made it a point.

To me, a Soulslike game has three requirements:

It does not need to be difficult necessarily, but players should feel weak and face insurmountable odds, with this weakness (and the triumph later) being baked into the gameplay feel. In a lot of games, players are powerful to fulfill a certain power fantasy; Soulslike games are inherently the inverse of that power fantasy. Combat must also be deliberate with some emphasis on build variety/build depth.
The world can take many forms and designs, and some Soulslike games can have a more direct story. However, the world and story should allow for a high degree of environmental storytelling and interaction because the world is intentionally bigger and more grandiose than the player.
Death must be a vital part of the experience, which is often done in conjunction with difficulty. Death should feel punishing, but also not like it's the end. Death runs are a result and not the intent of making death a vital part of the game, especially as the game progresses and players conquer death (make it feel less threatening).

It's easy to see how games like Lies of P or Elden Ring embody these requirements. Elden Ring is arguably one of the easiest FromSoftware Souls games because of its open-world design, but at every turn, players will always feel weaker than the enemies and gods they face (well, unless playing in certain areas in the early New Game Plus modes). Elden Ring combat is highly customizable and deliberate, down to what players have equipped, and how they engage or respec to face enemies/bosses. Meanwhile, a lot of Elden Ring's world and story is realized through sparsely connected lore descriptions. And of course, death is harsh—especially in some areas.

I am unsure how Valor Mortis fits into these requirements, if at all. It could be that Valor Mortis has a more traditional action game progression in the early hours that ramps up difficulty, but I would not describe its prologue as difficult at all. I did not feel weak and as if I am facing insurmountable odds; I felt smarter, stronger, and near invincible in this world, especially with those parries. I saw the combat wheel, which did at least come with some options, but I am not sure how Valor Mortis encourages deliberate combat outside the very basic tenets of a parry/dodge interaction. For the world and story, all I gathered from the environment is that I was in a Battlefield and red stuff is bad, nothing requiring any degree of insight or collaborative information. And death? I had to choose to die to see if there was a death run in Valor Mortis.

Now, again, I want to highlight that Valor Mortis was a lot of fun, and this sort of invincible power fantasy is easily one of the most iconic in video games. I am especially looking forward to seeing how the world evolves and how/if combat grows later in the game, and specifically, I want to know if I can kill Napoleon by the end of it. But at the very least, the prologue I played was unlike any Soulslike game I've ever played—so much so that I have to question whether or not it's an apt description.

The Best War Games received a Steam code for the purposes of this preview.

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