Like always, this year's Gamescom was accompanied by a slew of new game announcements. Among the new games revealed during one of the most important video gaming events of the year was Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike in development by One More Level, the Polish development studio known for the Ghostrunner series. Having appreciated some of the features of the first entry in the series, such as the amazing mobility of the main character and its uncompromising approach, but not being particularly keen on how restrictive the entire experience felt, I wasn't particularly thrilled about the new game, which looked at a glance like another take on the formula with an underused setting in video games. My first impression of the game was not only completely off the mark but turned upside down completely when I finally got to spend more time with it.
As mentioned above, Valor Mortis is a first-person soulslike where players take on the role of William, a soldier in the Grande Armée brought back from the dead to continue serving Napoleon and save Europe from the mysterious plague that is destroying the continent, corrupting its inhabitants beyond repair. The premise alone is more than enough to set the game apart from every other souslike on the market, as not only the setting is really unique, but the first person gameplay seems to harken back to the days of the King's Field series back when FromSoftware was still refining the formula that the studio would make popular with Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls.
Going the soulslike route with their new game, One More Level doesn't seem to have forgotten its past games, as Valor Mortis' smooth gameplay has some echoes of the Ghostrunner games' experience. Controlling William is extremely smooth, and the experience feels past paced without being on steroids like in the studio's older franchise, as combat still retails the heaviness and positioning focus of a soulslike. What I really enjoyed in Valor Mortis is how the first-person perspective is allowing the developer to nail how proper soulslike combat encounters should be - duels, or fights against a smaller number of enemies - going the opposite direction of many developers who prefer to overwhelm the player with huge enemy numbers using a combat system not really suited for big enemy numbers.
Following a few minutes of adjustments to the new perspective, I was immediately hooked to the experience, fighting enemies with short-range weapons and guns, unleashing special abilities, dodging, and parrying attacks with ease. Ultimately, the experience seems to strike a good balance regarding challenge, but as the game is still far from release, it is difficult to say how challenging Valor Mortis will actually be. In terms of level design, Valor Mortis also seems to be on point. The devasted battlefield where the Gamescom demo was set featured an intricate design with plenty of shortcuts and alternate paths, including some optional locations featuring powerful enemies, so it feels like One More Level is placing a decent amount of focus on traversal as much as it is on combat.
After taking down many corrupted soldiers and dying a few times in the process, I reached a massive corrupted soldier who served as the demo's final boss. Comprised of two phases, this boss fight put my limited knowledge of the Valor Mortis mechanics to the test, offering another look at how guns can be used to hit weakpoints and make some fights a little easier. After learning the boss' attack patterns, parrying and dodging accordingly, I managed to take it down with a few minutes to spare, which a member of the development team used to show me another enemy encounter where the player can use ranged weapons to destroy the cannon carried by the enemy to deal tons of damage. Sadly, my time with Valor Mortis ended right after this small additional showcase, leaving me hungering for more.
In a market becoming a little saturated with average soulslike that fail to capture what makes this sort of game so compelling, Valor Mortis feels like a breath of fresh air, as No More Level has shown, with this demo, to understand what a proper soulslike should feature. As such, the game was easily one of the best I had the pleasure of trying during this year's Gamescom, and one I really cannot wait to get my hands on the final game. Thankfully, some players won't have to wait until the game releases next year on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S to experience for themselves what makes Valor Mortis such a good game, as a playtest will be conducted soon.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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