Napoleonic era. Souls-like. I didn’t know I needed one to be honest, but now that I’ve had a taste of Valor Mortis, I need the full release ASAP. I had around a half hour of hands-on time with the game at PAX East, but in that time it displayed a penchant for tight combat, interesting alternate history, and gore! Oh, and did I mention this Souls-like is in first person? Let's dive into the preview.
You wake up in a pile of dead French soldiers as a mysterious rash pulsates on your hand—and hey, who hasn’t been there before, am I right? Napoleon’s voice permeates your mind, commanding you to your feet. The historical figure will offer words of encouragement from time to time, seemingly speaking to his soldiers via some sort of telepathic link. That’s handy for commanding an army. Well, it would be, if that army weren’t mutated and bloodlusted. I had to merc a good few of my own team because they were going feral. One of them was neck-deep in a horse’s torso, which is never a good place to be.
It’s a perilous situation, and you’re only armed with a sword at the start. You can light attack for a quick strike, or dish out more damage with a heavy attack at the cost of more windup time. You can parry, which does what you’d expect: negating all damage when successfully executed and punishing you with full damage when mistimed. Blocking might remind some of Bloodborne, as you can regenerate health lost while blocking by attacking enemies. Alternatively, you could be entirely evasive and dash away from every blow.
Let’s shift focus towards the other tools at your disposal: the revolver and magic. These two both occupy the same slot in your left hand, so you’ll have to choose between the two at any given moment. The pistol is powerful and precise, perfect for dealing with certain enemies who have big, glowing pustules just begging to be shot. Landing said shot will deal massive damage, possibly harming nearby enemies. Le Big Iron is also nice for dealing chip damage to mini-bosses before a fight. The flame magic you wield, on the other hand, excels at dispatching groups of shambling soldiers all at once. The initial scorching deals decent damage with a sustained stream of flame, which only accelerates once the burn meter on an enemy is full. Watching them stumble around while burning is brutal—just one of the ways this game displays its gritty nature. The ample gore also helps. I don’t mean ‘a little blood splatter on your screen’ gore, I mean ‘chop people fully in half and send heads whirling away, streaming blood as they fly’ gore. Damaging enemies feels visceral, a true feat of visual and audio design. I don’t have any audio of combat from the game, but imagine smacking a pillar of ground beef with a sword. Valor Mortis has a posture meter similar to that of Sekiro, and parrying is probably the best way to drain the enemy’s meter. Once that meter is full, you get rewarded with those sweet kill animations or a free chunk of damage on tougher foes, like bosses.
Gore aside, you’ll need to maintain your resources to keep the pain-train going. Your fire spell uses a resource called Nephtoglobin, which comes in vials, and your pistol uses bullets. Then you’ve got your standard healing-vial type resource, which you get three of. You can refill them at hourglass-like lanterns, this game’s version of campfires. You’ll also be able to buy upgrades at the lantern. These upgrades include the foundational basics, like more health, reduced damage taken and stamina drain while blocking, and dealing more posture damage on a successful parry. Then there are more game-changing upgrades that will shift your playstyle, coming with powerful buffs and drawbacks, like losing all of your healing flasks, but regaining health when you kill enemies.
The visuals are quite stunning. You’ll wander through piles of corpses on wet, muddy battlefields where fires smolder and smoke from the previous battle looms in the air. It’s not just visually pleasing, it’s atmospheric. There’s a sense of desperation threaded into various aspects of the game’s designs, like the ghostly soldiers talking about how Napoleon will end up getting them all killed. I mean, the very act of mutating yourself in an attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for your army is a desperate move. One of the mutated soldiers crawls at you on all fours and belly up, with a gnashing mouth enmeshed in his decorative cap. It’s peak body horror.
The ONLY frustration I had is that the first person view faltered while I was fighting a rather tall mini-boss called The Fencer, who was so close to me that I could not see his strikes, and I couldn’t back up as I was stuck by terrain or something. On one hand terrain and arena shape will just be another thing to account for during boss fights, on the other, that’s something you just have to fail a few times to learn to deal with. It’s a minor nit-pick in the grand scheme of things.
The Fencer is a really cool mini-boss fight. The developer told me that The Fencer hates guns, and one build of the game has him switching to a more aggressive move set if you use one on him. I’m not sure if that was the current build, but the developers having that kind of mindset in the first place is a massive green flag. The time I had with Valor Mortis was not nearly enough, and I can’t wait to hop back in when it’s released.
