You play as a soldier named William in Napoleon’s army. During one of his many raids, Napoleon somehow got a hold of a virus that turns his men into Resident Evil-like monsters who lose all their humanity and kill anyone who isn’t one of them.
For whatever reason, William was spared this fate and is now being forced to fight off his former comrades while trying to figure out what Napoleon’s role in all of this is and survive. To make things more interesting, there also appears to be some supernatural things afoot, which work in William’s favor because they allow him to shoot fire from his hand.
As intriguing and mysterious as the main story is, the gameplay is where things shine. The second the demo booted up, I couldn’t help but compare it to BioShock for a handful of reasons. The obvious is that it’s a horror story told in a dated period that can often be romanticized when looking back at it. While the other can be seen in how the combat plays.
One of the stronger things this game leans toward is the horror aspects of it. Valor Mortis is extremely gory; this can be seen in everything that’s thrown at you. Since it’s in first person, a lot of the attacks you perform feel a lot more personal, and this is especially true when you perform an execution on one of your enemies. Even though you’re fighting for your survival, you can’t help but feel a bit dirty in the process.
Of course, there’s the Soulslike aspect of this game. After all, it’s one of the main lures when trying it out. It has all of the core mechanics you’d expect in the genre, including a blocking, parrying, and stamina system for you to keep track of. One of the best things about Valor Mortis is its parrying system. It’s never easy to do, so being rewarded for it only feels right. Whenever I could successfully land one, the game would go into slow-mo. If I attacked immediately after, it would perform a gruesome execution that made me feel like a killing machine. But if you didn’t, you’d end up dying and be taken back to Valor Mortis’ version of a bonfire, and need to collect the currency you dropped when you died.
One of the things that can often be annoying when playing Soulslike games is investing points into a proper build. Thankfully, Valor Mortis takes out a lot of the headache that comes with that. The skill tree set is straightforward to understand and does so in a way that doesn’t talk down to you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t min-max my character in the demo, but I can see how this can be done once the whole game is released.
Is there any first-person soulslike out there? Does that even work? Very curious to see what this’ll turn out
Is there any first-person soulslike out there? Does that even work? Very curious to see what this’ll turn out
Elderborn released in 2020 and fits the bill. It was a lot of fun, I thought it had Conan vibes and a killer soundtrack
I played the playtest. Game has potential, but part of me felt like the Soulslike aspects were holding it back more than helping it. Does it need corpse runs and boss runbacks and all that or would it be better as a more straightforward Bioshock/Dishonored type game? Maybe I just have a bit of Souls-fatigue.
Combat felt better than expected, took a bit to get used to the first person but I think it works. Definitely some balance issues and the flask animation and healing time is atrociously long which makes it feel nigh-unusable in battle.
Voice acting was very weird, why are some characters super British and some use bad fake french accents?
Voice acting was very weird, why are some characters super British and some use bad fake french accents?
this is also something I noticed from the gameplay videos. This was a perfect game to hire french voice actors considering the setting, but it’s strange they went for english actors
I think using English language voice acting but with the accent of the local region or setting is an underutilized thing in video games. It always helped my immersion in for example the original STALKER games, and I hated that they went away from it in STALKER 2 and had the protagonist sound like a B-movie American action hero.
But even that aside - at least pick a lane! I’m used to games having British accents as the “default” for some reason, but this game having it side-by-side with fake french accents is really jarring.
Thanks for your insight. You could definitely argue that soulslikes, roguelikes, and metroidvanias have become quite common as genres or inspirations for games and that some games are more so hindered than elevated by them. It’s probably just studios trying to ride the wave of popularity. In a case like this, maybe it’s also trailblazing in a way because a first-person soulslike is quite different compared to your standard soulslike - if it turns out good, more might be following suit.
Nevertheless, you could also argue that an oldschool Bioshock-style game would also be something fresh and new these days so clinging on to the soulslike framework might be more hindering than helping.
Anything else you’d change if you could outside the things you outlined?
Hard to say, the playtest demo was very short. Some things I’d wish for might be introduced later in the actual game. I would personally have liked to see it leverage the first person perspective more and play more like an actual FPS hybrid. Shooting weak spots is fine and all, but it would be fun if you could actually do a “gun build”. From what I’ve seen that isn’t the case and you can spec into magic and/or melee and the gun is more of a tool.
Is there any first-person soulslike out there?
There’s the Kings Field series of games, but they might feel pretty clunky to modern gamers.
He did, they’re called “The French.” /s
