Valor Mortis Reviews Are Mixed, With Critics Split on Its Soulslike Ideas

Valor Mortis, the first-person Soulslike from One More Level (the Polish studio behind the Ghostrunner series), lands on Xbox Game Pass day one today with reviews that lean positive but land all over the map. The game sits in the 79th percentile on OpenCritic, a review aggregator that compiles critic scores. The strongest praise keeps circling back to its combat and its Napoleonic-fantasy setting; the loudest complaints are about bugs, uneven pacing in the back half, and boss fights that underwhelm.

It’s a Ghostrunner pitch with a Soulslike backbone. You play William Dowsett, a British soldier in Napoleon’s Grande Armée who wakes up in a mass grave on an alternate-history European battlefield. There, the emperor won at Waterloo and turned his army into reanimated monsters with a substance called Nephtoglobin. Saber, gun, parkour, and BioShock-style powers all live in the same kit, and the best moments come from blending them. Eurogamer’s Matt Wales gave it 4/5 and called the combat “beautifully designed, blending weight and fluidity with satisfyingly visceral follow-ups.” Rock Paper Shotgun’s James Archer agreed, writing that the game’s parry timing carries a “narrow potential for build diversity” that the genre usually punishes players for lacking.

The setting is the other thing critics keep pointing to. Kotaku’s Ian Walker and Ethan Gach praised “unsettling atmosphere and creature designs” that connect the horror of war to Napoleon’s ambition, calling the art direction among the best the industry has seen in years. Destructoid’s Andrej Barovic went further, calling the 19th-century supernatural setting “the best part about Valor Mortis overall” and the boss fights some of the most fun he’s had with the genre.

That’s not universal. IGN’s Travis Northup gave it 7/10, noting the hodgepodge of ideas doesn’t always cohere. He also flagged recurring technical issues: crashes, a Steam launch that shut down his PC, and missing environment pieces. GameSpot scored it 6/10, saying the game has “the bones of a great game here, one that would benefit from a tighter focus on its engaging first-person combat and a trimming of the superfluous mechanics that detract from the ones that work.” Polygon’s impressions piece went unscored but flagged “difficulty hiccups” in the early game. On the high end, GamingBolt gave it 9/10 and Push Square’s PS5 review hit 8/10, calling it a worthy addition worth picking up at its discounted $40 price.

The technical complaints are concrete and recurring. IGN, Eurogamer, and Kotaku all called out the same issues: inconsistent enemy AI, invisible hitboxes on larger foes, and platforming sections where William catches on ledges or falls through the world. IGN and Kotaku both also noted the boss roster is thin, and that several of the fights are just tougher versions of regular enemies.

Review scores at a glance

Sources: OpenCritic, Pure Xbox review roundup.

Our read: With a roughly 20-hour campaign and a $40 price tag on PS5, and free on Game Pass for Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers, this is the kind of uneven-but-ambitious launch that’s easier to forgive on subscription. If you bounced off the last three Soulslikes, the Ghostrunner-style parkour and the BioShock powers are the hook. If you stick with it for the rapier, the parry timing is the real star, and that’s the one thing most critics actually agree on. The bigger question is whether One More Level can patch out the crashes and the invisible hitboxes in a day-one patch, because the bones are clearly there.

Valor Mortis is out today, October 13, on Xbox Game Pass (Cloud, Xbox Series X|S, and PC), PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam for $40. It is on Pixel Herald’s Release Calendar. The Pure Xbox review roundup is available here.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report