Valor Mortis review - this Napoleonic first-person swordfighter is one of the freshest Soulslikes in years
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Well, I say "freshest. " In its ickily up-close vision of Napoleonic battlefields, swapping the boring old bubonic plague for a fleshy, pustulating necro-blight, Valor Mortis is as horrid and grim as a standard Soulslike rulebook would compel.
At the same time, One More Level’s first-person take on campfires and attack-pattern combat does feel like a game striking out on its own, and not just through its unusual choice of perspective. If anything, there are decisions here that might have FromSoft purists calling for the guillotine. Yet it’s almost all in service of an intentionally tighter, more intimate kind of supernatural action, which – while lacking the immaculate complexity of Souls masterworks – serves up enough tense sabre duels to see the whole thing through.
This article is an excerpt. To read the full content, visit the original source. Rock Paper Shotgun
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Valor Mortis' system requirements appear to have been drastically cut, just before the FPSoulslike launches
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Valor Mortis review
Ghostrunner studio One More Level returns with a Napoleonic alternative history Soulslike that fuses fluid sword- and gunplay with exhilarating parkour, and it's a delight. Valor Mortis plays a bit of a sneaky trick. For a while it keeps it straight. 'Yes', it seems to say; 'I'm definitely a Soulslike. Look at my bonfire equivalents, my healing flasks, my corpse runs, even my early impossi-boss feints. Look at my cautious action, my fog gates, the oppressive air of melancholy that lingers over these fields of mud and blood'. But jumpcut to a few hours later, and there you are: first-person wall-running, grapple-swinging, one-two parry slashing, quick-step-fire-ball-dismembering, slow-mo bullettime high-jump shotgun-blast-to-the-face-ing. This, it's fair to say, is not your usual Soulslike.

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