Last Updated on Oct 12, 2026 @ 22:41:38 PM.
It has been a long few years waiting for Valor Mortis to finally make its way onto our gaming consoles, but the time is finally here to slay monsters in first-person action while wielding magic, a gun, and a sword.
Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to fight through the dark world of Valor Mortis, where I explored numerous different locations just as unique as the last, fought numerous enemies and bosses that were a blast to overcome, and even tried out unique abilities and weapons that kept the game fresh from start to finish.
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During this review, I will talk about these different gameplay features and how they impacted my time with Valor Mortis and its many adventures.
Combat Was Fluid But Had Many Rough Edges
While I played through Valor Mortis, I was often quite impressed by how the combat would function throughout the game, as I found it was very fluid with a lot of dynamic situations that kept me on my toes, but that being said, there were quite a few issues that I found that led me to get annoyed in a lot of situations.
In regard to the good side of the combat, I had a lot of fun fighting through the game world, as the numerous weapons, perks, and transmutations made the actual combat side of things quite interesting, as there were so many ways I could handle and look at combat that made it interesting throughout.
A great detail for me was the skill trees for my actual character that I could grind through leveling up at the rest spots that were absolutely full of choices that could improve my combat in so many ways, such as generally improving my melee damage, upgrading my health and stamina, improving headshot damage, and so much more, making me spoilt for choice.
This wasn’t the only thing that impressed me, as the weapons as well had their own skill trees, so playing around with them and creating unique weapon builds that worked with each other, and choosing between increased range or increased ammo capacity and the ability to swap between them at will was a rather fun choice, as I wasn’t tied down if I didn’t like it.
When it came to actually fighting, the combat was quite fun, as enemies reacted realistically to my attacks, and focusing on different body parts or enemies meant the fight would either end with me victorious or with 5 enemies standing over my corpse, laughing at me.
The major drawback for me was how the hit registration for both the enemies and me was completely all over the place, as some of my attacks were perfect and did exactly what I wanted, while some attacks looked as though they hit, but they just didn’t, so I often found myself getting annoyed when I attacked a boss, and I could see my sword go through it and nothing would happen.
Luckily, though, this was only a rare occurrence; I didn’t get too upset dealing with it, but it was something that came up often enough that I would feel betrayed by the game.
Along with generic combat, the ability to stealth and use guns was a lot of fun too, as this provided me with so many options, as I enjoy a bit of stealth gameplay, so I often snuck through enemy lines, picking them off while also sniping enemies with my guns to take them down with one quick shot.
Finally, I just want to mention the parkour aspect of the game, as initially it was a lot of fun as I unlocked new abilities to maneuver around the game world, but for me, I often found that it was very glitchy, with the character not triggering certain abilities when they were supposed to, as many were automatic, causing me to fall to my death on a lot of occasions.
The Game World May Be Grim, But It Is Designed Well
Although the game world is incredibly linear in Valor Mortis, the actual design of the world was something to behold, as you often ended up looking out across vast landscapes that looked completely untouched by human hands or sometimes wandering into burning villages like something out of a fantasy horror film, and combining these two aesthetics scratched an itch I never knew I had.
Throughout my time with Valor Mortis, I was always trying to explore the game world as much as I could by venturing out and seeing what I could see. Sadly, I often found myself bumping into invisible walls and trees blocking my path, but when I was rewarded with secret locations and loot to gain, I was often overjoyed, as my searching wasn’t for nothing.
However, as I have said, the game is incredibly linear, so exploring wasn’t exactly a big part of the game, with me following the path 95% of the time and only ever exploring for a side quest that lasted 5 minutes or fighting an optional boss-like enemy before carrying on with the main story.
With that being said, this did ensure that I stuck to the game’s story and didn’t get too sidetracked, as I feel as though a large open world with freedom to choose where and what to do in the game would have spoiled the experience, leading me to overly enjoy the linear experience, but I do feel as though a few more side paths would have been beneficial to avoid main story fatigue.
The best part of the game world for me was buried within its side quests, and in fairness, I am talking about the idea of the side quests rather than their content, as most of the side quests are downright depressing, let alone tear-jerking. For me, I was quite happy to find the rare few side quests within the game, as they were always relatively short, allowing me to finish them quite easily while also being filled with worldbuilding to help me understand what is going on and why the people are gone.
Along with this, there was quite an even amount of side quests to boot as well, and I didn’t feel suffocated by additional stories to explore, and I wasn’t struggling to decide on what to do next; I was simply able to naturally flow through the main story while completing side quests on the way and stopping every now and then to see what the world had in store for me.
Valor Mortis’ Story is Confusing as it is Addicting
While I played through Valor Mortis, one thing that really caught my eye was the story. The reason behind this was that, at the beginning, I had absolutely no idea what on Earth was going on, who I was, where I was, what I was doing, and why I was doing it, but as the game went on, I was able to slowly learn and advance through the story at a reasonable pace that kept me in the loop rather than hiding things from me.
Whether it was the side quests that helped build the game’s extra lore or the main story, there was no shortage of context as I explored Valor Mortis, and I had a lot of fun piecing together what was happening, but I will say around halfway through I was completely lost for a while as the game went from maybe a 5 out of 10 on the confusing scale to an 8 out of 10 as things began to get really strange from there on out.
This isn’t even just regarding the story either, as this confusing aspect of the game was embedded in its characters as well as the enemies and bosses start out as you would expect for the world you are fighting through, but again, around halfway you begin to fight bosses that I shan’t spoil for you, but you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you, but I will say the actual designs and combat abilities from these bosses were amazing, with them being so detailed and fun to fight against.
As usual, I won’t spoil the overall ending or story for Valor Mortis, but I will say that by the end of the game you will feel a sense of satisfaction from completing the game, as you will finally uncover what the hell is going on in this alternate history while also piecing together all the mysteries you uncover along the way.
The biggest positive I want to give Valor Mortis was that its story never got ignored at any part of the game, as it was always a big focus on what the player and the NPCs were trying to push towards, as they weren’t simply looking to survive or run away, but they were actually trying to get to the middle of what was going on, and having the option to talk to the different NPCs and learn from them and understand their perspectives was something I thoroughly enjoyed.
Valor Mortis
Valor Mortis is the new Soulslike RPG set in an alternate 19th-century Eastern Europe during Napoleon’s endless wars, but with a twist: a plague sweeps through the soldiers, turning them into monsters, as your character, William, has to fight through his comrades to discover what has happened and if he can fix it.
Summary
For me, the combat was very fun, whether it be using the swords, guns, or transmutations, but there were quite a few glitches that ruined the fun at times and led to me losing out on the immersion.
The parkour again was fun at the beginning and when a new ability was released, but there were numerous situations where the maneuvers didn’t trigger when intended, causing failure.
The game world was great to explore with a reasonable pace to the main story, but that was all there was to see, with the side paths being so small they felt pointless unless there was a side quest involved.
In regard to the overall story, I was constantly intrigued by what was going on, and I always wanted to find out more, so I was always progressing through the story and learning all I could from the side quests, notes, and NPCs.
- Beautiful locations to explore.
- Combat was a lot of fun due to the various weapons and skill trees.
- The story was gripping from beginning to end.
- Side quests were a lot of fun and enticed me to follow them when necessary.
- Combat was often glitchy with attacks not hitting.
- The parkour was a struggle at times as sequences didn't fully work out as intended.
- Exploration was pointless even though there were options to do so.
Valor Mortis is due to release tomorrow on October 13th, on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC.
For your next read, why not check out our Hellraiser: Revival review, or check out our first tech review with the Ducky OK-M keyboard.
Thumb Wars reviews every game based upon the structure of our review policy, and every review is on OpenCritic.
Liam is a Senior Editor, Writer, and Critic for Thumb Wars and has been working with the team since day one. Liam is a big fan of all things gaming, as you will catch him playing all of the new releases from every genre you can imagine. Whether you find Liam gaming just for fun or spending his free time streaming, you will always find a smile on his face when it comes to all things gaming.
