Valor Mortis made me a believer

I love Souls-like games, and there’s a lot of different kinds of games that fit that description these days. But the dark truth is that very few games going for the actual Soulslike experience — bosses, areas with respawning enemies, deliberate combat, flasks, etc — live up to the genuine article. I’ve played Souls clones that I enjoy like The Surge, and I think games like Lies of P have actually gotten close to FromSoftware’s pedigree, but most just aren’t as tight or as fun.

One game from Steam Next Fest, however, really impressed me while very clearly trying to bring the FromSoftware touch. It’s called Valor Mortis, and its demo is still up on Steam. The game  takes place during an apocalyptic/magical version of the Napoleonic wars.  Oh, and it’s first-person. 

So that last thing — the whole first-person perspective thing — is what had me extremely skeptical going into the demo. I mean, I already think most third-person Souls clones are mediocre at best. And I wasn’t entirely sure that a first-person version of the genre was even possible. But the demo — which I only played the first chapter of (there is a second chapter set deeper in the game, but I didn’t need to see it) — proved me wrong in a little less than an hour. 

In the demo for Valor Mortis, you wake up on the outskirts of a battlefield with a saber and not much else. When you come across a fellow soldier, they’re essentially a mindless zombie, and attack you — as do the reanimated bodies of enemy soldiers. There's also a mysterious web covering certain areas and enemies, which adds to the creepy ambiance.