I wake up with Napoleon’s voice in my head commanding me to “scrub the bloody muck from my eyes.” His voice is wrong, somehow. Gutteral. But I obey. Corpses in French uniforms surround me. A discolored rash flashes across my hand, then fades. My name is William. I am a soldier in the Grande Armée. I have died for Napoleon. And I will die for him again. And again. And again.
This is how my demo for Valor Mortis began. You’ve seen some of what Valor Mortis does before: it’s a first-person Souls-like whose mechanics are revealed as I move. Crows flying from a bush reveal my sword, which I’ll later use for light and heavy attacks that consume stamina, a sentence that makes me tired just typing it.
Soon after, I attempted to cross a bridge. William spots another soldier and calls “Friendly!” before realizing the soldier likely speaks French, and correcting himself. It’s odd that he has to remember, given that both men wear French colors. But he does, and his accent, unlike Napoleon’s, which drips with French vowels but avoids substituting “ze” for “the,” is decidedly un-French. At least stereotypically. Perhaps British, though I can’t be sure. It makes me wonder who William is, and why he’s here, fighting for the Napoleon in his head. Speaking of, why is there a Napoleon in his head? So many questions.
Before I have time to ponder them, the bridge breaks beneath me, and I have to wipe the muck from my eyes again. This time, I have a health vial, which like any good Soulslike protagonist, I break in my hand to heal. Whatever’s in it is absorbed into my skin, briefly discoloring it before being soaked in. It reminds me of the rash I woke up with. That, too, faded away. And like the potion, I am not sure what it was doing to me, or what it meant.
Shortly thereafter, I get into my first fight. Another soldier, wearing the same colors I am, slashes at the disemboweled remains of what looks like a horse, though it is wrong, somehow. He growls and grunts, and when he notices my presence, he comes at me. Our matching colors do not matter, much to William’s horror, and I dispatch him quickly.
It’s here that I really begin to get to grips with Valor Mortis’s combat. Like I said, this is a Soulslike, just in first-person, but it does feel good to parry another soldier’s sword and lop off their head or stick your sword through his neck. Or sneak up behind a guy and plunge your saber through his back. Standard stuff, yes, but feel is just as important. It’s easy to parry these guys – they’re essentially walking corpses wearing French uniforms – but that doesn’t make it less satisfying.
After dispatching them, I came across a note addressed to the commander officer of the 3rd Detachment, the Garde Éternelle. They’re protecting something important, and cannot retreat at any cost. Interesting. I’m off on a quest. After some more words of encouragement from Head Napoleon, I stumble into another mass grave, and another soldier, whose head has been overtaken by a bulging, orange pustule, and who is firing his musket repeatedly into a dead body. The other soldiers I fought were little more than the shambling remains of men, but this was something else again. Like me, something was wrong with him. And I wondered what it meant as I stabbed him in the back.
Later, I come upon the remains of a French camp and find a pistol. A revolver, to be precise, which I dual wield with my sword. I guess I’m playing French Bloodborne. No complaints here. It’s handy, because right after, as if placed there by some extradimensional deity, I use it to knock over a tree with one of the weird orange growths at its center, and then pop the weird pimples that are becoming more and more prevalent in the environment and on my fellow soldiers.
Then I see it: the lantern, Valor Mortis’s bonfire equivalent. After rekindling it and taking a quick rest (and spending some of the currency I’ve acquired through all the killing), I’m back at it. And here’s where I notice how beautiful this world is. Corrupted, yeah. Ruined. Horrific. But beautiful. Like the corpse I stumble upon whose innards have melted from his body, and grown up and out around him, a ribcage surrounding a rotting heart. He gives me the gift of flame. The wild growth that impedes my path blocks me no more, but I am less human than I was.
I press on, Napoleon’s voice in my ear, my advance marked by sword and flame and gunfire. My enemies grow more grotesque, my reality uncertain. I find a giant, misshapen, two-headed figure who looks as though two soldiers were fused together at the waist. Memories that are not mine play out before my eyes. I step over piles of dead bodies and ruined canon and tattered flags. Something horrible happened here. And then I am reminded of the cargo the Garde Éternelle was carrying, and backtrack to the growth that blocked me before, something my pistol can destroy.
It’s here I meet my greatest challenge, or at least the one that flummoxed me the most throughout my time with Valor Mortis: another soldier. He wore a cape and a fancy hat and a sword, and he killed me several times before I, limited by time (my demo was only 30 minutes), moved on. Back to the battlefield. Back to the soldiers overtaken by corruption, to men transformed into dog-like beasts. As powerful as Valor Mortis often made me feel, I never felt safe while playing it. Even basic foes could kill me, and moving forward meant I was always met with a new horror or trapped in a cage with the remnants of my comrades.
I’d like to tell you I finished Valor Mortis’s demo. I really would. But the truth is that I ran out of time because I spent several attempts on that soldier with the fancy hat, and my demo expired just before I saw the end. But I did see another player take on the final boss: General Lothaire, a mountain of a man seemingly made of the flesh of other men who wielded a flagpole, a sword bigger than William, and several pistols from the arms attached to his back. The player he fought did well, exploiting his weakpoints, dodging his attacks, and picking spots to retaliate. But he, too, ran out of time.
From what I was told later, almost nobody finished Valor Mortis’s demo before time expired. But that only makes me want to go back to it and try again. The 30 minutes I spent with Valor Mortis was a lot of things: horrifying, beautiful, intriguing. But no matter how many times I died to the soldier with the fancy hat, it was never dull. After playing it, I was left with more questions than I started with: what is happening in this world? Why is Napoleon in my head? Who is William? What makes him special? What is this corruption that touches everyone and everything? I can only guess at the answers. But I know I want to go back. And that feeling is more than enough to keep me interested, and hopeful, in what developer One More Level has up its sleeve.
Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.
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