I haven't cared about soulslikes since Elden Ring, but Valor Mortis changed that

I awaken in the bowels of a fog-enveloped forest, surrounded by hundreds of corpses. The bloodied bodies of my countrymen line my path forward, ushering me deeper into the darkness. Mud squelches beneath my boots; I crouch - there's something up ahead. Once a man, now a mutated monster, it turns and screeches, weapon raised, preparing to fight. This is my introduction to Valor Mortis, the new soulslike from the creators of Ghostrunner. It's a marked departure from the cold, neon-bathed streets of Dharma City, but, much like its cyberpunk sister, it hooks me immediately.

Revealed at Gamescom 2025, Valor Mortis thrusts you into the middle of a world at war. Set in an allohistorical 19th Century where endless conflict has corrupted the planet, you're cast as William, a fallen member of Napoleon's Grande Armée who has, apparently, been brought back to life. Imbued with a new set of powers that allow you to spew jets of fire from your hand, you'll battle your way through various bosses (many inspired by real-life historical figures) and attempt to unravel a shadowy conspiracy, all while the disembodied voice of Napoleon witters away in your head. What could possibly go wrong?

I find out pretty quickly. As I traverse the early stages of the tutorial, I attempt to cross a rotting bridge and immediately find myself at the bottom of a chasm. Not a great start to my conspiracy squashing. I battle through a few of my fallen, mutated comrades in the tried and tested soulslike fashion - perfect parries, a mixture of quick and heavy attacks, and seasoned sidestepping - before cresting the ridge of a hill, finally breaking free of the forest's grasp. Enemies slain, there's a moment of silence as I look out over the sunset, which peers through a pair of mountains. I feel my breath hitch; in a world that, so far, has been portrayed as grim to its core, there's a fleeting moment of beauty. But it is only fleeting.

The rest of the world is slick with gore, amplified by the game's brutal kill animations, reminiscent of the slicing and dicing you see in Ghostrunner. Upon decapitating an enemy, level designer Damian Wójcik urges me to "go a little psycho" and dismember the corpse on the ground, promising me that this isn't what he does in his free time. I hack at the body and can confirm that the limbs do, in fact, fall off, spewing bodily fluids everywhere. "We try to hit a sweet spot with the violence," he laughs, and despite my initial surprise at just how gory the game is, I can't deny that chopping up my foes is incredibly satisfying.

Bloodied sabre and pistol in hand, I follow the trail along until I come to another clearing. At its center, illuminated by the descending sun, is one of my colleagues, suspended upright in a contorted, circular structure made of viscera and gore. I approach him, assuming that he's dead, reaching out for what appears to be his glowing, red heart. I audibly panic as he grabs my hand, twisting it and pouring eerie crimson energy into my veins. He fades away in silence, and I'm left with a very red hand and the ability to produce flame in the palm of my hand. Not bad, but definitely not good.

I can use my new powers to burn down growths in the environment, granting me access to new areas of the map. Combined with the flintlock, I shoot down a tree, offering me a somewhat dangerous path forward along the side of what appears to be a rather deep canyon. I take a leap of faith, grab onto a tree branch, and swing to the next one, gingerly making my way downwards into the heart of the battle. The parkour, however, offers something different from other soulslikes, which are largely linear, with the odd detour off the beaten path. I can certainly feel a little bit of Ghostrunner in its fluidity, so I ask Wójcik how the team went about integrating platform elements into Valor Mortis.

"Obviously [making a soulslike] is easier if you don't have a jump," he says. "You don't have to think about the environment, and you can block it off in natural ways. Obviously, other soulslikes don't have the platforming parts because it's not part of the identity of soulslike games, but we took inspiration from our experience on Ghostrunner. We knew that we could go for it and make the game feel special, and [traversal is] a crucial part of making the game not feel all about combat - it helps with the pacing. Some areas can be tougher because you need to jump a lot, but the combat will be easier."

But Valor Mortis breaks soulslike conventions with its shooting mechanics, too. While we've seen souls-lites like Remnant marry gun combat with FromSoft-style bosses and dodge-based defensive moves, One More Level lets you use your gun in tandem with your traditional saber and newfound magic. I quickly dispatch a sniper perched on top of a roof, but also find out that I could have loosed a nearby cart to climb up and reach him for an up-close brawl, all while squishing one of his allies in the process. With the parkour elements and dual weapons working together, there are multiple ways to approach each combat instance, making things feel more dynamic than just 'kill enemy, farm resource, repeat, fight boss.'

"There's shooting in Bloodborne, but it's more supportive," Wójcik says. "Here it plays like an actual shooter game. You can also use fire, and who knows, you might be able to do something else with new powers. But we can combine both [of William's] hands together to make combat feel different [from other soulslikes], which isn't really that common."

That flexibility comes in handy (pun intended) with the demo's final boss, the hulking General Lothaire, a former soldier now composed of the bodies of his dead comrades. Sporting shootable growths that deal extra damage, I quickly learn his general patterns and only die three or four times during his first phase. From yeeting corpses at you to slamming into the ground and dealing massive damage, there's a wave of relief when his health bar finally hits zero - a sense of triumph from blending all of Valor Mortis' combat mechanics together. Look mom, I won!

And then he gets up and initiates phase two. Well shit. Given that I only had an hour with the game, I called it quits with victory in my veins, and Wójcik politely informed me that very few people had actually beaten Lothaire over the course of the show. It's worth noting, however, that my preview was on the first day of Gamescom's business days, meaning I was probably among the first to go hands-on. Still, I'll take a win where I can get one.

I listed Valor Mortis as one of my three top games of Gamescom, and now you hopefully understand why. What at first glance feels like yet another soulslike, albeit with a unique setting, quickly transforms into a dynamic action game that pays homage to FromSoftware's tried-and-tested formula while adding its own ideas. When I saw that One More Level was making a soulslike - something that contrasts sharply with the lightning-fast action of Ghostrunner - I was a little perplexed as to what it would look like, but there's some Dharma DNA in here for sure. Ghostrunner's influence still feels like a natural throughline. It's not a case of 'look, we're doing platforming to be different,'; it's perfectly integrated into the overall experience.

From a game I was dreading playing (I'm not great at soulslikes) to one of my games of the show, Valor Mortis has so much potential. As we march ever-closer to what feels like certain death, I really can't wait to see what comes next - and maybe, finally, take down Lothaire for good. Honestly, I went easy on him; he doesn't stand a chance.