Valor Mortis has serious potential but the combat needs to stop fighting the player
The first thing that struck me about Valor Mortis is the feel of the controls, because right now they feel pretty clunky and genuinely not very fluid. The basic combo works, but the third attack in the sequence, with that backward motion of the blade, feels strange and unnatural. It’s obvious that the game is still technically behind, but in a title like this, where a huge part of the experience is basically killing stuff, I think the combat should be the absolute priority.
The problem is especially noticeable with blocking, parrying, and dodging. Sometimes they work perfectly, other times they feel unreliable or difficult to execute quickly. I’m not completely sold on the Lies of P-style blocking system: I understand the idea of taking partial damage and being able to recover it, but if the controls themselves aren’t very responsive, it becomes difficult to get through even small encounters without losing HP. The dodge feels like a halfway solution as well. I’d rather have something more decisive, deeper and easier to read, maybe something you can chain a couple of times without completely destroying your stamina.
The first miniboss, the armored guy with the hat who also uses a pistol, felt particularly rough. His movements lack fluidity and the running animation honestly looks pretty bad. The guard and stagger system, though, improves the combat quite a lot when it works. The second miniboss, the one who throws bombs, felt less clunky than the first, but still not very polished. At one point I dodged an attack, triggered a counter and dealt a huge amount of damage, but I’m almost certain I mistimed the dodge. When the game rewards you in a situation where you yourself feel like you made a mistake, timing, hitboxes or animations still need work.
The first proper boss, the huge one with the second phase, is cool, but his difficulty is clearly above everything that comes before and after him in the demo. Definitely too much. Not so much because of what he actually does, but because of all the combat-system issues I mentioned above.
I didn’t mind the boss in Chapter 6. He wasn’t particularly difficult, I beat him on my second attempt, also because by that point you have plenty of tools and resources available, but the fight worked better and I actually had fun using the rapier.
The ranged options are extremely basic. Pistol, rifle, and the fire hand/shield all work, but there isn’t much depth to them. Personally, I’d try to differentiate them with some kind of immediate quick draw option and a slower, charged version that requires you to aim or prepare the shot. That way they would actually create a meaningful choice between speed and power.
The rapier also has potential, but right now it’s difficult to control. I struggle to position myself properly and to hit the exact target I want. That’s a shame, because the weapon itself is interesting and visually it works.
The finishers are decent, but nothing more than that. In general, I also feel there isn’t much attention being given to secrets, side paths or small elements of discovery. While exploring, I found almost nothing that really encouraged me to leave the main route.
The very obvious reuse of assets bothered me as well: identical dead horses, almost identical bonfires, repeated environmental elements. It would be easier to forgive if the combat were already incredibly polished, or if there were another particularly deep system where it was obvious that most of the development effort had gone.
On the other hand, I really like the setting. The overall design has personality and feels different from many other games of this type. The boss designs work too: regular enemies are fairly simple, but the bosses have more character. Chapter 6, the witch chapter, also felt much more focused from an environmental standpoint.
There are some issues with enemy placement. It’s not really about the total number of enemies, but more about their concentration and where they’re placed. Some areas feel too empty, others too crowded. The more “Assassin’s Creed-style” section, with running and moving across environmental objects, didn’t excite me much either, and the encounter with the inventor in Chapter 6 felt completely pointless.
As far as UX goes, journal, character pages, interface and so on, I don’t have any particular complaints. Everything feels fairly standard and functional.
In the end, the feeling is pretty clear: Valor Mortis has an interesting identity and could become a really good game, but the combat needs to be cleaned up first. More responsive controls, clearer animations, more reliable dodges and parries, and better weapon precision would dramatically improve the whole experience.
The visual design, the setting and some of the bosses make me think there’s something genuinely worth building here. For a demo/playtest, I can definitely see the potential. But I can also see a game that still needs a lot of work on the technical side before everything else can really shine. My priorities: cleaner combat and animations; more reliable parries, dodges and hit detection; more depth in the use of the pistol, fire hand and weapons like the rapier.
To the devs:
If you need someone to break your game, complain about it for an hour, and somehow make that useful, I’m available for playtesting.