4.5 out of 5 at TheGamer, 6 out of 10 at GameSpot: both reviewers played the same game, released on October 13. Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike from One More Level (the studio behind Ghostrunner) and published by Lyrical Games, is set in a Europe where Napoleon won at Waterloo. The press averages it at 80. Between the 9 and the 6, the disagreement is not about the combat, which most reviewers praise. It is about everything else.
Valor Mortis: an 80 average, but only 76% of critics recommend it
On the morning of October 14, OpenCritic shows an 80 average among top critics and 76% of critics recommending the game, across 55 reviews. The visible list runs from 6 out of 10 (GameSpot) to 8.5 out of 10 (DualShockers), with IGN at 7/10, Eurogamer at 4/5, TheGamer at 4.5/5, TheSixthAxis and Shacknews at 8/10, and Hobby Consolas at 78/100. The scales differ, so the comparison stays approximate. The same page rates Dragon’s Dogma 2 Dark Arisen at 85 since October 8.
Two days earlier, on October 12 when the embargo lifted, GamerFuzion recorded a different trend. Metacritic gave 77 on PC (32 reviews, 24 positive, 7 mixed and none negative) and 83 on PS5, but from only 7 reviews. OpenCritic then counted an 80 average, 84% recommendations and 33 reviews. Twenty-two reviews later, the average has not moved and the recommendation rate has lost eight points. The PS5’s 83 rests on a sample too thin to separate the platforms.
The same roundup gives the price of Valor Mortis, $39.99, and a same-day arrival on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. The Steam page lists €39.99 for the PC version. That leaves the release date. OpenCritic shows “Sep 24, 2026 – PC” on its listing, while Steam and IGN give October 13, 2026. We found no explanation for that September 24 and go with October 13, confirmed by two sources. For players, the verdict will come from Steam, as with Gears of War E-Day, 87 with the press and 78% on Steam.
Combat, the one point where both camps agree
At TheGamer, Steven Garrard writes that combat “is still incredibly satisfying once you get into the right rhythm.” Khayl Adam, who gives it 8/10 on PS5 Pro for Push Square, goes further: “Combat is the game’s main verb, and you will spend the majority of your time engaging in it.” The subtitle of his review sums up his score: “Short in a few places, but a titan where it counts.”
Even the 6/10 camp agrees on this. Alessandro Barbosa, for GameSpot, praises a “snappy and satisfying combat that rewards deft parries and patience in equal measure.” Travis Northup, who gives it 7/10 at IGN, judges the game “pretty much exactly as cool as it sounds” when everything works, with a sword in one hand and fire in the other. On the environments, Adam thinks they are among the game’s greatest strengths. Northup praises “fairly unique” levels, from battlefields strewn with horse corpses to a port of ships lifted into the air.
Story, bugs, pacing: where the 9 becomes a 6
The disagreement over Valor Mortis starts with the levels themselves. Barbosa finds the first hours slow, with near-linear battlefields that “blend together in forgettable ways,” and says the game only finds its pace at the halfway point, when burning cities and catacombs replace the villages. Garrard, for his part, describes zones with “plenty of room to explore,” even though he sometimes lost his way for lack of landmarks.
The story widens the gap. For Northup, Valor Mortis has “a story that’s more vibes than substance,” and Barbosa calls it “frustratingly straightforward,” a waste for a setting rarely used in action games. Garrard, meanwhile, praises soulslike mechanics tied well to a “haunting” narrative.
Then there is the technical side. Northup, who played on PC for more than twenty hours, mentions “numerous bugs and crashes that turned an otherwise good time into my own personal Waterloo.” He also notes “shockingly few” bosses. Garrard hit stutters early on, fixed in his view by updates and graphics drivers. Adam, on PS5 Pro, only reports sometimes muddy textures and a frustrating final segment after 18 hours of play, and excuses the first flaw because of the reduced price. The copies played are not the same, which fits the gap between the PS5’s 83 and the PC’s 77, without proving it on seven reviews.
GameSpot’s 6 and TheGamer’s 9 say the same thing about the combat. What changes is the weight given to the story, the pacing of the first hours and the crashes.
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