Review | Valor of Man - Reroll Simulator

Tactical roguelites at their best can be enjoyable experiences that are hard to put down, whether you successfully finish a run or not. Diving back in gives you hope for whatever exciting permutations you’ll run into this time around, and you may walk away with a story to tell. Randomness is a factor, but the ability to roll with combinations you haven’t even conceived of makes for a great session. Valor of Man achieves none of these things.

Valor of Man places you into the shoes of a quartet of characters: Alistair, Ignatius, Elara, and Octavia. As Alistair discovers his connection to the god, Death, he finds missing memories and discovers the world as he knows it may be hiding some dark secrets. The game’s story attempts to integrate the cyclical nature of the gameplay, but the writing is amateurish. It’s a tale you’ve experienced in one way or another in a better form — an unbelievably attractive protagonist, convenient amnesia, and a story that concludes with a damp twist after a dull twist which left me befuddled. Alistair inches towards his goal, reliving the same segments and culminating in a nonsensical title drop. While I don’t need a reason to drive me through a good roguelite, it may have been better to leave what was given on the cutting room floor.

To start a run, you’ll select from each of the character’s three variations, with each having a slightly different alternate. Calling them variations is a bit of an overstatement, as your characters are essentially the same with some builds being unplayable while the rest are completely governed by RNG (Random Number Generation). Players can choose from one of four game difficulties, and climb through ten levels of “Valor” that increase in difficulty as they work their way through Alistair’s journey. 

Players venture through three “chapters” of maps, deciding which route to follow to the boss. There are multiple types of places to travel to: normal battles, elite battles, merchants, armourers, campfires, and events. Decisions like when to go to a campfire to hone skills or cure conditions your party may be afflicted with, or whether to take part in an event which may present you with a great item or resource if you have the right variation of a party member, are important to be able to progress. However, the severe lack of any sort of seeding for abilities, items, and many other essential pieces — which are left entirely to RNG — makes this more of a groan-worthy chore than anything. The amount of times I ran into useless abilities both in general and for the particular builds I found effective climbed into the dozens before I even realised for a game so reliant on RNG, there is no reroll feature on any options. An upside, if it can be called that, is that the same oversight applies to launching a new run, so I could just restart until I landed the option for beginning with an Ancient-quality Artifact.

Part of Valor of Man‘s systems place emphasis on conditions, which can occur from events, characters being knocked out in combat, or losing all Courage in combat. These conditions are Traumas or Injuries, which affect characters with debuffs like one less attack range, or losing HP each turn. Courage can be lost from enemy abilities, and most character abilities have a chance to cause that party member to lose Courage. While the intention may have to get players to think more carefully about using Courage-risking abilities, in practice it just causes frustration, as players will need every advantage they can get in the game. This is in part because every successful attack you make on an enemy will trigger one of their Reactions, which could be as simple as an attack or charging in a certain direction. This gives foes far too much maneuverability to the point of cruelty, especially when you consider player characters have to spend their very limited Action Points to move. Another issue with this system is if you have the character Octavia cast an AOE spell, each enemy will react, most likely targeting her. Critical hits and certain abilities get around Reactions, but you are once again at the mercy of RNG of items and abilities. I should be excited about casting screen-clearing magic or cleaving into half a dozen orcs, but instead I had to numb myself to characters dying.

The graphics are reminiscent of a browser game from some years ago. With some shading Valor of Man could look less like a PlayStation Portable game, but as it is the snakes look more like frogs and the decision to zoom in on some kills is not the flex Legacy Forge presents it as. Trying to use the mouse to click on certain abilities felt awful — ability icons have no selection “glow” and not all of the icon itself is selectable as it’s blocked by descriptors. Many times I’d accidentally move a character because I didn’t realise movement was selected or the thing I actually wanted to do became de-selected. Cursor movement in general was rough; I would think an isometric PC game would allow me to easily scroll and move, but an uncooperative camera and some strange camera controls put that to bed. 

I’ve mentioned how the game’s story might as well be nonexistent, and this quality of writing is present elsewhere. In battle, your characters will bark out phrases such as “Killing enemies is TIGHT!” and “I am a good person.” Characters will also occasionally swear lines like “Motherfucker,” which seems wholly out of place and unnecessary. Even stranger, when the elf Elara speaks her language, your party will question what she’s saying. I honestly can’t decide if it’s more fantastical racism or is in fact lore-breaking, as the player is led to believe this is not the first time they’ve worked together. 

I did not enjoy Valor of Man. I can’t think of anyone who I’d recommend this game to. At best, the limited but thematic soundtrack backed my smart plays as I lucked into a status effect-based unstoppable strategy, but that was one run out of many more miserable ones. At worst, the RNG was so heavily against me that I would die to common enemies. Ultimately, it does not deserve your time or money without some heavy adjustments. Whether you’re searching for fantasy, roguelite experiences, or tactical RPGs, this game hits none of those marks, and I think you can quite easily find something that fits in those categories without subjecting yourself to Valor of Man.

Valor of Man was played on PC with a code provided by the publisher.