Controls, Settings & Accessibility
There is no difficulty slider, but there are four toggles that matter more than one would. This page covers what each assist option actually does, why a controller is the intended input, and what the game lists for accessibility.
Target Lock
ConfirmedCameras lock onto an enemy and stay on it.
In a first-person game you cannot see behind you. Without lock-on, fighting two enemies at once means fighting the camera. Turn it on before your first boss, not after your tenth death.
Combat Assist
ConfirmedMelee swings snap toward the target.
Removes the tracking half of the aiming problem and leaves the timing half intact. It changes how forgiving the game is, not how hard the encounters are, which is why it does not read as a cheat.
Instant Restart
ConfirmedSkips the death screen and restarts the encounter immediately.
Purely a convenience, and it is the single biggest quality-of-life improvement available. Running back through a level between attempts is what makes people quit soulslikes, and this removes it.
Quick Cast
ConfirmedUses a Transmutation without a confirmation step.
Matters most against Carrion, where the Fire answer needs to come out fast. If you find yourself dying mid-cast, this is the setting you are looking for.
Turn these on from minute one
Target Lock and Instant Restart cost you nothing except the illusion that you are playing the “real” version. Both were present in the demo, both are officially supported, and both remove frustration that has nothing to do with whether the combat is good. The assist options exist because the studio watched people fight the camera.
Dynamic FOV scaling: the readability system nobody mentions
The developer revealed, almost in passing, that the game uses dynamic FOV scaling to make huge bosses more readable in combat. That is a more interesting sentence than it first looks, because it is the studio telling you what its actual design problem was.
They have said the same thing four separate times across their own posts: environmental awareness, field of view and depth perception are all harder to convey in first person, and the perspective “can cause issues regarding sense of space and combat readability”. Every criticism anyone has made about the camera in this game is a problem the studio named first.
The practical consequence for you: a large boss whose tells matter will pull the camera wider automatically. That is why some fights feel like they open out as you engage, and why the same attack can read very differently against a human-sized enemy. It is also one of the reasons Combat Assist exists — the two together are the studio's answer to the first-person problem, and turning both off is choosing the hardest version of a game that already has no difficulty slider.
An admission worth respecting: no other first-person soulslike has solved this, and rather than pretend otherwise, this one built a system for it and then told players it had.
What this means for your settings
Leave FOV-related options at their defaults for at least your first few hours. If you widen the base field of view manually and then hit a boss that scales it further, you can end up with visible distortion at the edges precisely when you need a clean read on an attack. Tune it after you have fought something large, not before.
Where it comes from
Stated by the developer in their own Steam post on 17 September 2026, and corroborated by the readability comments in their 9 August and 19 August posts.
The confirmed action list
There is no single official control scheme to publish, and that is not us hedging: the demo supported rebinding, and layouts differ between PlayStation, Xbox and PC. What is confirmed is the set of actions you will be binding. Two of them decide whether you enjoy the game, and both are listed below.
Parry
Load-bearingThe single most important input in the game
Builds enemy posture, opens the critical attack, and costs nothing but timing. Everything else in this list exists to support it.
Transmutation
Load-bearingYour left hand
Fire, Shield, Grapple and Stasis. Runs on Nephtoglobin rather than Endurance, so it is a second resource with its own economy.
Light and heavy attack
Two commitment levels
Heavy attacks are slower and hit harder. Both cost Endurance, and the cost is why mashing is punished rather than merely inefficient.
Block
Load-bearingThe safe answer that advances nothing
Costs Endurance and can be broken outright by heavy attackers. The Rapier cannot block at all.
Dodge / dash
The answer to unblockable attacks
Commits you to a direction. The correct response to anything that punches through a guard.
Firearm
Ranged and weak-point access
The pistol is the default. The Musket beats it on range and power; the Blunderbuss trades range for a cone.
Weak point attack
Load-bearingAim, do not swing
A confirmed system. Aimed hits build Nephtoglobin and are how you break armoured targets.
Grapple and traversal
Movement, not damage
The third Transmutation is how you cross gaps and take height. With no map screen, it is also how you get unlost.
Lantern interaction
Rest, upgrade, fast travel
Where you spend Catalysts and equip Ambers. Resting resets enemies, which is useful before a boss attempt.
Finisher / execution
Ends a fight, changes with your kit
Hands-on coverage reports the animation changes depending on your weapon and which left-hand power is active.
Every action above is confirmed by the publisher's gameplay overview, the developer's Steam posts, or demo hands-on coverage. We deliberately do not publish button bindings, because they differ by platform and the demo shipped with rebinding enabled.
Controller or keyboard and mouse
Use a controller. That is not a preference dressed up as advice: a reviewer who put real time into the demo described keyboard and mouse as workable but never ideal, and noted that a pad was clearly the intended input. Fighting in first person with a lock-on, a parry timing window and a left-hand ability wheel is a lot of simultaneous inputs for a mouse and keyboard layout, and the game was tuned around a pair of sticks and four shoulder buttons.
If you are on PC without a pad, that is still an entirely playable setup, and the point is not to talk you out of it. Just know that if the parry timing feels wrong, the input method is a plausible cause and not necessarily your reflexes.
Graphics settings and what to turn down first
The demo shipped with a graphics menu that hands-on coverage described as unusually complete for a pre-release build, which is encouraging for anyone on mid-range hardware. The only published performance figure comes from a top-end machine at 1440p maximum settings with ray tracing, which held around 80 FPS and dipped under 60 in scenes with water, fire and heavy effects.
That tells you two things. The game looks best in exactly the scenes that cost the most, and ray tracing is the expensive part. If you need frames, drop ray tracing first, then shadow quality, and cap the frame rate rather than chasing a peak number. A steady 60 reads better than an average of 70 with drops into the 40s, especially when a drop lands mid-parry.
- PlayStation 5
- Native. Supports HDR and the DualSense feature set.
- Xbox Series X|S
- Native. Xbox Play Anywhere, so a digital purchase carries save data between console and PC.
- Steam Deck
- Not officially verified. No Steam Deck compatibility rating had been published at the time of writing.
- Nintendo Switch 2
- No announcement. The publisher has said nothing either way, and no port has been listed on any storefront.
- Last-gen consoles
- Not supported. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are not listed on any storefront.
Accessibility and display features
Full controller support
Steam lists it as fully supported, not partial.
DualSense & DualShock
Native support on PC, including the PlayStation controller feature set.
HDR
Available on PC, with HDR on both consoles.
Subtitles
Subtitle options are listed as a supported category.
Custom volume controls
Per-channel volume rather than a master slider only.
Stereo and surround sound
Both listed. Pre-release coverage repeatedly praised the audio.
Steam Cloud
Save sync across machines.
Family Sharing
Enabled, subject to Steam household rules.
Xbox Play Anywhere
Digital copies carry one save between an Xbox console and a PC.
Settings questions
Does Valor Mortis have an easy mode?
No difficulty selector exists. It ships four assist options instead: Target Lock, Combat Assist, Instant Restart and Quick Cast. These change how easy the game is to control rather than how hard the encounters are, and the director has discussed difficulty balance publicly without confirming a mode.
Should I play Valor Mortis with a controller or keyboard and mouse?
A controller, if you have one. Demo impressions were candid that keyboard and mouse worked but never felt ideal, and that the combat tuning clearly assumes a pad.
Does Valor Mortis support HDR and DualSense?
Yes. The Steam listing confirms HDR, DualShock and DualSense support, full controller support, custom volume controls, subtitle options, stereo and surround sound, Steam Cloud and Family Sharing.