Mortal Shell 2

There have been a load of soulslikes in recent memory. To the point that a decent sized margin of gamers are growing fatigued. This can be said about a ton of genres though. For example, people have been tired of how many roguelikes come out per year. Same can be said for metroidvanias, boomer shooters, and ‘friendslop’. Let’s highlight that last one specifically, friendslop. Not a lot of people are referring to it as co-op games or comedy multiplayer. ‘Friendslop,’ because within a short period of time we’ve seen dozens of games in this kind of style. Some of them are really good, well designed, and polished despite coming from small teams who may be debuting their debut title. Other genre entries feel rushed, bafflingly designed, and as if they were stitched together with kindergarten glue and popsicle sticks. Look I’m not trying to talk down of anyone who may like these kinds of games, but I bring this example up to explain why many are fatigued with the soulslike genre. There have been a lot of them within a short period of time to the point the subgenre got a tag on Steam. Some are great, and some are kind of doodoo.

Another reason why I believe people are more fatigued with soulslike than the prior genres I had mentioned is probably the state of action games right now. Personally I’m someone who enjoys action as long as it’s fun, or there are other hooks to keep me going. There are gamers who have begun to blame the success of the Souls series for why combat design and mechanics stagnated. Every game needs weighty attack animations, precise dodging, parrying ever since Sekiro went and popularized it, and put more focus towards slower methodical combat than fast pace fights. Newer action games like the recent God of War entries have taken influence, and some devs like Team Ninja who formerly made Ninja Gaiden ditched their prior formulas to make soulslikes. Dark Souls despite having a niche audience is well beloved, sells well, and with each new entry From Software evolves their formula. The market adapts to what is popular, and gamers do not like this. It’s led by hack and slash games, the dominating style of action games before, declining as well as any other forms of variety action games can have. This to me are the reasons folks are fatigued with soulslikes. Too many have come out in a short time period and not enough of them are good. I hate opening like this, because I still enjoy a good soulslike every now and then.

I adore seeing how devs put a spin on the formula. Sometimes a game stands against the titles it took inspiration from. Lies of P is one of my top twenty games of all time for not only understanding what made Bloodborne and past Souls games good, but for forming a distinct identity and telling a beautiful tale about humanity. Team Ninja, who we mentioned a few seconds ago, made Nioh. A series that became a trilogy this year and contains what many consider some of the best melee action in gaming. Then you got all my beloved soulslike metroidvanias, but I don’t want to blabber too long about them too. I like a good soulslike game, and one I think about occasionally is Mortal Shell. Developed by Cold Symmetry and released all the way back in 2020. Crazy that six years have passed since the Covid-19 pandemic huh? Mortal Shell was one of the earlier soulslikes to have come out and at the time I remember it being well liked. Some of the content creators I followed gave it glowing reception. Saying it’s a perfect genre entry for those who can’t wrap their head around the RPG systems and complexity Dark Souls occasionally presents. Such as the shell system where each of the four shells offer a specific build to tinker with. Hardening which not only negates damage, but could also be triggered while attacking. Allowing players to not be punished as badly for bad timing, and get used for the lack of animation cancelling soulslikes have. Leveling up was cool in that as you grow stronger you learned more about the deceased warriors and their past history. A world that allows you to approach the three main dungeons in any order, and the list goes on. 

Mortal Shell was a solid soulslike and debut title from a team who are technically independent. Cold Symmetry doesn’t have the budget, studios such as Team Ninja or Round 8 have, and when you look back at their first game you can kinda see it. Mortal Shell was a game I quite liked back when it was released. I don’t think I would like the game as much now, because it definitely feels rough in certain areas. The world design is kinda bad, because there’s no way of differentiating one corner of the overworld to another. With several hills of green, muggy fog, and crawly holes that are identical. Meaning exploration is quite confusing, and the lack of checkpoints meant if you die you gotta start back from the center of the map. Controls felt stiff even for a soulslike as there are times your character doesn’t respond to commands even with a full stamina bar. The way leveling was handled is cool, but a majority of players found themselves unable to level up a single shell to half the perks they had to offer due to how the secondary currency worked. It was a game with great ideas, but also weird execution. However, I am able to forgive Cold Symmetry for these shortcomings. Again, a small indie studio. I knew if this team was given a larger budget and time to learn they could craft a noteworthy title. A soulslike they dreamed of. 

Anyways, Mortal Shell 2 came out two months ago. The sequel was announced during Summer Game Fest last year, and it was the title I was looking forward to the most as someone who held the thoughts I just described. It looked like a ginormous step up from the first, and I crossed my fingers hoping Mortal Shell 2 would stick the landing. Thankfully it did, and a lot more people are praising it compared to when the last game was released. To me this is one of the greatest sequels to have come in recent memory. Not only did Cold Symmetry learn since their first title, but took notes from soulslikes that released in between. In particular From Software’s grandest game to date is Elden Ring. It places the player in a much smaller scaled world, and while that world may not contain the same level of jaw dropping surprises Elden Ring holds, it shows that even at a smaller scale it understands what made Elden Ring work. In the same way King’s Field was a rough beginning, this is Cold Symmetry’s own Dark Souls moment. There are a few flaws, but they have evolved in amazing ways and I’m excited to be talking to you all about this game. Today we’re going to be talking about Mortal Shell 2 and why it deserves your attention.

Story

Much of the story surrounding Mortal Shell 2 doesn’t require you to know what happened in the first game, but some events are used to set up the premise. In the first Mortal Shell you followed the Foundling, a being of no origins who awakens in a distraught medieval land called Fallgrim. Overrun with monsters and cultists who believe by consuming artifacts and substances left over by the goddess Vatra they too can ascend to godhood. Constructing labyrinth caverns, temples, and dungeons for religious practice and protecting what they’ve managed to find. Three beings managed to mutate themselves to stronger forms, but ultimately failed to ascend. The Foundlings purpose was to locate these beings, take back the glands they stole, and ascend to godhood. They manage to do so, but the events of Mortal Shell 2 reveal that this ascension didn’t go the way the being’s adversaries expected. Another being known as the Undermether crashed onto the earth. Different parts of her body breaking apart and scattering into different regions. Seeing that more gods exist and one has appeared before them new cults emerged. Transforming the bones of this fallen goddess into temples. Some pathways led to regions beyond the current one. To the point that plains of existence started to make sense in the land of Fallgrim. 

Unfortunately along with the Undermether came the Foul Passenger. Unlike the Undead Curse of Dark Souls this presence created much of the new monsters roaming around in Mortal Shell 2. A war erupted and this kingdom, once trying to recover from its fractured past has one been turned fractured again. To combat this new enemy the spirit of the Undermether awakens our new hero the Harbinger. A being who can inhabit the bodies of fallen warriors much like the Foundling of the first Mortal Shell. She has tasked the Harbinger with locating her eggs, otherwise Ova. She was carrying them before dying on impact, and cultists have either managed to steal them and if not them then creatures of the Foul Passenger have. She promises that once the Harbinger locates all the Ova she will ascend both the eggs and protagonist into the heavens. A temple stands on the highest peak where people welcome you as their newborn god. With a blade in one hand and gun in the other, the Harbinger will utilize Shells of the past to fight through the enemies who stand before them, kill those who played god, and obtain the destiny they were promised.

Gameplay

The first game had a decent idea of having a central overworld that you’d traverse and locate one of the three main story dungeons. Tight and narrow pathways full of traps and carefully arranged enemy encounters you’d learn how to deal with. There’s critiques to be made of the world design of Fallgrim from the original. The lack of environmental variety outside the main dungeons, and it leads to a lot of locations looking the same. Even the Dark Souls have better visual distinction with key structures or locations towering in the distance. Giving you a sense on where to go or if you’re possibly on the right track. Elden Ring especially did this very well. Making being lost in a massive world as there was always a fun discovery to be made. Mortal Shell 2 has taken a lot away from the Elden Ring as the world is much bigger, and the sense of direction and where you need to go is much better. Distinct villages, fortresses, and landmarks litter the map. There are to me essentially two regions containing three gateways in need of cleansing. Each one contains a gigantic dungeon to venture into. Finding map fragments allows charting the lands to become much easier with time, and usually once you find the first one to one of the two regions the three gateways become marked. I think some players will be mixed on how much Mortal Shell 2 tries to help the player whereas so many soulslikes trust the player in figuring stuff out, but I think the game does a good job at not being too vague in direction and giving the player meaty challenges in between trying to get to the important gateways to progress.

Seeing something cool in the distance is easy. Getting to it is harder, because there’s the layout of the land and those roaming around. Crazed inhabitants who will want to claw out your face upon laying eyes on you. The game starts you out with the Iconoclast, but with careful exploration you will find an assortment of weapons to test out. Each with their own unique movesets, and when brought to a blacksmith at Marrow Keep you can upgrade their attack damage. My main weapon of choice is the Axe and Dagger. An easy to use dual wield set that hits quickly and allows for better reaction against aggressive foes. Some people might prefer heavier weapons like the Obsidian Hammer or Martyr’s Blade. New to Mortal Shell 2 is the ability to respec upgrades for weapons. Refund all the gold and upgrade materials spent on one if you find a weapon you like more and would rather dedicate resources toward. Great for players who want to experiment a bit more easily without worrying too much on investment. Also new to Mortal Shell 2 are guns, well the first game did have a gun. Sadly it relied on finite ammunition that when drained you would have to purchase more. Plus depending on when you find the tools to fix the gun you unlocked it so late in the game it was best to not use it. Guns are distinct in Mortal Shell 2. There’s a variety of them, and rather than use ammo they instead rely upon Resolve. The yellow bar that fills up when you strike enemies, so there’s a push to be active and switch your style. 

The earliest tip the game gives you early on is to switch up attacks for different foes. Some foes are more resistant to weapons than guns, and vice versa. There’s shielded enemies whose defense can be broken with  a heavy attack, and so on. Build craft is more diverse than ever not only due to reworked and streamlined leveling systems, but also more stuff to tinker with. Tarstones that can grant player unique passive perks, combat arts, or infusements that coat your weapon in one of many ailments this game has introduced. However, the biggest distinction setting Mortal Shell apart from other soulslikes are the Shells! The fallen warriors with distinct pasts and function as the different builds. Back in the first game it was all about what stats they offered. One character had high health and defense but low stamina, and another could be the reverse. Here they function as distinct characters/classes to master. Glimpses return as the secondary currency to upgrade your Shells. Spending them allows you to increase your bond with a Shell. Not only do they reveal their past memories and their unfortunate demise, but also unlock different tier perks. Each Shell has their own abilities, and when choosing the right perks you can make their skills deadlier or open up different choices on how you handle fights. Creating for some fun build craft that goes beyond choosing a weapon and what it scales with.

My main two Shells were Tiel the Acolyte and Eredim the Venerable. The first is a character that can vanish into thin air whenever he dodges correctly or at will, and when done via the second method he can perform a deadly stab attack. There are perks that allow me to make the deadly stab even deadlier. Such as increasing damage the longer I stay hidden before performing a stab, or increasing stab damage depending on how much poison I stacked onto an enemy. Again, there are ailments now and they are more important than before. I could unlock a perk that allows for the poison stacks to detonate upon doing the stab, and what’s this? I have a tarstone that infuses a light weight weapon such as my Axe and Dagger with poison. Allowing me to end tough bosses and encounters more quickly. There I got Eredim whose special skill is a shoulder bash. I can increase the break damage of this skill, and usually break damage is built upon landing well time deflections or hardening. I could essentially make a build where I play aggressively, tank blows, and keep bashing until an enemy breaks. When combined with a perk that allows Eredim to refill resolve when healing, and another that increases critical attacks through building up a Slaughter ailment I can turn Eredim into a killing machine. These are just 2 of the builds I utilized during my time in Mortal Shell 2. There’s just a lot to talk about with Mortal Shell 2 to the point I gotta divide my usual one gameplay section into two separate parts....

Thoughts on Gameplay/Changes

This game is an absolute f*cking blast to play, hands down. If you’re someone who is searching for games that exactly understand what makes Dark Souls work then you might be looking in the wrong place. Mortal Shell 2 is far from playing like a mainline FromSoftware game. It borrows from Elden Ring and for some reason it also reminded me of the modern God of War entries. It does a lot differently from its brethren, but in doing so it formulates a distinct identity. A game that can stand on its own in the same way Remnant: From the Ashes or Lies of P did. It pursues a different direction and simplifies RPG systems in a way that allows it to be a great entry point for those wanting to get into soulslikes. Similar to how the original Mortal Shell in 2020 got some to slowly get into this formula. I’d say it’s an easier genre introduction than the first, and the fact you don’t need to know what happens in the first to be hooked into the universe of Mortal Shell is fantastic. The combat is awesome. The first game had finicky controls, but man clashing blade and performing execution attacks felt awesome. Mortal Shell had a great feel and okay controls, and Mortal Shell 2 has both a great feel and functional controls! Movement, attacks, animations, dodging, deflecting, hardening, and such all feel satisfying to perform. I found myself parrying more this time around, because the window is more forgiving.

I forgot to mention earlier how Mortal Shell 2 has seals now. Allowing you to focus on either just blocking and deflecting, perfect deflection with a smaller deflect window, or harden depending on your playstyle. Mortal Shell 2 gives you a ton of options on how you want to handle combat, and not one is preferred over the other. You are allowed to experiment and master the tools you value most. Some of the bosses feel catered at times to specific playstyles. For example, there is this one boss in the upper region with a giant sword head that spins around frantically. Dodging and weaving attacks is hard, so I swapped to the blocking seal to perfect deflect attacks. I didn’t mind it, because swapping with different playstyles is a lot more smoothly whereas in so many other soulslikes you have to completely rework your build or toolkit to accommodate this stuff. I love how the gun has been reworked into multiple guns. There are two soulslike games I know of that have guns. Bloodborne but guns were more for cancelling attacks or parrying, and Remnant where guns are the central part of combat. In that game you managed limited resources, but here in Mortal Shell 2 they serve as a way of adapting on the fly. Dishing more damage if you cannot manage to land attacks up close, or against enemies who are more resistant to blades than bullets. It’s great, because it solves this problem soulslikes have recently where bosses have these long attack strings and you’re waiting to get a few more hits in.

Whenever you pick up a new weapon you can equip it whenever you want in the inventory menu much like any other soulslike. More some f*cking reason the original Mortal Shell had a design choice where weapons needed to be swapped out at Fallgrim Tower. Meaning if you were stuck in a dungeon and wanted to swap to a heavier or lighter weapon you’d have to backtrack, and I mean backtrack because the fast travel system in Mortal Shell was bad or nonexistent depending on if you managed to unlock it. The same applies for Shells, because now you can swap between them at checkpoints whereas in the first they too needed to be swapped at Fallgrim Tower. There has been even more streamlining in Mortal Shell 2. Fast travel was only unlocked when you fully level up a Shell. Now it’s unlocked upon clearing your first gateway, which makes sense since as you move forward the different points of navigation grow to unholy size. Glimpses are shared between Shells whereas before the Shell who earn Glimpses hold them. Each perk cost a different amount of Glimpses, and you’d never unlock enough to afford half the perks. Also you needed both Glimpses and tar which were basically Souls in Mortal Shell. Here it’s just Glimpses and twenty seven are needed to unlock every tier perk for the shell. By the end game you should have at least three Shells maxed out, and if not you can always respect your Shell.

In an earlier version of Mortal Shell 2 you weren’t able to do this, but the developers listened and patched their game quickly. You can respect them whenever you wanted, and I love this! In the same way you can respec weapon upgrades whenever you want. There’s about eight weapons in Mortal Shell 2, which is double the size of the first. Mortal Shell may not have a large arsenal like a majority of other soulslikes, but it prioritizes quality instead of quality. Every melee arm is easy to pick up, master, and fun to wield. Some weapons are kinda designed for specific shells though. I mentioned earlier that there’s a tarstone to apply poison to the Axe and Dagger. It does not work for other weapons, and goes against the poison detonation build I did with Tiel. There are a lot of Tarstones that are locked to specific weapons and guns, and that kinda sucks. Yet, the devs probably wanted to balance their game so that players don’t find one specific build that is more powerful than the rest and their whole community uses those specific builds. Now I might be wrong as people still did that, but what I will respect is how none of the item descriptions are vague. Giving an idea of what they do, the ailments they afflict, and what may stack on top of another. It looks complicated on the surface and poorly explained at times, but with enough time spent reading you can make some really fun characters to mess around with in the world.

The world itself is more visually distinct thanks to actual environmental variety and key locales to journey to. Despite being an open world in a similar vein to Elden Ring, what I wouldn’t say is that Mortal Shell 2 is fully open world. As a good chunk of pathways you traverse are linear and tight. Honestly, I would describe Mortal Shell 2 as a more advanced version of Dark Souls 1, and that is not a bad thing. You can tackle the six gateways in any order you want, and scouring each corner of the map for secrets isn’t as overwhelming. You engage with the level design the way the developers want you to, and determine what you can handle. I do think Elden Ring is still the best when it comes to this stuff but Mortal Shell 2 is close to understanding what made it work. What I will say though is that I wish the game had more enemy variety. There’s nothing wrong with what there is already and the sequel definitely has more variety than the original. There are a lot of well thought out encounters in Mortal Shell 2 due to well thought out placement and the design of each area. It’s just this is a twenty five hour long game depending on how much of it you explored, and around the fifteen to twenty hour mark you start to feel like specific enemies repeat too much. That and some miniboss encounters are either reused too much, basic enemies given a larger than usual health bar, or a horde. Something you deal with a lot.

Sucks that the miniboss encounters aren’t cleverly made, because the main bosses themselves are awesome. The first story boss which became a meme a few weeks back is an obese woman with a rocket power wheel chair and Samus Aran arm cannon that shoots exploding demon fetuses. You got the prisoner who literally rips his arms off and attacks with the giant blade impaled in his head. There’s a scholar prince whose half flies and buzzes around the arena. One of the three endgame bosses is a giant wall, and while the boss isn’t as fun as the others it was memorable. The bosses of Mortal Shell 2 have the sauce, and I like how none of them took more than an hour or two to conquer. Mortal Shell 2 despite being a soulslike is on the easier side. You are punished for not taking things seriously or paying attention, but it doesn’t want to be cruel or bash you on the head like so many genre entries want to do nowadays. It’s nice to play a soulslike that wants to be challenging and fair versus “challenging and f*ck you.” In the same way Lies of P struck a balance between the two regions and newer crossed the line of unfairness for me. The game is just good overall. Fun, well designed, and made by people who have taken many notes since the first. Cold Symmetry has made an outstanding well designed soulslike!

Okay, We Gotta Start Wrapping Up

From the gameplay alone I can give Mortal Shell 2 a strong recommendation. It has managed to fix almost every problem the first game had and succeed where so many of these kinds of games would struggle. Well crafted mechanics, world design, combat encounters, build diversity despite the simplicity, and pacing. It’s a much meatier game than the first, but the open world & runtime doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Elden Ring was a sixty plus hour long game, and Mortal Shell 2 is perfect for those who want an experience that is beatable within a reasonable amount of time. A final component that makes Mortal Shell 2 stand against most soulslikes is its universe. I know a majority of people believe Mortal Shell has the same fantasy apocalypse Dark Souls has, but as I read more into the lore and tried to piece what I found it became more intriguing. The mystery of the main protagonist, the goddess, those who worship her, and what people have turned to during the realization that god exists and one physically came down onto the earth. Not all questions are answered. Some blanks are left empty, but in the sense your mind is allowed to fill in the blanks. Another reason I like this universe are the Shells and their past history. Learning more about the acts they performed to survive, and growing empathy for them.

Tiel was a thief who regularly stole from people to fuel his alcohol addiction. Leading him to one of the world’s cults to exalt his inner pain through physical pain, but realized this wasn’t a good way to cope. Realizing the wine he’s become accustomed to was the problem, and trying to better himself as a person. Even if the path towards doing so was difficult. The sadness being that his lover and the people she served wanted his addiction to go on, and ending up back to where he once was. Eredim, being a knight, murdered tons of people during the war, and mentally grows more unstable. To the point a boy he adopted to become a squire has to put him out of his misery when his brain becomes too fractured to think properly. There’s more crazy things behind Eredim, but it can be summed up as that. There's a plothole in how three Shells from the first game managed to return. Considering years have passed since the first Mortal Shell and by then they should be decaying carcasses now. Only for their bodies to be in good condition and now in different locations. Harros the Vassal dies in the intro after you are ejected from his body, he then comes back to life to save you, and then gets eviscerated. That doesn’t make sense considering he was dead in the first game. Am I overthinking this? Maybe I am, who knows anymore.

Spoilers, but one of the Shells you can unlock is Sester Genessa. The handmaiden-esque person who levels you up in the first, and now serves as a combat trainer in Mortal Shell 2. Bringing this special lamp you find unlocks her as a playable character, but in her first memory she reveals the Foundling in the first game failed to ascend and died. Instead it was a ruse for another being to rise to the heavens. I may be missing some information on this point, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Despite a few plotholes and weird writing decisions I did like how so much of the world, universe, and stuff happening in it can be explained through the Shell memories. In the first game their memories were explained through text by unlocking their different perks. Here it is done through furthering their bond, and their memories are full of interactable cutscenes you the player interact with rather than read. Allowing you to see first hand what they went through. All of this was allowed to happen thanks to the higher budget and scale Cold Symmetry had for making this game. Even if you don’t get any world building from the shells there’s…. Well the world itself! How the game isn’t afraid to let environmental storytelling do the talking. Such as when I started running into these messed up cross bow head beings who obviously looked like they were stitched together rather than be monsters born into the world. Then I journeyed into this dungeon which turned out to be their factory. So my theory was right for how they came into existence. It’s a small detail, but I loved how it was done through witnessing it. 

The art direction of Mortal Shell has always been great in my opinion. The designs for each Shell you inhabit, monsters you face, and the locations. There were times I stopped and soaked up the scenery around me. A mountain made out of glistening marble. Green plains slightly torn apart from the war and decay occurring around me. There’s this one area of red forestry that reminded me heavily of an area from Expedition 33. Wouldn’t doubt if folks at Cold Symmetry are fans of numerous games outside of Dark Souls. That perfectly sums up my thoughts on Mortal Shell 2. Much like many indie games it was by people who clearly love the games they grew up with and took inspiration from. Mortal Shell 2 is a very well designed game with an intriguing world to explore. There are some flaws that prevent me from saying Mortal Shell 2 is my all time favorite. It technically being an indie game means it has some rough edges when it comes to physics and performance. Bodies glitching into the walls, bouncing weirdly upon death, or occasional dips in framerate. The third endgame region  doesn’t feel as good as the first. It’s not badly designed and you can still tackle three bosses in any order, but it’s more about which three linear paths you’d like to go down first. Whereas areas in the first two regions can be reached in multiple ways. 

The six gateways can be tackled in any order, but the second region has a noticeable increase in difficulty. It’s not a terrible increase and does give a signal to the player that they should search the first region before and come back later. However, it does go against the open ended freedom the team were trying to go for. Aside from these minor complaints I can confidently say that my time with Mortal Shell 2 was well spent. It’s a game I can easily recommend for those who want a good soulslike, and if you’re struggling to get into these kinds of games I think this is a pretty good starting point. The game is designed to be as accessible as possible and even contains a few options to further smoothen the experience for those who want an easy going time. I’m glad the folks at Cold Symmetry got another chance to shine. To prove that they could make a better title when given time. In the end I am gonna have to give Mortal Shell 2 a 9.5/10 for being superb.

9.5/10, Superb