Mortal Shell is a game that I've been enjoying quite a bit for the PlayStation 5 lately. This is a Souls-like made very much in the style of... well Dark Souls, and it had me impressed from the very beginning. Let's see if I can do this game any justice by typing up my review.
Souls-like to the core
Mortal Shell is a souls-like to it's very core. It's got that unforgiving swing, dodge and black combat that the Souls-games are so well known for. On top of this it also has limited healing options, enemies that respawn when you die, currency being dropped when you die and the well known bonfire mechanic that resets the world when you use it. Seeing these features shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as they're pretty much what makes a souls-like into a souls-like.
Luckily the game does plenty to differentiate itself from the Souls-games. There are some pretty unique features in this game that left me positively surprised.
Shells
One big feature of this game is that it doesn't really have any gear for you to equip. When you start out you're running around as this bony looking being that you can see sleeping in the water in the first picture of this post. As you explore the game you find what are known as shells. From what I was able to gather these are basically dead bodies that you are able to inhabit.
When you do so you get access to their set of skills and your life and stamina increases depending on which shell you pick. There's a total of five shells and they all change up how you play the game. One is heavy on health and low on stamina with a skillset focused on defence. Another one is heavy on the stamina and low on health with a skillset focused on offence. There's other shells that are more balanced as well.
My choice of shell fell of Eredrim, the Venerable. He had a ton of health and enough stamina to not have me completely starved at least in most fights. He was also a good choice for the earlier boss fights that were pretty hard due to not having been able to upgrade my weapons yet. Still, I played them all and I upgraded all of the shells with all their skills. How could I not?
Luckily all of the five shells are accessible early in the game and you're even hinted towards where you find them. This is a very good thing seeing as the game is rather short. It would suck if you found a shell only at the very end of the game when there's barely an hour left to play.
When you start out with a new shell you're rather lackluster on skills but you unlock more using currency you get from defeating enemies. You choose freely from a set of skills until you've unlocked them all and for every skill you unlock you unlock a new piece of lore about your shell. That was a touch I really liked. It makes it feel like you're unlocking the memories of the shells as you level them up.
Combat
Reviewing a souls-like without mentioning the combat would be a travesty. Deep down that's what these games are about after all. I mentioned earlier that combat is mostly about swinging, dodging and blocking.
Mortal Shells approach to combat is a slow one. Enemies attack slowly and so do you, making each encounter into a test of both patience and skill. This is something I don't really mind but due to this game not having a lot of enemy variety some encounters did become a bit of a drag. There's some enemies that just take forever to kill due to having a large health pool while dodging their attacks is really easy.
Blocking is done in quite a unique way. Basically you have the ability to turn yourself rock hard. This pretty much negates all damage for a little while until you get hit. What's cool about it is that you can harden mid swing. Say you run at an enemy, start your swing, harden yourself and tank their attack then you resume your attack as the harden ends. I really likes this as it was quite a unique approach to blocking and it can be used in quite a lot of fun ways. Harden is of course on cooldown for a certain amount of time which further adds to the slow combat.
Outside of this there's not really much more to say about combat. There's no magic or ranged combat. It's all swinging about with different kinds of melee weapons. There's give weapons in total and I just stuck with the starting sword as it had a moveset that was the most suitable for me.
Verdict
All in all Mortal Shell is a good game. It sets the bar for what it wants to be early on in the game and it stays true to that until the very end. My favorite thing about the game is that they've added just enough of their own twists to well known souls-like mechanic to give the game a soul of its own and stay relevant. This is something a lot of souls-like games could learn from.
There is some critique to be given towards combat and enemy variety. Combat is slow. Although that's not a problem to me it simply won't be everyones cup of tea. It's also worth mentioning that enemy variety is a bit on the lower side with each area not holding much more than two or three different kinds of enemies. It doesn't take many hours of playing the game until you've basically seen all the enemies there is.
This does however happen naturally seeing as the game is as short as it is. The game clocked in at around 12 hours for me to finish the main story and do some extra content. Not bad at all seeing as they're not overpricing themselves at $20 for the game. You'll even often see it on sale for around $5 which is definitely worth it.
I myself got it for free through my PlayStation Plus subscription ans as far as I know it's also available through Xbox Game Pass. If you're on the Nintendo Switch you'll have to buy the game for yourself. No matter your platform this game is availale!
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.
The shell changing mechanic is probably the most interesting feature of this game. I think that's the biggest thing that sets this game apart from Souls like games. I also agree with what @demotry said, Harden!
Yeah! It's basically just a glorified armor and gear system but it's definitely a cool one.
I love how they stick to their own discord and twists and try new things in an established genre. An easy add to the wishlist, thanks for making me aware of this. I especially like the lore and aesthetics, much like Elden ring drew me in. Thanks for the awesome post man.
There is some interesting lore in the background here but I wasn't able to follow along with it much. They try the From Software approach of telling through environment and item descriptions but they don't lay down that necessary groundwork to make it work for me. From Software does that really well with their intro cinematics.
Telling from environment is something I haven't seen done effectively a lot without cramming it down your throat, but I dig the look and that they kindof incite more exploration to know more. It's hard to do the From Software thing, but I appreciate them at least trying it. It's one of my preferred ways to digest lore compared to spoon fed.
The visuals of this game are nice.
Interesting concept—possessing the bodies of fallen warriors and unlocking their memories as you level up and gain more of their past abilities.
This block-hardening gameplay element sounds cool. I like the idea of being able to trigger mid-move/mid-swing. Probably turns the battle into more of a rhythmic challenge, timing attacks and hardening.
$20 for a 12-hour game that looks this good is not bad, and $5 sounds like a steal. Nice find. I’ll have to look this one up!
Not bad for its price at all! Especially considering I got it with my PS+ subscription anyways. Time well spent.
interesting.. the concept of shells are similar to warframe or godfall.
also: HARDEN!
Yes, can definitely be compared to Warframe on that front! I need to try out this Godfall you've been talking so much about.
Godfall is ummm decent. the only problem, not much variation regarding attacks. I ended up button mashing but there's a shield you can block and parry with a timing and dashing. at least bosses has patterns.
This looks cool as hell dude! I gotta say the graphics look sharp.
The way that the guys is looking in the second photo, it kinda reminds me about the game Infinity Blade if you know it. It was mostly a static game where you click to travel across the map and mainly dodge and parry and then land hits on the enemy :) Didn't have the Harden ability, but there were shield heheh.. It was a mobile game but they took it down a few years ago...
I remember Infinity Blade! Such a shame that they removed it and made it unavailable. It was so much fun.
That's how I found my current body!
I knew it!
Yay! 🤗
Your content has been boosted with Ecency Points, by @ivangeevo.
Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform!
Support Ecency
Vote for new Proposal
Delegate HP and earn more
Congratulations @pusen! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 70000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
Whaoo.. What caught my eyes is the 1000vote.. Like how do you all get that..
700 of those votes are from one account that voted the post with a big trail.
I wish I can join so I can get something like that too
Amigo desconocía este juego, cuando comencé a leer pensé que seria otro juego souls, que la verdad no me disgustaría pero se ve que tiene unos giros para ser algo diferente. Me quede con varias dudas así que voy a ver algún gameplay o algo para entenderlo mejor pero me llamo mucho la atención ¿Sabes si esta para PC? Igual seguro termine buscando esta información por internet jajaja pero gracias por compartir este titulo.
Sounds like an interesting game. Thanks for writing the review.