Mortal Shell Review

Hard-shelled tacos are the Dark Souls of industrialized Mexican food in North America. Wiping with one-ply toilet paper without folding it several times is the Dark Souls of the public washroom experience. Game journalists writing about any video game that has any semblance of difficulty without saying it’s the Dark Souls of its category is the Dark Souls of games journalism. It’s fair to say that Dark Souls has had a massive impact on the gaming industry since it showed up nearly a decade ago, and in its wake spawned a sub-genre that is still being heavily drawn on today by developers big and small. The latest in that lineage of Souls-like games is Mortal Shell, and it is perhaps the most unabashed in its Dark Soulsiness – not that that’s a bad thing.

Developed by a small group of roughly 15 folks collectively called Cold Symmetry, Mortal Shell sets out to faithfully recreate the first Dark Souls experience while spicing it up just enough to feel like its own game. If you’ve played any of the Dark Souls games before, you’ll immediately be awash in familiarity. Everything from the menus, art style, enemies, narrative delivery, and combat all resemble that which came before. In fact, my immediate reaction to Mortal Shell wasn’t particularly positive as I was disappointed in how it seemed the game was going to be without its own identity. Thankfully, at least in part, that isn’t the case and Mortal Shell is in fact more than simply a husk inhabiting the body of the Souls franchise.

You play the role of a new denizen of…somewhere…and are eventually tasked with collecting sacred glands at the behest of an imprisoned ancient for no other reason than because they asked and you have nothing better to do with your time. The world around you is grim, rife with cultists of various factions aimlessly wandering as they’ve been lost to this would-be purgatory. The glands you seek are well protected, and you’re the odd guy out around these parts so as you’ll be cleaving your way through more than a few cultists and their leaders to get where you’re going. Understanding much more of the story than that will require you to do a fair amount of finding and reading etchings and stitching it all together, so if you were hoping for it to not be like Dark Souls in that regard you’re out of luck.

You’ll actually sort out early on that you’re not like the others when you happen across a deceased warrior lying on the roadside. Approaching the warrior, you embrace their corpse, armor, and all, and inhabit their body. This is your first Shell and exposes you to the game’s high-level combat mechanic. Each of the Shells available are essentially classes in that they all play a little differently and have their own stats to add to that variability. Some may be more durable, others may be speedier, and some may have more endurance. The initial Shell you inhabit, as you might expect, is the middle of the road in everything and represents the sort of catch-all class of the bunch. There are four Shells to be found in total, but there is no guarantee you’ll find them all in your travels. In fact, I finished the game without retrieving one of the shells.

You don’t level up your character like you might expect, however. Instead, the Shells keep their base stats, and you can spend Tar and Glimpses on upgrades to the Shells to gain access to both passive and active abilities. Tar is gained through killing enemies in the same way you’d collect souls, while Glimpses are physically manifested memories of those you fell in combat which are apparently a hot commodity. Upon death, you’ll drop your Tar (which can be collected again much like souls should you reach your place of death) but Glimpses stick around until used. It should also be noted that Glimpses are tied to the Shells that collect them whether that’s from picking them up off an enemy or using an item to obtain them, so be mindful with your Glimpse use.

Similar to the Shells, there are four weapons to be found as well, all of which help add to your combat options and increase the odds you’ll find something that suits your play style. These weapons aren’t just sitting in chests waiting for you to come merrily scoop them up for free, however. Outside of the default sword that you pick up during the tutorial section, the other weapons are being wielded by a select few big baddies that appear to be similar to yourself. These encounters are optional and are found at various waypoints throughout the world, so trying to take them out isn’t a major risk. Weapons can also be upgraded with items found around the various areas you’ll be exploring, so keeping a watchful eye out can make the difference when trying to do some more damage for that next boss fight.

Both the Shells and weapons locations aren’t completely left up to you to find, thankfully. At the main hub location in the world (where the imprisoned ancient is located) lies the phantom bodies of those Shells and weapons you haven’t found yet. Interacting with them reveals a mini cutscene that gives visual clues as to where you will find them without being completely obvious about it which is a nice touch.

The basic combat is about what you would expect at this point, but in fairness, it’s done very well. If I had to place the feel of it, it would be somewhere between Dark Souls III and Sekiro. You certainly can’t always just button-mash your way to victory as attacks are weighty and deliberate even when using a faster weapon, and the parry mechanic includes attacks you can’t parry with an indicator to let you know when you’ll just get crushed. Parry timings are a bit all over the place, and it may sometimes feel like you’re using the same timing but getting different results, and I think some of that has to do with the fact that there’s a bit of a lead-up to the parry animation completing. Roll dodging is absolutely a thing, and while some shells have a side step that precedes it, some shells just get right to the rolling.

The camera is one of the more consistently good I’ve experienced in the genre, and it only occasionally got in the way of me knowing what was going on or where I was in relation to my enemies. The combat also includes some really satisfying animations for special attacks, and there is a notably visceral feeling to just about every swing of your weapon. The look and sound of hardening just before a massive enemy strike is also particularly satisfying. With that being said, and your minds likely in the gutter, let’s expand on that a bit, shall we?

The real differentiator in the combat of Mortal Shell is the hardening and despite a nearly endless list of teenage-grade dick jokes to be made about getting hard too fast, too slow, or not at all, it’s a cool mechanic that mostly replaces the need for constant i-frame abuse found in other games of the genre. Essentially you have the ability to harden, quite literally so, into stone. You can only do so once every so often, and so you can’t just spam it, but instead, you want to learn to use it strategically.

What makes this mechanic even more interesting is that you can use it at any time whether that’s just standing still, swinging your weapon, or even jumping through the air. The ability to do so opens up several tactical options depending on your class that can do everything from bridging your stamina recovery time to surviving a particularly powerful blow after using all of your stamina dodging other faster attacks before. If that sounds like it would make the combat easier than what you might be used to, you’re not entirely wrong.

While Mortal Shell certainly isn’t an easy game, it’s not going to push back hard on veterans of the genre either. The hardening mechanic, while incredibly cool, does create some relatively easy combinations that apply to almost every enemy and boss. What’s more, upon your first death you are simply separated from your Shell in combat. Time will slow down briefly, and you’ll have a window of time to reclaim your Shell without much enemy interference. You’ll continue to live so long as you don’t die in this state, but you’ll be killed in a single hit by many enemies, so you’ll want to be careful when making your move. Once reclaimed, your Shell will have one more life left in it before you’ll be sent back to your last point of rest. There’s still nuance to being able to do it all and not get killed, but when you’re used to I-frame abuse in Dark Souls, or parrying with only a handful of frames to do so, the hardening does give you a bit more flexibility to play it a bit fast and loose.

I don’t say all of this as a detriment to Mortal Shell because I think it strikes a great balance of difficulty for newcomers and veterans alike – it’s just that when you are so blatantly a Dark Souls relative, there is a certain expectation players will have. In fact, I think Mortal Shell may be a perfect introduction to the genre made popular by its idol. For those who do want the extra challenge, the game does present you with an opportunity to permanently part ways with your Shells for the entire game, which I can imagine will test even some of the more hardcore Souls-like fans.

There’s not a lot of downsides to mention when it comes to the combat. Occasionally the parry, dodge roll, or hardening didn’t happen on a button press but not so frequently that it had me throwing a controller. Perhaps the most damning thing I could say about the combat is in the boss design. Almost every boss has an extremely limited set of moves, even if they have more than one phase. One boss in particular has a soul-crushingly limited move set and it knocks the difficulty down a few pegs, not to mention it partially killing the excitement. Thankfully, the final encounter does not fall victim to this as much, though it does come with its own anticlimactic moments.

Outside of combat is also what you’d mostly expect. The world feels expansive at times but also really small at others, likely due to the nature of the level design being simplified between main areas to better serve one of the game’s core world mechanics. Resting points are centered around finding Sesters (fancy mystical flame-faced priestesses of sorts), and fast travel while available to you through item use comes at the cost of your Glimpses without the fancier item variants. You don’t get potions to heal with, either. Instead you’ll come across mushrooms, or cooked rats and other animals to regain some health. Certain items throughout the overworld respawn on a timer, so you know you’ll have more to come back to later on but you can make use of what you have in the meantime.

There are a bevy of other items to use both in and out of combat depending on what you need, and almost all of them have their potency changed based on how familiar you are with that item type. Most consumables have a familiarity ranking that increases as you use the item more. The more you’ve used an item, the more information you’ll know about it, and in many cases the better that item becomes in some way when used. I certainly didn’t shy away from using items for once, but there were a number of items I never ended up using during my time so it’s not necessarily imperative that you make use of everything on hand – though I suspect it might make things easier on you if you do.

Art design being overtly derivative aside, from a technical standpoint Mortal Shell is a great-looking game overall. While some of the environmental design is a bit lackluster, the world is relatively well-crafted and visually interesting. The enemy designs have a surprising amount of diversity, and some of the models are awesome. Personally, I see a lot of some of the later Guild Wars style character designs in many areas, which I like a lot. I can’t say that it doesn’t still just look like I’m playing a Dark Souls game, and honestly, almost anyone who lacked knowledge of Mortal Shell would likely come to the same conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a looker.

It sounds fairly good too, with weapons all sounding satisfying and bosses being appropriately menacing. The minimal voice-over work you’ll encounter is well delivered in all but a handful of instances, though once again it’s very much Dark Souls. There’s an intriguing lack of music for the vast majority of the game, with only the occasional lute being played by an enemy (or yourself if you’ve got one handy) providing the soundtrack to their own demise. Standard enemy audio lacks variety and many of them share the same singular death sound which is a bit of a shame. I guess on the bright side, the handful of lute tunes you can jam out to are well done – so there’s that.

As of this review, there are a couple of bugs worth mentioning but also keep in mind that they are all known and are likely being worked on or will already have been solved so just take a peek and make sure if they concern you. The biggest issue I encountered was that any amount of GPU overclocking led to the game crashing to the desktop, even though no other game presented any issues at all. Having the card run stock speeds solved this immediately in my experience. One of the Shells also had a bug whereby a skill scaled incorrectly, leading to eventually one shotting enemies and bosses, though I never experienced that while using said Shell. Lastly, there was a bug whereby after your initial death and reclamation of your Shell you’d not be able to harden until you’d died again. Once again, some if not all of these issues will be fixed or are already fixed, so just double-check if you feel the need.

If this review sounds middling, it’s because that’s what Mortal Shell is. It’s not a bad game, in fact, it’s quite good, but it does nothing special to make it stand out. It’s the type of game that you’d buy and play without many complaints but also not remember much of it once you had moved on. It’s not about to leave its mark on the genre, but it’s also not doing the genre any disservice. Mortal Shell is the oatmeal chocolate chip cookie of the Souls-like genre. It looks like a regular chocolate chip cookie, it even basically tastes like one, but the oatmeal adds just enough to make it discernably different.

What makes it an easier recommendation is that it’s priced at $30. I know that personally, I’ve played shorter and less well-made games for twice that price more than a few times. It might not do enough to separate itself from the pack, but it does do everything well and asks a fair price for the experience. If you’re a Souls fan or a newcomer looking for an entry point to the genre, Mortal Shell is the game for you.