SVG REVIEW Mortal Shell II
This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Mortal Shell II on the So Videogames Podcast, Episode 506: Mortal Shell 2.
BRAD: Okay, the one and only circle back we have today is Mortal Shell two, and I know I’ve been talking about it a lot, but this is the final wrap up. This is our official So video games review that’s going to get posted on Metacritic. So I got to do like an official official sort of thing here.
mortal shell two, just a quick recap. Third person soulslike action coming from cold symmetry. I believe they are in Eastern Europe somewhere, if I’m not mistaken. this is a sequel which like hugely expands on all of the concepts that were initially created in Mortal Shell one. at heart, this is a game of cosmic horror. And what happens when one of those Cthulhu type entities crash lands onto your planet? How do you deal with that? And what happens? How can that influence the populace? How can that influence religion? How does that influence your ruling classes? interesting stuff.
You play a character brought to life by one of these entities, and you are conscripted to serve it and to help it do whatever it needs to do. I’m trying not to give any spoilers here, but cosmic horror runs all through this. And I gotta say, I think it’s one of the best uses of cosmic horror I have seen in a game in quite some time. A lot of people do the Cthulhu route, and they do the first person psychological thing, which I find to be incredibly boring these days. they do a lot of the, you know, insanity effects and spooky stuff and whatever, but this one just, just to pause for a minute, they really, really drilled down so deep on what it would be like. I mean, obviously fantasy setting here, but if, if like a Cthulhu type entity was around and they were living amongst you, under you, above you, and what would that what would that be like? Like if their influence was all through the land, how would that affect the animals? How would that affect the people? How would that affect the economy? How would that affect everything? And they really do, even though this is like a soulslike where you’re just hacking and slashing most of the time, there are so many instances where they really think about like, man, like, like how would this change things? And it’s fucking fascinating. I think they do such a great job of handling the cosmic horror in this. And it’s not just horror. It’s like, it’s like having this alien presence and it infects these people and it changes their thinking. And that thinking in turn changes relationships. And those relationships play out in different ways. Most of this.
And the really cool thing about this is that it’s not just finding a bunch of files and lore. You’re not reading item descriptions, like you’re not doing the typical Dark Souls shit where, like respect to Dark Souls for pioneering this, but I feel like we’ve really moved past this and I’m kind of done with the way that Dark souls does it. you know, they, they outright say certain things and a lot of the story is told in these cutscenes, but these are not just regular cutscenes.
So in Mortal Shell two, you have eight bodies that you can occupy as the envoy of the Cthulhu creature are kind of a spirit creature. you have a form, but it’s very weak. And so you need to take shelter inside these other dead bodies. And those become the bodies that you use to fight through the world. You eventually have eight of them. And as you build a bond with each of these bodies, you get more and more cut scenes out of them to tell you a little bit about that body’s life before they died. And this is where most of the game’s storytelling comes in. So you’ve got eight bodies. Each body has five cutscenes, so that’s 40 short cut scenes that they use to illustrate the world and the person’s life and how they’re affected, how they’re affecting others, how some of these characters knew each other, how they intertwine, how this Cthulhu like entity has influenced their lives in many ways.
It’s brilliantly done. It is brilliantly done. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about writing, thinking about narrative and stuff like this, I think the stories and how they are told in Mortal Shell, two top notch, great stories, super interesting that fill in the backstories of the character and tell you a lot about the world, but they are not shoved down your throat. You’re not reading ten thousand fucking folders like you are in Resident Evil. You’re not reading a million item descriptions like in Dark Souls. They are just so elegantly done. And honestly, if you don’t want to watch them, you absolutely don’t have to. They are purely, uh, optional except for the very first one for each character when you are being introduced to the character. So outside of those eight brief introductions, you don’t have to partake of any of this if you don’t want to, which I think is fantastic. but if you do watch those, you will get a really rich picture of what’s going on in this world, all these connections, all these cool callbacks, all these nods, all these just weird interstitial bits. It’s fucking genius. Really fucking genius. And I think the cosmic horror is just so perfect.
Beyond that, uh, they, they give a what looks to be, on the surface, a pretty standard soulslike formula, but they have removed the stamina bar and I think this is a great choice. It shows that you do not need stamina as one of the core tenets of having a soulslike. It is absolutely a soulslike, but you know, you can just attack as much as you want. You can dodge as much as you want, and it doesn’t hurt the game at all. I think there are many considerations to be taken in the actual moment to moment gameplay and stamina does not need to be one of them. I think that’s totally fine. I think that’s great.
The world design is very much like Elden Ring. If people are familiar with Elden Ring FromSoftware open world opus, you start off in a central location, but then you are soon given free rein to go just about anywhere in the world you want to. Some enemies are certainly harder than others. I think the developers certainly want you to go a certain way. not that you have to, but I think they make very clear where you should probably go first, but you don’t have to. There’s plenty of videos where you can go to other places and take shortcuts and go here and go there and do these certain things. almost, almost entirely at whatever order you wish. Uh, so I think that’s interesting. I love doing that. The world is super dense and super rich. There is something interesting around every fucking corner. There is something to find tucked behind every stone monument, behind every hill and every pit and down every ravine. There’s there’s stuff all over the place. It is worth your time to explore all the time. You never know what you’re gonna find.
There’s also a million dungeons scattered across the land. Very similar to how they did in Elden Ring, where you find a particular gate and you know that if you go in that gate, it’s going to be a self-contained little dungeon. They almost all have some kind of worthwhile reward at the end that is worth going into to check out, and all these things kind of build back into the system of having the eight bodies.
I think it’s great that you have these eight bodies because each one has an active power that is different. And so you can find one that suits your playstyle, but also some that suit the situation. Some bodies are better for straight up exploration. Some bodies are best for one on one duels. Some bodies are better for crowd control, it really depends. And as you as you find these and build them, you will have more and more tools at your disposal. And it’s very easy to switch back and forth between them. And in fact, the developers have made it even easier in the last couple of patches. They’ve put in tons of tools to make sure that it is as accessible and as player friendly as possible to fully engage in all these systems.
I’ll give you a perfect example. I got to this one battle, and I felt like my weapon was not really cutting it, and I wanted to change. There’s eight main weapons and the one I’ve been using for most of the game all of a sudden felt like it wasn’t wasn’t getting it done. So rather than having to grind out $1 million or just being stuck with it, right? Because like in traditional soulslike games, you pick a weapon early on and then you invest all your materials in it and you never want to switch weapons because nothing’s ever as good as what you’ve got, because nothing’s upgraded and because upgrade materials are super rare and they’re hard to get, and it’s really expensive and it’s just really prohibitive to change weapons. And so if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s very easy to get locked into it and you just have to stay there because otherwise you’re taking a huge penalty. Not the case in Mortal Shell. They’ve patched a lot of things in and they’ve taken some player feedback into consideration. I changed my main weapon like 4 or 5 times, It’s a feature you have to unlock at a certain point. You can’t just do it right off the bat, which is fine. But once you get into it, you get all of your materials back and you get all the money back that you spent on it.
I couldn’t believe it. I was like, oh my God, like I, I knew you could get the materials back. And I guess I was just ready to go grind for some cash because that’s what Fromsoft would have done. They’re like, no, no, just take all the money and just put this in another weapon. I’m like, yes, absolutely. So I jumped back and forth between weapons and that was like, amazing because I made a mistake when I went to my next weapon, I’m like, oh, this is actually not what I not what I need. Let’s go to a third weapon. And then you could just bounce back and forth. You can get your points invested in your bodies because you can upgrade the bodies and give them different abilities. You can get all your points back anytime you want to. No penalty. You don’t have to do anything. It’s like a push of a button and you get all your points back. I mean, they really want you to experiment with this, with this game, with all these options. Eight different guns, eight different bodies, eight different main weapons, melee weapons. They want you to mix and match. They want you to kind of figure this out. And I think that type of approach is fucking amazing because it’s kind of the opposite of what Fromsoft has been doing all this time, where they get you to pick something really early on, and then you just like invest and invest and invest and you never want to change because it just, it’s just not really, you know, feasible to do so. So I love that option for sure.
I also really love that in this particular game, everything is fairly straightforward. And I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. But what I mean by this is there were very few times that I, I think a normal person wouldn’t have been able to figure something out. It’s like it’s just a matter of thorough exploration. A lot of the clues that are in this game are, I think, are very approachable clues. They’re not super arcane. You didn’t have to like, you know, figure anything crazy out. You didn’t have to look for like a lore guide or anything like that. So I think that is really worth complimenting because I think the average souls player who just, you know, explores efficiently and spends time going through the game, playing it as it’s meant to be played, is going to be able to solve most of the mysteries. It’s going to be able to put two and two together. It’s going to be able to get to the hidden dungeon. It’s going to be able to find the secret weapon, it’s going to be able to do all these things without having to do a big YouTube lore dive, which I appreciate.
I talked about this in the discord a little while ago, but I hate one aspect of modern game design, and that is when a game designer knows that the internet exists. And that sounds kind of like a silly thing to say, but I do encounter many games these days where there’s something in a game that is hidden, or is some kind of secret option, or some kind of like, weird choice that like literally you would never, ever, ever know unless you went online to look it up. and I hate that. I want more games that are self-contained, that give the player a fair fighting chance to figure these things out and that are not so arcane that you need to have an entire community coming together to put together clues to have like this hive mind solution to problems. You know, I don’t I don’t want to have to go to the internet every five seconds. I want everything to be in the game. So when I sit down with the game, I want the lore, the information, the directions, the tutorials, everything right there in the game. I don’t want to have to get up from my chair and go to an outside source. So I think that Mortal Shell two does that for the most part, really, really well. And I think it’s just fantastic.
So as this is an official review, I want to say, I just finished the game yesterday. and roll credits on it, finished with like an above 90% completion rate, and I think the other 10% was probably hidden on hard mode, which I did not engage with because I don’t generally play games on hard mode. So I feel like I rinsed this game pretty well. I don’t think there’s any stone left unturned, and it took me about pretty close to, I want to say 60 hours to get all the way through it.
I’ll say that the first the first 55 hours are generally superb. Mortal Shell II sports excellent game design, excellent world design, character design, ability design, along with great aesthetics and great theming. It’s a superior work from any perspective, and it goes straight to the top of the soulslike genre, right alongside the best. I think cold symmetry really, really finally, um, figured out how to best leverage their concept of body swapping. I don’t think they got it the first time around. I think they made some mistakes and it didn’t work very well, but I think they really fucking got it now. They targeted dead on this time around. A lot of the things that didn’t work in in Mortal Shell one, they now have got it to work and they’ve expanded and exploded and just like just made everything so much better.
With all that said, I will say that cold symmetry severely fucked up in one particular aspect. And if you follow me on social media or if you’re in the discord, you know what I’m about to say. The last boss encounter of this game is fucking miserable. it is miserable. It’s miserable for a couple reasons.
I’m not going to go into any major spoilers here about the boss itself, but it does that kind of thing where, where the boss gets really big, like physically large. And so it’s hard to see when you’re close up to it. I think the hitboxes are sloppy. I think it’s got too much range, the hitboxes are too big, and it has this move where it sends out flames in concentric circles. And it’s very, very hard to tell where you’re supposed to dodge. Am I supposed to dodge at the beginning of the circle? Do I wait until I’m at the leading edge? Do I dodge in the middle? It’s really fucking hard to tell where it’s at. So I think in general they they went wrong on the boss design. I think it’s too big. I think it’s too sloppy. I think it’s too hard to read. I think it needs to be dialed back. I know they were going for like a big finish visually, but it’s fucked up in a lot of ways that many of the other boss battles are not fucked up. And I think that’s a problem. But that’s not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that this boss has an ability which fucks you up. It fucks you sideways, fucks you top to down, like it just sucks so bad. And the only way to survive this is by getting a special secret item. I’m not going to get into the details here but you will probably likely if you’re thorough like I was, you will probably come across at least a couple of the items you need just naturally exploring. it is not very clear what you’re supposed to do with those items. And so just to just to save the heartache of anybody listening to this, you have to get three items that are pretty well hidden in the game as you’re playing. you’ll get them because they just kind of stand out and they don’t go to anything and they don’t do anything and they’re hidden and really obscure locations. You’ll probably know what I’m talking about when you find them. You need three of these things. And then you need to put the game on hard mode. You cannot do this on the normal mode. and there is no easy mode. It’s just hard mode or normal mode. And so you’ve got to put the game on hard mode, which I never would have done because I don’t really play games on hard mode because that’s not what I’m about.
So you have to go in hard mode. You have to go to specific place in the map that you very likely have been to on normal mode and nothing was there. And then you go back on hard mode and something is there, and then you give these three things to this guy, and then he gives you a thing, and then you go back to your normal mode and you equip the thing, and then that thing lets you fight the boss in a much more effective way. That is the one place where this game supremely fucked up. The boss sucks already. Way too much life, way too sloppy, way too big. It’s not fun to fight. And then the real fuck up is by doing this whole arcane sequence of events that if you don’t figure this out, which I doubt anybody will, but somebody did somewhere. if you don’t go to YouTube and look this up, if you don’t go to the internet, look this up. You’re fucked. It is so fucking hard to beat him without it. I mean, is it impossible? No, it’s not impossible. But it had me frustrated for, like, a couple hours. It ruined my day. I was so fucking mad. and I loved this game. I think this game is a masterpiece. Literal masterpiece — until literally the last boss. And then I was so fucking mad that I was beside myself. So developers, if you’re listening to me, i love your game, I think it is clearly a masterpiece. Superior work. So much respect and love for what you’ve done. but that last boss needs to be patched ASA fucking P. Fix that motherfucker because it ruins it. like it’s one of those… It’s such a bad fight that it kind of like, casts shadows on everything that came before it and everything before it was like, perfect.
I don’t understand why developers will take a great experience. Wonderful level design, wonderful encounter design, great adventure, great pacing. And then they will stick some balls headed fucking piece of shit last boss that frustrates the fuck out of everybody and everybody talks bad about it. And then you leave the game with a sour taste in your mouth.
Like, why do that end the game on a high note? Give us a boss that is not bullshit. Give us a boss that you know, is maybe a little more challenging, sure, but doesn’t require us to go to YouTube doesn’t require a trick. Just give us a regular fucking boss and end the game on a high note. We walk away feeling like a hero, and then we sing its praises to everybody that we talk to. But instead, all people heard about was me ranting for like a day about how pissed off I was about this boss. Which is stupid because the boss battle is like 1% of the experience and the other 99% was fucking glorious. But all I talked about mostly was that 1% because it made me so fucking mad. So developers, please patch this fucking battle. This is such an amazing game. Don’t let this one boss taint people’s memories of it. It’s just a stupid boss. You’ve done so many amazingly smart things. Just fix this one, boss, and then you’re good to go.
And I really hope that they do some DLC. I would love a good reason to come back to this game. I don’t generally do new game plus, but I would love, love, love a reason to come back and play with these characters some more. Explore more of the world. Do more combat. I would love it.
so with all that being said, it’s time for the review. I think I’ve explained how I feel about it. Mortal Shell II is a brilliant piece of work full of smart decisions and excellent design. It also changes up the typical soulslike approach to storytelling, along with uprooting the structural underpinning of stamina systems while also offering tons of flexibility and options, which are generally not hallmarks of the genre. It innovates in all of these major ways, and I could probably come up with a few more if I sat and thought about it.
I’m going to give Mortal Shell two an official So video games, nine out of ten, nine out of ten. And just FYI developers, I almost gave you an eight because of how much that last boss pissed me off. I almost took an entire point off because that boss is bullshit, but I finally got past it with the help of some friends. Shout out to Mike Suskie who pointed me in the right way. I got through that fight and it didn’t ruin the entire experience, although it came kind of close. So you’re going to get your nine. You really did deserve it.
But fuck that last boss. Please fix it and let’s get some DLC on board. Good job. mortal shell two Nine out of ten.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Disclosures: This game was developed by Cold Symmetry and published by Playstack. It is currently available on the PS5, PC, and Xbox Series S/X. This copy was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 60 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was completed. This is a single-player-only title.
Parents: This game has received an M rating from the ESRB and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language and Suggestive Themes. The official summary reads: “Mortal Shell II is rated M for Mature 17+ by the ESRB with Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Suggestive Themes. This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of the Harbinger on a quest to find mystical eggs across a fantasy world. From a third-person perspective, players traverse dungeons, forests, and castles to battle human enemies and fantastical creatures (e.g., zombies, golems, demons). Players use swords, axes, and firearms to kill enemies in melee-style combat. Battles are accompanied by realistic gunfire and large blood-splatter effects. Some attacks can result in the dismemberment and/or decapitation of enemies; other attacks result in enemies exploding into large sprays of blood. The game depicts a harpy creature with exposed breasts and a bloated corpse that appears nude. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.”
Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The subtitles’ size can be altered. In combat, some enemies emit a loud shriek as a warning before committing a suicide attack, but this is also accompanied by an on-screen indication. There is also a visible on-screen indicator for when enemies are behind or to the side of the character. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: The game offers a control diagram, and all buttons are fully remappable.
Senior Editor of GameCritics.com and host of the So Videogames Podcast.
Transformers fan. MOTU stan. Black Lives Matter, pro-LGBTQIA. Anti-fascist.
