It starts off pretty promising, but with little build variety and a world much smaller than I expected it leaves a lot to be desired. After playing for a while you'll also notice the enemy AI becomes very predictable, so much so that when you encounter new enemies, you can kind of guess what they will do at specific distances from you.
Overall, Dark Souls minus the Soul.
Overall, Dark Souls minus the Soul.
At first glance I was split on my thoughts on Mortal Shell. It has the bugs you would expect from a smaller indie studio, and the story suffers from hiccups that the genre seems to enjoy crediting as being “creatively vague.” It portrays itself as a tightly wound dungeon crawler that focuses on its unnerving one-on-one combat, but the amount of information was too much at the start and not explained well at all throughout.
But once I put my head firmly against the wall and found a combination of weapon and shell I enjoyed, what the game wanted just clicked for me and turned into a fulfilling test of patience and skill that had me kicking myself for thinking otherwise. Mortal Shell is absolutely worth the time, and can comfortably stand as one of the better Souls-like games in the genre.
But once I put my head firmly against the wall and found a combination of weapon and shell I enjoyed, what the game wanted just clicked for me and turned into a fulfilling test of patience and skill that had me kicking myself for thinking otherwise. Mortal Shell is absolutely worth the time, and can comfortably stand as one of the better Souls-like games in the genre.
The concept is great but the execution was not very good.
The game has too much jank to it (and I know it's supposed to be like that due to the pacing of the game but come on, too much) and I felt cheated most of the time by the enemy moveset and placement.
It feels like a slog to play through once the novelty of the combat wears out.
Side rant: I HATE the healing system with a passion and even more when I'm not even sure if I missed a healing system/mechanic or not. Spoiler alert: I didn't, the healing system does really sucks, they managed to make a worse version of Bloodborne's blood vials.
The game has too much jank to it (and I know it's supposed to be like that due to the pacing of the game but come on, too much) and I felt cheated most of the time by the enemy moveset and placement.
It feels like a slog to play through once the novelty of the combat wears out.
Side rant: I HATE the healing system with a passion and even more when I'm not even sure if I missed a healing system/mechanic or not. Spoiler alert: I didn't, the healing system does really sucks, they managed to make a worse version of Bloodborne's blood vials.