Mortal Shell

🎮 Steam ⏳ 13 hours ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Bleak Soulslike Foundations #

This is a Soulsike action RPG released that emphasizes slow, methodical combat and a heavy, oppressive atmosphere. Clearly inspired by games like Dark Souls, it adopts familiar elements such as stamina-based combat, punishing enemies, and cryptic worldbuilding, while presenting them in a more compact and focused experience. And I tried really hard not to call this a rip-off when it comes to it’s visuals, but despite it having amazing art-style, it is not very original, very uninspiring and generic at times. This won’t necessarily hurt the experience, but it is an important point to make. Its dark fantasy setting is bleak and unsettling, reinforced by minimalist storytelling that leaves much of the lore to be inferred through environments, item descriptions, and brief character interactions.

Shell System Identity #

I got to admit that I didn’t really paid much attention to the lore, or dove deep into the written stories you face during the adventure, simply because no character or location felt interesting enough to make to do so. As for its most distinctive feature is the Shell system, which allows you to inhabit the bodies of fallen warriors scattered throughout the world. Each Shell functions as a different character class, with unique statistics, abilities, and combat strengths, encouraging experimentation and adaptation rather than traditional leveling choices. And this is truly what makes this game unique, there is no clear upgrade when it comes to this mechanic, you can play the entire game with the very first shell that you find. I mostly focused on the balanced builds, even though I mostly favor more glass-cannon playstyles.

Hardening Tactical Combat #

Complementing this is the hardening mechanic, which lets you temporarily turn to stone mid-action to block attacks without consuming stamina. This system adds a tactical rhythm to combat, rewarding precise timing and patience, and helps Mortal Shell stand apart from other Soulslike titles. This mechanic alone can help you balance your level of aggressiveness in combat, making it feel like an oldschool Soulslike title. And the reason I say this is because most Soulslike nowadays tends to encourage being maximum aggressive, more and more I see this happening. And while I particularly like this kind of approach, it can lead to repetitive, generic and an uninteresting ecosystem if every game developer is trying to push the same approach.

Weighty Combat Limitations #

Combat is weighty and deliberate, with an emphasis on reading enemy patterns and committing carefully to each attack. Weapons feel impactful, and boss encounters are tense and often visually striking, reinforcing the game’s grim tone. However, the smaller scale of the project becomes apparent in its limited enemy variety and world layout. The interconnected map can feel confusing, with significant backtracking that may frustrate some people, especially during early exploration. There are also some interesting mechanics such as the Resolve gauge, which is refilled once you attack enemies, and lets you execute parries and use weapon abilities, similar to mana or magic.

Missing Quality Features #

My biggest complaint about this game is the lack of some basic features, such as fast-travel and weapon swapping. For some reason, the developers thought it was a good idea to have no way to perform fast-travel, you need to walk to each and every checkpoint in the game. This is especially frustrating because that you can’t change your weapons, if you are not, either in the hug area of the world map, or in the very place you found the weapon that you want to use. It hurts experimentation since if makes you commit to a single play-style for the entirety of the dungeon that you decided to start. What makes this tolerable is that the world map is not really that big anyway.

Focused Yet Flawed Experience #

From a technical and design standpoint, it shows both ambition and restraint. Its visuals and sound design effectively create a haunting, oppressive mood, but occasional bugs, uneven difficulty spikes, and a relatively short overall length hold it back from matching the depth and polish of larger genre leaders. Despite these shortcomings, this title succeeds as a focused and atmospheric experience that offers fresh mechanical ideas within a familiar framework, making it an appealing choice for fans of challenging action RPGs who appreciate dark, deliberate gameplay, even with a small scale. Hopefully the sequel brings much needed polish and QOL improvements.