Mortal Shell Reviews
Mortal Shell embraces the Souls-like moniker with open arms. They welcomed comparisons, and, for the most part, delivered. What's more impressive is that a team of only 15 people created it. Mortal Shell will make you to rethink your ideas around patience and frustration. You will love this game for all the same reasons that you hate it.
Mortal Shell is an interesting soulslike, affected by some not perfectly developed background ideas, combined with an extremely derivative final product. Certainly intended for lovers of the genre.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Mortal Shell boasts refreshing mechanics that eschew the Souls-like subgenre's tried-and-tested methods. Though a bit on the short side, it oozes bone-crunching, stylish combat, and its performance is superbly optimized. Simply put, Mortal Shell manages to exceed all expectations.
Mortal Shell is another Dark Souls clone with nice graphics, interesting ideas and good combat mechanics. On the other hand, there's a problems with hitboxes, enemies are too slow, and it lacks epic bosses and spectacular battles. However, among other Dark Souls clones this game looks really unusual and worthy.
Review in Russian | Read full review
For the hardcore crowd that’s made it this far, congratulations! You will love this game, no two ways about it. For everyone else, heed my warning: Mortal Shell is just as brutal and beautiful as you’re imagining.
Unfortunately Mortal Shell just feels like a bad Dark Souls game, while I enjoyed it initially, the more I played the more it wore away my enjoyment. The few unique features it has do make the game feel slightly unique but its world-building, combat and enemies pale in comparison to its inspiration. The bad AI and other small issues do little to complement what could have been an enjoyable title. There are far better games in the genre.
More in line with From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice than a traditional Soulslike, Mortal Shell offers a short and sweet take on the hardcore action RPG formula by focusing the player to harden up and push the offensive in order to create the perfect defense.
With beautiful environments and plenty to discover, Mortal Shell is a compelling world to explore. After a steep learning curve, its combat is challenging but fascinating, and with a great sense of reward once you master it. It might be a little too similar to Dark Souls in terms of overall tone and style, but it brings enough new ideas functionally to make it stand out from the crowd. Ultimately, this is a great entry into a demanding sub-genre that fans won't want to miss.
Mortal Shell wants you to know that if you like Dark Souls, you don't always have to resort to From Software. A brutal ARPG with good ideas.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Wonderfully captures the atmosphere and combat of Souls games, but without enough tools to experiment with and an AI that's easy to abuse, Mortal Shell lacks meat on its bones.
Mortal Shell is an excellent entry in the Souls-like space with some fantastic ideas around character progression and combat, but is unfortunately let down by a health system that discourages exploration and an element of tedium that unnecessarily pads out encounters.
Mortal Shell is a enjoyable Dark Souls-like, with a few good ideas and a charming dark fantasy world but the execution is clearly not perfect.
Review in French | Read full review
Mortal Shell is one of the year's biggest gaming surprises, offering a deep, fascinating journey into a melancholic world. It takes blatant inspiration from Dark Souls and Bloodborne,. But innovative tweaks to its combat and progression mechanics let it easily stand on its own two feet.
Mortal Shell unleashes an astoundingly creative new combat mechanic in a brooding and strange world, but its meandering narrative, uninspired and confusing maps, and punishing-to-the-point-of-cheapness gameplay will test the patience of all but the most hardened of Soulslike fans.
Mortal Shell doesn’t just replicate what other games in the genre have done before. Instead, it takes that formula, sharpens it and adds enough to make it a completely different feeling, but equally satisfying blade. Fallgrim is a world I’d be happy to struggle through again.
I heavily enjoyed my time with Mortal Shell, and if you are a fan of Souls-like games then you will certainly enjoy this one. The combat is extremely engaging, and the atmosphere and setting provide a disturbing and dark would to explore. At times, if I did not know the title of this game I would have assumed it was a Dark Souls entry.
Mortal Shell may be a smaller Souls-like adventure, but the passion from the developers and unique mechanics results in one of the best entries in the genre.
While I wouldn't call Mortal Shell a bad game, it doesn't know what it wants to be and that makes it worse. It's to the point where I could legitimate see this being developed as an action RPG set in a fantasy world that needed a hook, so a bunch of punishing mechanics were just thrown in haphazardly. Let's have you drop tar on death but also make it a useless resource or create an extremely difficult mode that can largely be negated by abusing dodge roll. I mean, it's so bad I quite possibly overcame literally every encounter by using the hallowed sword (initial weapon) and used either a running heavy attack or a normal heavy attack, harden, dodge roll back, wait for resources to replenish and repeat. It's simply not going to appeal to those looking for a challenge, nor is it going to appeal to anyone who doesn't care for the tedious elements of this genre. It's just a shallow experience with some neat gimmicks tossed in a small world. If that is enough you might enjoy it but otherwise, it's hard to recommend.
It's still hard to believe that Mortal Shell is Cold Symmetry's first game, as this game rivals many AAA games. Everything in the game screams quality, from the gameplay to the art and sound direction. As a long time fan of Soulslike games, Mortal Shell has shot to the top of my favorite game lists and I can't wait to see what the devs do next. If you enjoy these sorts of games like I do, I recommend giving Mortal Shell a try.