Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Soulslike game developers have been gleefully punishing players ever since FromSoftware unleashed Demon’s Souls on unsuspecting action-RPG fans back in 2009. But while the genre has grown increasingly competitive – and crowded – in the 15-plus years since PS3 owners braved the foreboding kingdom of Boletaria, it hasn’t seen many significant evolutions in that time. Mortal Shell II remedies this, delivering a refreshed, more accessible take on the formula while still retaining the brutal boss battles, permanent currency loss, and dark fantasy vibes fans adore.
Like any good soulslike worth its weight in dropped XP, Mortal Shell II checks all the expected boxes. Its combat is deep and challenging, its world cleverly interconnected, and its health-reviving checkpoints have a habit of respawning all the nightmarish creeps you just carved up. And, of course, if you’re unable to recover your valuable, player-progressing resources – dubbed “gloom” here – upon death, you lose it for good.
But while Mortal Shell II includes all the staples seasoned players crave, it also tweaks them in a number of welcome ways. First and foremost, its combat drops the genre-defining stamina bar, making melees much faster and more fluid. Fights are still challenging, weighty, and rewarding as hell. But they also favor speed and aggression over the more deliberate, measured approach of similar entries. It doesn’t hurt that up-close strikes also fuel the ability to use powerful specials and ranged sidearms, encouraging you to feverishly bring the fight to your enemies.
Speaking of freeing foes of their innards, the dynamic combat cadence is nicely complemented by this heavier focus on distanced attacks. You’re welcome to rely on the awesome assortment of handheld death-dealers – like dual katanas that can somehow morph into a beefy battle axe – but it’s far more satisfying to swap between melee and sidearm attacks on-the-fly. This is especially true when wielding some of the more creative “guns,” like a lute that turns targets against each other with its twisted tunes.
The stellar combat is further elevated by seals, which ensure the challenging battles are both more flexible and accessible. These acquired items inform your defensive options, allowing you to switch between the genre’s signature high-risk-high-reward parry, a more forgiving guard, a block that literally turns you to stone, and a difficulty-decreasing defense that’s great for newcomers.
Cold Symmetry’s second crack at a soulslike is leaps and bounds better than its first effort
Toss in a ton of active and passive perks, and tailoring and tweaking builds quickly becomes an addictive metagame in Mortal Shell II. Of course, this is before you even account for its titular shells, inhabitable husks of former warriors that significantly shape your playstyle. With a total of eight discoverable, class-based shells, you can freely swap between them, tackling the adventure like a tank, adopting a stealthy approach, or crafting a combo that borrows from various disciplines.
Beyond injecting the gameplay’s core mechanics with plenty of new, welcome layers, Mortal Shell II introduces a number of minor changes that further file down the genre’s rougher, off-putting edges. Its more streamlined world isn’t bloated or confusing, while its lore isn’t unnecessarily obtuse. More than that, its tighter, well-paced campaign respects that you have more to do than wander aimlessly for hours or die dozens of times at the feet of the same insurmountable foe.
Developer Cold Symmetry’s second crack at a soulslike is leaps and bounds better than its first effort, but it’s not without a few cracks in its, er, shell. A few glitches and bugs occasionally break the immersion, as do some frustrating late-game difficulty spikes.
Still, these minor headaches are worth suffering for an evolved take on the tried-and-true template that makes an enduring formula feel fresh as a newly resurrected corpse run.
