Mortal Shell is one of those games that felt so close to “getting it” when it launched that it was a shame Cold Symmetry couldn’t quite stick the landing at the time. It felt truncated and unbalanced, with the life going out of it by the final third to leave a slightly disappointing aftertaste but the promise of greater things to come. In Mortal Shell II, Cold Symmetry makes good on that promise and then some, in one of the toughest and most compelling Soulslikes of recent years.
And make no mistake: this is a Souls like through and through, skewing fairly close to Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen 2023 in terms of its atmosphere, difficulty level, and world design. It doesn’t have the dual-world state of that masterpiece, but the interconnected open world feels almost twinned with Mournstead.
The central conceit here is that you are the Harbinger, a resurrected soul reborn into a frail, featureless body, and must inhabit the corpses, or “Shells”, of fallen warriors. When you die, as surely you will, you’ll be spat out of the Shell with a chance to resurrect it during combat before you’re slain fully and returned to the last Beacon.
Your goal is to gather up the scattered Ovum of the great Undermether, an alien deity that fell from the sky and scattered her body and her eggs across the land. You collect them in a place called Marrow Keep, the hub from which you’ll venture forth, aided by a shadowy brotherhood and a handful of vendors, craftsmen, and eccentrics.
Each Shell must be found and bonded with in order to inhabit it and unlock its power. Each has a specific elemental resistance, unique stats, and its own moveset, though weaponry is interchangeable. I found Proxima to be the best all-rounder, as she comes equipped with a grapple to pull enemies to her and a fair amount of health. I spent as much time as Eredrim, a powerful knight with a huge HP pool and a shoulder-barge that staggers enemies. Other Shells, like Smert and Tiel, are less focused on brute strength, allowing for a mix of playstyles.
You level up the Harbinger and the Shells with different currencies. The Harbinger uses Gloom to buy XP levels, which unlocks a Shell Point to increase one of three stats specifically related to the individual Shells. But Gloom is hard-won and you won’t be ramping through levels quickly. There are specific ways to alter the difficulty, which I’m not a complete fan of. The Slayer Seal item allows you to switch out your Seal (the item that determines your parry window and rewards) for one that restores health and Resolve on kill, but it disables your perfect parry and in-game achievements. The opposite item is the Gloombound Flame, which blacks out the sun and makes everything hit harder, but grants greater rewards and more Gloom. I can understand the devs avoiding simple sliders or difficulty settings, but neither feels appealing. Those who seek out a greater challenge will treasure the Flame, I’m sure, but the Slayer Seal feels almost useless.
Combat relies heavily on parrying, which allows you to stagger enemies and follow up with a fatal attack. Even bosses can be parried as long as the attack isn’t tagged with a glowing red icon, and the dance of parry, riposte, dodge is what makes Mortal Shell 2’s combat so energetic and engaging. Build variety comes from Tarstones and consumables. The former are found in chests and given as rewards, and can be equipped in various slots. They boost certain stats, add effects like Bleed or Stagger to attacks, or allow you to imbue temporary buffs to your weapons using Resolve. This resource takes the place of Mana in Mortal Shell 2, and is refilled by landing hits. It powers your Sidearm, a permanently equipped ranged weapon, as well as your Shell skills and Tarstone abilities. There is a Stamina meter, but it is only affected when you block attacks, so you can swing, sprint, and dodge freely (there’s no jump). It’s a refreshingly unshackled approach to combat that makes it feel fast-paced and controllable, even when enemies are tearing you apart.
Consumables, on the other hand, have an Active and Passive effect that you must learn by using the item or finding many copies of it. Some will passively refill health up to 20% while actively removing a status effect, for example, and you can swap and change them between slots as the situation demands. It makes for a very deep, very malleable build system that doesn’t rely on armour pieces.
And you’ll need it all. Mortal Shell II is incredibly tough at times. It thinks nothing of throwing multiple enemies at you at once, sometimes in excess of half a dozen, all with different attack patterns, weaknesses, and devastating grab moves or unblockable attacks. Bosses are monstrous and varied, with some towering above you and others moving like lightning. A battle against a vampire knight who turns completely invisible was a nightmare until I learned that status effects bestow a glow, and killed him by making him bleed, ironically. But that’s just it: Mortal Shell II has the capacity to make you think. You cannot rush it.
Even when exploring, it drops cliffs and traps round corners, and places Beacons off the beaten path so desperate sprints past multiple enemies will often end in sudden and brutal deaths. By the final third I felt massively overpowered, something that Cold Symmetry are addressing with a huge day one patch, along with a number of balance issues and performance bugs, although I really didn’t encounter many of the latter.
Mortal Shell II is a game you must approach steadily and methodically. It demands respect from the player as much as it demands grit and determination. The open world is dotted with dungeons containing Tarstones, Shells, weapons, and other secrets, and you won’t know what awaits you until you take the plunge. Some are small, confined areas, others contain surprise bosses, while a percentage are sprawling, interconnected areas that will truly test your mettle. Even Beacons must be entered and cleansed before you can use them as fast travel points, which often means risking your life over and over to do so.
To call Mortal Shell II an improvement over the first game feels like underselling it. It’s bigger, tighter, deeper, wider. There are more Shells, more weapons, dozens of Tarstones and consumables. The open world is stunning and utterly hostile, demanding patience and perseverance every step of the way. Despite some balance missteps, which they’ve promised to fix, it’s a fantastically atmospheric adventure that deserves to put Cold Symmetry well and truly on the map.
