Mortal Shell II's eviscerating difficulty and grimdark world work to grind the player into a fine paste. But its build variety and satisfying loop often turn the tide, rewarding exploration and experimentation to brave enough players.
Mortal Shell and Lies of P are two of my biggest blind spots in the vast ocean of Soulslike games that have claimed a relatively large mindshare for their quality and unique approach to the genre.
As a die-hard fan since Demon’s Souls back in 2009, I’ve fought and died against countless vicious foes who have whittled down my patience and resolve, infrequently tempering me into a better player.
But sometimes I wonder if these games are simply too hard for me. Am I getting worse? Are the developers crafting more complex and deadlier challenges? Am I out of practice or just getting older? There’s probably truth behind all of these scenarios but I’ll be damned if the last few major releases haven’t pushed me to my limits.
Shadow of the Erdtree was like a litmus test for misery-based acceptance. I cannot deny the pronounced beauty that Elden Ring wrought and its expansion was massive, brilliant, and daunting. And oh how I struggled. Bosses with multiple phases pummeled what hope I had left in me and honestly, my build was probably garbage. Earlier this year, I almost hit a brick wall with Nioh 3 as a boss was proving too hard until I sufficiently grinded out enough experience and luck.
But Mortal Shell II. Mortal Shell II is hard, chat.
Until it wasn’t…
Most of the enemies can deplete the player’s health bar in a few shots, often making engagements a careful dance of avoidance or a sloppy mess of spamming attack. I’ll admit that I was never not frustrated by not having the game’s most basic enemies getting a hit in on me and watching almost a third of my health be stripped away.
However, the main pillar of Mortal Shell II is the “Shell” mechanic in which the player inhabits the bodies of dead warriors. Take enough damage in a Shell and the player is ejected from it to their normal form, the Harbinger, a faceless being who is roaming across the land in hunt of Undermethyr’s ova.
Culling from cosmic horror, Mortal Shell II tells a relatively open-ended narrative. In it the Undermethyr, a being from space, came to this world as a powerful deity-like entity. It’s arrival brought both madness and blessing, while festering inside was some sort of corruption that began to seep out into the world. The Undermethyr’s remains were mined for their resources and can be seen as gargantuan, calcified pieces across the world. As the Harbinger, the player shares a connection, being created from the Undermethyr, and goes to hunt down her eggs that have been corrupted, potentially birthing new celestial offspring.
This framing allows for significantly grotesque bosses and enemies to inhabit Mortal Shell II. And Cold Symmetry has done a phenomenal job making a world that is bleak, decaying, and rife with horror. This is an especially grim game in which colors are muted and some of the only beauty to be found is in the creative and horrendous designs of its denizens. Splashes of prominent color are used sparingly and if a player doesn’t want to be trapped in sickly wooden villages, grasslands of camps, and barely-lit dungeons, I understand.
Cold Symmetry seems to be following a strict rule to never stray from its vision of a medieval-esque fantasy world that is less dead and more holding on by a thread. I’ll admit that Mortal Shell II‘s coolest moments are spaced out a bit far from each other but this is also a smaller game than players might be expecting. This isn’t a game where players are unlocking shortcuts to gain access to easier paths to new areas. While a few random gates and bridges can be opened to make a return journey shorter, players can seemingly tackle any part of the world they wish.
But to do so would be a quick and inevitable death for all but the most skilled.
Despite the voracity of the game’s enemies, there are ways to tell when the player may be in over their head. Forked paths will start with a named boss that hits impossibly hard for being right out of the game’s tutorial area, indicating you should press on or be prepared to die many times. Clutches of enemies challenge the player to either run past or be brave enough to face them.
I’ll admit that Mortal Shell II often felt like a survival horror game to me. The threat of being overwhelmed by one or two potential enemies–especially in a new area–made me turn tail enough times. Threats will pursue and often enemies’ attacks will almost magnetize to players even as they dodge and run away. This is a cruel world where the end bosses of the game’s main corrupted gates have a warm-up boss fight before them. Players will desperately scour the open world for respite in the form of beacons where they can recover health, level up, change their loadout, and cause everything dead to come back to life.
It is a brisk, razor-sharp, but sensible loop. Cold Symmetry’s first game was apparently an attempt at making a Soulslike on a budget, a more compact game that still held a challenge. For its sequel, the developer still maintains this ethos. My 35-hour playthrough was a bit sloppy, missing out on many of the game’s secrets and also spending a few of those hours beating my head against the wall over a few boss fights I stubbornly should have waited to do.
Frankly, it baffled me that large swaths of Mortal Shell II‘s real estate are absent of beacons, having the player run across unfamiliar lands and potentially avoiding mobs just so they can preserve their stash of Gloom in hopes of pocketing it for an upgrade. Because the enemies were so difficult and the rewards sometimes felt not substantial enough, I had the sense that spending a lot of time facing the roving bands was a bit pointless. They were roadblocks into getting me new items and making substantial progress.
In a way, Mortal Shell II discourages grinding for Gloom and even gold (which is preserved through death). This isn’t a game where most players are ever going to feel substantially powerful, just more able to manage the odds. Yet I began to enjoy the natural loop of discovering dungeons and diving into beacons to cleanse them. Should the player wish, they can buy maps to show the general location of new weapons. They can also spend a limited currency to show the locations of new Shells to inhabit. But the game’s real treat is upon discovering these locations and stumbling upon a new potential upgrade.
It’s easy to pretend that Mortal Shell II is being generous when it provides players with a life bar for both the Shell form and the Harbinger form. But it’s a desperate and false sense of security. I watched as my Harbinger form was ejected from its Shell into a pit numerous times. I forgot to heal my true body while hacking away at enemies to revive my Shell, only to then take a massive hit, depleting both health bars. Having two life bars isn’t a crutch but it can be a tense thread to salvation.
As the Harbinger, players can use their melee and ranged weapons but nothing else. Leveling up can raise base health but it still feels extremely fragile. Extracting the blood from an enemy with a melee weapon raises the revive percentage of the currently active Shell and when it reaches 100 percent, you’re back in business. Based on how high the player has bonded with the Shell, it will revive with more health and the threshold to recover the Shell takes less hits.
It’s a fascinating system that does give the player breathing room but only just enough to not feel completely hopeless. As a back-up, the player can use four seals to stave off damage. One seal enables the player to guard against damage by blocking, though it can only absorb a hit or two before inflicting a punishing stun. Guarding at the right moment does stamina damage to an enemy, opening them up to a critical hit after enough perfect guards. Another seal can parry attacks but the timing window on it is tough. My favorite seal is the one that hardens the player’s body like stone, making it immune to damage. Timing a harden right before being hit causes the enemy to take poise damage. The player can trigger hardening mid-attack, creating a few interesting setups but it is also important to keep in mind that flashing red attacks can only be dodged or avoided completely. Cold Symmetry offers a seal that makes the game easier but it also disables achievements so I never used it.
Through the incredible difficulty of Mortal Shell II, it’s understandable why this game and others in the genre simply aren’t for everyone. Constantly throughout my time–even when I got extremely comfortable–I still questioned my own ability to keep up and not let failure wash over me. Should players wish, they can acquire an item early on in the game which makes everything harder. Doing so enables new areas to explore, new items to discover, and even a few different NPCs to crop up. But good lord… it hurts.
And then I started “breaking” the game.
To increase the viability of Shells, players assign them skill points to specific nodes. Usually these skills increase passive stats for that specific Shell and enhance their primary ability in useful ways. While players can only equip 40 total points to a Shell, it takes significant leveling to do so. And to unlock the entire skill tree, players need to raise their bond with a Shell which requires Glimpse, a currency that is relatively rare.
While skill points can be reset and traded between Shells at any rest location, Glimpse cannot be. One entire playthrough is not enough to see the capabilities of all Shells but that also means that players can’t be loose with which Shells they increase a bond with. Love the idea that Proxima, one of the starting Shells, has damage mitigation and want to lean into her? Cool. But you might want that Glimpse when you fight Smert who can freeze time and build up explosive damage stacks, or Genessa who can throw out clones of herself that will attack.
These Shells have insane utility when used right and even crazier functionality when paired with the dozens of Tarstones that can be acquired over the game. Multiple Tarstones can be equipped by the player enabling things like increase critical chance and damage, more Gloom and gold drops, boosted damage with lower health, and so on. Other Tarstones are specific to weapons and generate effects or enable unique attacks that consume Resolve, the meter that also allows for Shell unique abilities.
Without realizing it, I eventually began to level up Tarstones and refining them at the forge in the game’s hub area. Eventually, I upgraded one Tarstone that permanently infused my weapon with an effect that when stacked enough would cause the enemy to take massive burst damage, forgoing its limited-use version that also consumed Resolve. Another Tarstone applied double hits when using the quick-hitting axe and dagger. Combine this with Smert and I could freeze a boss momentarily, get 100 stacks of Chaos on him that would explode with damage, apply an additional status effect, and also have my passive item that triggered a spectral enemy to attack… Well, I turned some of Mortal Shell II‘s bosses into a joke and got my groove back.
Unfortunately, some of what I experienced in Mortal Shell II is bound to change. During the pre-release period, we were notified that a massive Day One patch would be released that did a sweeping pass to address bugs and other issues but also changes the utility of Shells and Tarstones. Considering how some of it could be abused, I understand the changes. But Cold Symmetry is also adjusting the difficulty curve, making some later encounters harder than before but generously adding attack animation tells. This makes me wonder how significantly harder the game will be on full release and what other refinements could be in store.
Regardless of how Mortal Shell II exists now or in the future, I really can’t deny that in spite of my struggle, it feels like a quite brilliant take on the genre. Even when my face was being stamped into the ground, I could see the layers unfolding before me, the build possibilities. There is not an “easy” game here but certainly one that can be mastered, toyed with, and actively engaged in. Players can build out towards specific Shells to create powerful builds that can take on NG++ Hard Mode and I will sit on the sidelines and admire them, glad I had my chance with the game.
Mortal Shell II‘s eviscerating difficulty and grimdark world work to grind the player into a fine paste. This is an exacting universe rife with fascinating depths to plunge, as long as players are brave or persistent enough. Exploration and experimentation are rewarded to those investing in the game’s unique Shell mechanic and potential for build variety. While it may be difficult for many to surmount, Cold Symmetry has crafted a sequel with an undeniable draw for those masochistic enough.
