Mortal Shell II knows its purpose, focuses on it, and delivers a truly fun action RPG that might make a lot of fans drool
The first Mortal Shell was fun. I played it for a bit, enjoying the “shell” idea even though the execution had a lot of issues. The sequel builds on that idea and seems to fix the roughest edges, leading to the proclamation that Mortal Shell II is solid, surprisingly accessible, and, well, it has the juice, man.
Mortal Shell II’s whole purpose seems to be to just let us “go off.” This is a video game ass video game. The developers know our time is important; they could have packed in tons of content and let us go deep with fidgeting on different aspects, but they’ve chosen instead to focus on the game’s strengths (in this case, the combat, the brutality) and not worry as much about the rest. It’s there, there are layers, but we don’t need minutiae here, we just need solidity.
There are times when I feel overpowered, times when I’m getting obliterated, and times when I have no fucking idea what I’m walking into, which is 90% of the experience. And these moments are all good.
Let me explain it like this: the game starts with a cult scene, and then there are more cults, and then even more cults? I don’t know how they packed so much of a cult experience into this, but there is a lot. We even dance in the cult? Sick. Then there’s a tree we walk into. Then exploding poison frog enemies, then exploding zombie enemies, then a wild skull eating a body, then a boss that’s a shepherd that can turn us into a nightmare-inducing bipedal sheep.
The game is constantly trying to top itself and it’s always succeeding. It’s as if the development team finished up some wild idea, celebrated by getting together at someone’s house to drink moonshine and do mushrooms and listen to Tool albums all day, and then came up with something even more outrageous.
Like any Soulslike Action RPG we’re someone who starts out relatively naked, a small fry, before we’re thrown into the mix of the world, but here it happens VERY fast. It’s “welcome to the game, everyone you know at a Midsommar-like cult dies, here’s your giant sword, go save the world.” All of it seems to happen in the first 2 minutes of the game. And it makes sense! Sure! Let’s go!
While the genre typically has us sit through a prolonged tutorial sometimes we just want to get into the unique mechanisms of a game, and Mortal Shell II lets us do that quickly. And luckily it feels good, too. I’m not a fan of canned animations for big swings and attacks, but the hitboxes are generous enough here that even at higher difficulty levels, where there’s definitely some strategy involved in our combat, we can just hack at enemies and roll away as needed, all pretty efficiently.
The controls are solid, the audio is moody and the visuals are well enough detailed, even on the Steam Deck, where it’s surprisingly competent. By design it’s very dark, with a lot of grays and blacks and forests and ash, so I have to make sure my brightness is cranked all the way up. But it still looks good on this aging LCD screen and doesn’t overheat my much older gaming laptop.
The game has all the vibes we want. Good vibes. Dark, evil vibes. What the fuck is going on vibes. By sticking to the vibes, by not overinflating but instead unlocking, the game experience is so much better for it.
I don’t know if I’m going to specifically remember Mortal Shell II, but I’m going to remember what it feels like to play it, and in a world where this genre is saturated and games drop every second that’s probably much more important.
This review is based on a Steam copy of the game sent to the Editor by the Publisher.
RATING: 4/5
Read about our review and rating process here — Review Process
