Mortal Shell Review
Played on Xbox One (base)
Developed by Cold Symmetry
Released 18th August 2020
Mortal Shell was developed by an American indie group called Cold Symmetry, and their attempt at making a love letter to the Dark Souls legacy is a joke. When I played through the game, I expected it to be one of the first few games to copy FromSoftware's formula after Dark Souls' inevitable boom in the industry. Yet, despite feeling like a 2013ish game, I was surprised when I found it came out around 2 years ago, foolishly challenging the other Souls-like giants such as Nioh and The Surge. However, even with no expectations set and bias completely removed from my experience, this game managed to hit an all-time low for me.
Story
The story is executed wrong. When I played through this 7-hour journey, it emulated what's a classic in any Souls-like: encrypted, lore-heavy details. However, for all the items and dialogue lines I paid attention to, I found myself endlessly bored with the narrative that seemed to be the most uninteresting thing I've possibly played this year. This is wild as it turns out the whole plot centres around the ideas of ascension, set in a world that's been ruined by false worshipping of deities and the endless craving to enter that godhood. Tell me how this immensely creative concept and overarching story dwindles down to something so minute that it feels too irrelevant to indulge in. I'm almost disappointed at how poorly executed this incredible idea is and the worst part is I don't know how they managed to screw this up.
Gameplay
The gameplay feels like a sloppy reinvention of the Souls formula, with a unique mechanic that is counter-intuitive. To get the basics out of the way, you have a light and heavy attack with blocking, parrying and dodging as your defensive options, however, if you die, you lose all the experience that you could've used to upgrade. I do have to give credit where it's due as the variety of offence and defence that the player can have is an awesome addition to make sure this game never gets repetitive by being able to mix and match different parry abilities, weapons and their abilities and more.
The additional mechanic that separates this game from the others in the overwhelmingly washed-out market of Souls-likes is the Shell system. It's a super cool idea in which the player can not only revive themself after being knocked down by re-entering the "Shell" of their character but can also switch Shells on the fly. The reason this is great is that every Shell functions like a separate class, each with its preferred weapons and playstyles. However, the reason this is not so great either is that it feels pointless. After all, people would rather try to max out their main Shell and rely on it than evenly split the Tar (this game's equivalent of Souls, Blood Echoes, Runes, Amrita, Tech Scrap, etc.) between all four of the Shells. In other words, it's better to be powerful with one class, than weak with them all.
Another thing to quickly point out is that grinding for Tar is way too excessive and tedious. There's physically no way to earn more than half the upgrades by simply progressing through all the main bosses. Yet even then, you can end up too overpowered way too quickly making the game lose so much of its impact. This could've been changed by having substantial upgrades like the Quenching Acid locked behind different forms of progression like after defeating a boss.
Now, to talk about the actual combat. It's meh. First of all, the hitboxes felt inconsistent. Moments, where I should've been hit, didn't register and moments where I should've hit the enemy didn't count. Second of all, the weapons felt lacklustre. This game's arsenal features a big sword, a medium-sized sword, a glorified hammer, and a smaller, glorified hammer. The coolest weapon in the game is the axe-katana fusion which happens to be locked behind DLC. And for the final negative commentary about the combat are the enemies. The foes you deal with feel like they're locked between being a regular enemy that can be copied and pasted endlessly, and a brute that feels like a pathetic miniboss. The only differentiation that I remember seeing was the cloaked ghost enemy that summoned attacks, however, even then, they didn't feel that incredible in presence.
Before I start bashing this game's bosses, the level design needs some bullying. It's dogshit. There are four areas in this game and between one another, they look fascinatingly different. But while inside these areas, I felt like blowing my brains out as I thought I was stuck in a virtual Groundhog Day. Every twist, turn, corner, nook and cranny looked the same as if the developers replicated an asset too many times and proceeded to say "Why not use them all?". What makes it worse is that the enemies aren't placed in any memorable way, instead, they've been multiplied and dumped in each area randomly. Not to mention the awful, guide needing bullshit of literally every area except the hub level of Fallgrim.
Bossfights
The bossfights were pretty mixed for me. These bosses can be tackled in any order and that's one of the few aspects of the game that I enjoyed. Imrod was the worst boss of the game by being a super basic, buffed-up version of the brute enemy.
Crucix was the most engaging gameplay-wise. Being a constant threat, regardless of the situation, this boss specialised in all ranges of attacks before being extremely aggressive at close range. This easily could've been the best boss of the game as the build-up to the fight felt rewarding since you just conquered the Seat of Infinity area, they were a fun kind of difficult and everything was going well for them until you acknowledged the design. I don't know what in the goofy, Scooby-Doo type shit this is but my god is it ridiculous.
Tarsus was the next foe I tackled and he also had the potential to be the best boss. Being very cool visually and having a great arsenal of frost and sword slashes, Tarsus could've been something fantastic if it weren't for how much his attack pattern was suppressed, attacking once every blue moon. Because of this, the fight lost not only its challenge but also the engagement it had with the player.
The Unchained was possibly the best boss. With an imposing design and a multitude of unique attacks that require quick thinking, I enjoyed this boss. However, its absence of impactful music or sound effects left a void within the duel, making the whole experience shallow and anticlimactic.
For the remainder of the bosses who mostly served as optional fights, they were relatively mixed as well. Hadern is a splendid fight for the tutorial and his versatility in weapon usage made the act of recycling him less detrimental. However, the other two optional bosses are awful. Grisha is challenging for the first time, sure, but after upgrading a little, it becomes child's play and the lack of attacks is emphasised to the point it feels monotonous to fight its variants. Ven Noctivagu is easy to read and is even reused as a regular enemy in the Crypt of Martyrs, making every encounter forgettable.
Characters
The characters don't establish enough of a presence for me to A) care about and B) critique. They are empty shells of NPCs that are limited to a couple of lines each, making my involvement with them quite minimal.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is sub-par. On both sides of it, visuals and audio stick in a grey area between impressive and terrible. Visually, the reason for this is that it mixes some of the grandest visuals out there with a headache-inducing design choice. For example, the Shrine of Ash area is optically engaging at some moments, while at other times it abuses the concept of copied and pasted assets, having nausea emerge from just traversing the areas due to how sick of them I got. Another example is the enemies being an interesting medieval-fantasy format, endlessly filled with super bland and uninspired details and design.
Audibly, the music is unmemorable and left no impact on me while I was playing- this is the same case for the sound effects. One major problem I did encounter was the textures occasionally bugging out, especially for the water physics in certain areas. Additionally, the models of characters and items would render at a much slower rate compared to everything else, however, these technical problems could be blamed on my ageing Xbox.
Story - 3/10
Gameplay - 3/10
Bossfights - 5/10
Atmosphere - 5/10
Bad
When playing this game, I thought I had a love-hate relationship with it, playing it regardless of how much garbage it threw at me. Turns out it was more of a toxic relationship instead.
