If you like Souls-likes and prefer them without invasions and co-op, you will probably enjoy Mortal Shell.
I’d describe it as the equivalent of a new band copping your favorite band’s sound and style. They do a few things differently, but it is basically more of the same, to some diminishing returns.
Load times on PS4 are painful, though, and have put me off playing (to be fair, that has as much to do with the PS4, as it does the game).
Ugh, so here we are. I can’t (re)play Demon’s Souls because I can’t find a PS5, so we’ll have to go through the bargain bin.
Mortal Shell is, ehh… okay?
I absolutely hated it at first, but once I “got it” I warmed up a bit. The armors are awesome. Hardening is a cool mechanic, but the game doesn’t do that good a job at telling you how it works.
Basically, you can harden during any action and you stay frozen for as long as you want until you get hit. Your action will then complete and you’ll still be invincible while the animation finishes. In practice, you can queue up a heavy attack, harden and wait, then the enemy will get hit upon attacking you, then you roll away. It’s a foolproof plan for about 90% of fights. Once you understand that, it’s kinda easy.
Despite the above reviews, I wouldn’t call the game elegant. The starting area is a murky mess that takes hours to mentally map despite not being that big.The game is very dark too and when I increase the brightness, the game re-changes the setting every few minutes (screw you, says the game! It’s inky black or nothing!). One area is bigger than the rest of the entire game combined. It doesn’t make sense from a design perspective.
Mortal Shell kinda ticks all the basic boxes of a soulslike, the combat works fine once you adjust to it, but it has very few secrets, build options, exploration, quests, etc. Honestly, I don’t see why you’d play this instead of better “knockoffs” like Nioh or The Surge. The only reason I’d recommend it is because it’s short. I can see an experienced player beating the game in a few hours, nevermind what the speedrunners could do. So if you want to break your balls and git gud, but not for too long, I guess this is the game for you?
So… beating the game in one-hit kill mode is a thing. It seems kinda doable, but I’m not sure I have the patience for that. :-/
Wait, Nioh is a Souls knockoff? I got an impression from the demo that it was more like a Ninja Gaiden knockoff? I loved playing through Ninja Gaiden on hard back in the day, but I don’t think I’ve got it in me to that anymore as I’ve gotten older.
Also, thanks for your post! I still plan to play Mortal Shell one day, but maybe I’ll move it lower on my priority list compared to other Souls-likes.
Current priority list (from the top of my head):
Already played through:
Everybody and their mother says Nioh is a soulslike, and while I understand why they say that, to me the similarities are superficial and they play completely differently. Mortal Shell, by contrast (I have only played the demo) feels very soulslike, but a bit (more) unpolished.
Yeah, I agree, based on having played both of their demos as well.
I thought this game was just “OK”, the hardening idea is cool but becomes rote way too quickly and they never really change anything up.
If you want more Soulslike and don’t mind a bit of jankiness I think Hellpoint is better.
There’s some clear Souls influence in terms of exploration, with “bonfires”, shortcuts, etc. But it’s from the Ninja Gaiden team, and the combat is much more in that mode. And there’s a whole layer of randomized loot chase a la Diablo.
Woah. I either haven’t heard of this, or I heard of it and forgot about it.
Looks good. Adding it to my mental Souls-like list.
Umm, I think you’re safe to put The Surge 2 below Sekiro. (For fuck’s sake, man…)
You could put The Surge under there too but this will encourage you to finish games.
I am mostly scared of Sekiro because I’ve been reading that thread. Back when it came out, just the amount of people who had so much trouble with it made it seem really, really daunting.
IMO, Sekiro is the hardest of the From Software games. It’s a toughie! No level ups to help you or begging for the help of other players either!
As for Nioh, eh, basically what @Thraeg said. It’s still very soulsy in tone, RPG elements, level design, etc, but it does its own thing in many other ways. It’s Souls-adjacent, maybe?
So @Rock8man, are you on a quest to play them all?
Iron Pineapple has a playlist of soulslikes, but not the bargain bin stuff. He tried the true shovelware at the bottom of the Steam ratings list:
Don’t forget Blade & Bones too! Not sure if it qualifies, though. It’s a janky, barely playable piece of crap, but it’s sort of charming in its incompetence.
Well, I don’t have enough time to play them all probably, but I’d like to at least play all the decent to great ones. There’s just something about this genre that I find soooooo… I don’t know the perfect word that fits here, maybe “comforting”. The combination of my character getting better, me as a player getting better, and exploring environments under these conditions is just at the base level everything I enjoy the most about video games. I respect the ones that try to be story-telling devices too, there’s some good work being done there as well, but this genre just hits me in my animal brain, I just find it irresistible.
Hmm… I’ve heard Jedi: Fallen Order kinda fits the bill too.
It does! I played it through on Hard, and enjoyed the heck out of it.
There actually are level ups in Sekiro. When you beat a boss you get an item you can use to increase your attack power. Your health and posture can also be increased.
Sekiro is really, really hard. But, a lot of that is because it doesn’t allow for the flexibility of the Souls games. There aren’t different weapons. There aren’t different classes. If you’re used to dodging/parrying like in other action games the timing and mechanics are different enough that it’s a big adjustment.
But, once you get the hang of it it has maybe the most satisfying combat of any game I’ve played. It’s a ton of fun. But, even less of a souls game than something like Nioh.
Haven’t played Mortal Shell yet, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it.
Speaking of parrying, does anyone really like parry mechanics? I kinda hate them… it’s “all or nothing” and I can rarely get the timing right, which you have to figure out for every single attack in the game.
At least in Sekiro, parrying is tied to blocking, so you can err on the side of caution and do regular blocks instead.
The main way to heal in Mortal Shell (except for consumable items) is to execute a parry. If you screw it up, you’ll probably lose way more health than what you stood to gain. And it costs “MP” too. Parrying sucks.
While the combat is quite different, although something like a DS/Bloodborne hybrid, in my opinion despite being set in literal Japan the world and its atmosphere are the most Souls any Soulslike has been since Dark Souls.
I liked parrying in Sekiro, but it felt so off in the Mortal Shell beta (which is now seemingly permanently stuck in my Epic library).
I suppose this is appropriate…nice title! :
I don’t like them in most games. It requires way too much precision. But there’s certain enemies where it’s pretty forgiving in Bloodborne, so I don’t mind it there. And the whole combat system is reliant on pseudo-parrying in Darksiders 3, so they implemented something that I like even more: right as an enemy is about to strike you, they go into slight slow-motion, so that’s your cue to evade and then hit attack. At least, that’s what they do on “balanced” difficulty, but there are 3 more difficulty levels on top of that, so I’m betting there’s multiple difficulties above “balanced” where they don’t go into slow motion.