Mortal Shell is one of those games where you will be like, one more try and you will keep going like this for hours. Not because the game is broken or it has cheap deaths, actually the gameplay is fair and fun. If you die then it’s your mistake as you were most likely not focused or in a hurry to kill and move on.
The game is a beautiful action RPG, you will be thrown into a world without much explanation and directions.
Even the items you obtain and gather are unknown to you until you use them and get to know their effects. I remember eating a poison mushroom thinking that I might give me more health but instead I died from the poison, so yeah lesson learned.
I found this very fun as I had to explore and test everything I found, there are hidden chests and many shortcuts to find as well.
You will start in a hollow form and will be able to acquire other shells which will give you unique combat abilities and passive skills, each one feels and handles differently as well.
Soon you will see yourself sticking with one, the game only has a handful number of weapons to choose from and you will unlock them after beating certain bosses and will find certain items required to upgrade them.
There is no shield in the game but you can parry attacks which has different form and abilities and you also have this ability to harden your body even during an attack, you will lose this form upon getting attacked as you will take physical damage but without losing your health, so use it wisely just before getting attacked just like you would with a normal shield and mastering this ability is your key to win in this game.
The game has a small variety of different locations with different terrains, and each location will come with its own set of monsters and bosses to fight, there is also a fog mode where the atmosphere will change and will bring with it new monsters and during this mode you will be able to explore and interact with things that you couldn’t interact before, though it’s very harder but yet very rewarding as well.
The game is heavily influenced by the souls series, it has taken elements from other games and combined them into one very fun and engaging combat and gameplay.
You have two chances, upon your first death you will be returned to your hollow form with 5% health and everyone around you will be frozen, you need to interact with your frozen body to regain your real body and full health back, if you die a second time then that’s it. Upon the second death you will lose all your tar and leave a frozen shell or a red small smoke, you need to retrieve this frozen shell to get back your tar.
You don’t have a flask to regain your lost health but instead you can eat items such as health mushrooms or roasted rats, there is no limit to how many you can carry in battle, you can go into a battle with dozens of mushroom and roasted rats but whatever you consume during battle will not be reversed upon death so if you have 20 mushrooms and consumed 5 then after death you will only have 15 left.
These gatherable items such as mushroom have a respawn time, so you can gather them again after a certain time.
The game feels nostalgic yet new and very fun, am actually very surprised by the amount of content, lore and the world map created by this very small team!
I thought the game will be much smaller but in fact it’s not, you will be spending a lot of time exploring and fighting your way to new areas.
What you get for about 30$ or less is insane and I really appreciate their decision for that!
There is no multiplayer or fast travel in this game but to be honest though it would’ve been more fun but you will certainly lose the atmosphere created by the team for you to experience alone.
I can’t wait to see more from this talented team and maybe some more expansions or more for this game!
