Info about Mortal Shell:

Official game description:
Mortal Shell is a deep action-RPG that tests your sanity and resilience in a shattered world. As the remains of humanity wither and rot, zealous foes fester in the ruins. They spare no mercy, with survival demanding superior awareness, precision and instincts. Track down hidden sanctums of devout followers and discover your true purpose.  
The dead litter this tattered landscape, but not all are without hope. The lost remains of defeated warriors are yours to discover. Awaken these Mortal Shells, occupy their bodies and significantly open your understanding to diverse masteries of combat.  
Your path is guarded by desperate adversaries, devoted to inscrutable gods. Behold creatures both pitiable and grotesque, but do not let fear halt your journey. Muster your courage and face them down.  
Combat is strategic and deliberate. You must commit your sword only when an opportunity opens. Calculate your parries to unleash devastating counterblows. Temporarily entomb your Mortal Shell in stone to block attacks, or play aggressive and use your stone-form to add brutal weight to your own sword swings.

Release date: Aug 18, 2021

Categories: Action RPG, Soulslike Combat, Real-time Combat, Exploration, Character Management, Single-player Story, Roguelike, Item Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Good soulslike experience (weight 0.33): The game is frequently compared to the Dark Souls series, with reviewers noting similarities in atmosphere, difficulty, and gameplay style. It is often recommended for fans of the soulslike genre and is considered a good entry point for newcomers due to its balanced difficulty and unique mechanics. Some reviewers, however, found the game easier than other soulslike titles.
- Excellent graphics and atmosphere (weight 0.31): The game features stunning graphics, a hauntingly evocative soundtrack, and detailed environments that create a captivating and immersive dark fantasy atmosphere. The art style is frequently compared to AAA titles and praised for its unique and beautiful aesthetic, contributing significantly to the overall player experience.
- Unique shell and harden mechanics (weight 0.19): The game features unique mechanics such as the shell system and the hardening ability, which add strategic depth and variety to combat. The hardening mechanic, in particular, is praised for its versatility and the ability to create interesting combat moments, allowing players to absorb damage and counterattack effectively.
- Intriguing world and exploration (weight 0.12): The game features a mysterious and well-crafted world that encourages exploration and rewards curiosity. The interconnected level design and detailed environments create an immersive atmosphere, with locations feeling alive and distinct from one another.
- Good potential and unique ideas (weight 0.04): The game has potential for further expansion and offers unique ideas and mechanics that make it worthwhile. The core concept is well-grounded, and the game has a good sense of impact, making the initial playthrough experience enjoyable.

Common complaints:
- Clunky, slow, and frustrating combat (weight 0.95): Combat is frequently criticized for being clunky, slow, and unresponsive, with limited stamina and long animation locks. The 'harden' mechanic, while unique, is often considered either overpowered or ineffective. Many enemies are damage sponges, and the parry system is inconsistent and difficult to master, leading to a frustrating combat experience.
- Confusing, unpolished, and frustrating experience (weight 0.91): The game suffers from numerous issues that detract from the player experience. These include a lack of clear direction, a confusing map, repetitive environments, uninspired enemy design, clunky combat, and a general lack of polish. Many reviewers felt the game was incomplete, frustrating, and ultimately not enjoyable.
- Confusing and repetitive level design (weight 0.74): The game world is criticized for its confusing level design, repetitive environments, and lack of clear landmarks, making navigation difficult. The absence of a map exacerbates these issues, leading to player frustration and aimless wandering. The world feels small and artificially stretched, lacking meaningful exploration.
- Unfair and unbalanced difficulty (weight 0.73): The game is often criticized for its high difficulty, stemming from enemy spam, unfair enemy placement, and a lack of player guidance. Enemies frequently ambush the player, have high health, and can quickly overwhelm them, leading to a frustrating and punishing experience. This difficulty feels artificial and unbalanced.
- Short, vague story; lacks content (weight 0.69): Many reviewers found the game to be short and lacking in content, with a story that is vague, rushed, and difficult to understand. The game's potential is often seen as wasted due to its limited scope and underdeveloped narrative. The ending is often described as bland and unsatisfying.
- Scarce and unreliable healing system (weight 0.68): The game lacks a reliable healing system, with limited and scarce healing items that require farming or waiting for respawn timers. This makes exploration and boss fights more challenging and frustrating, as players must conserve resources and avoid damage at all costs. The absence of a reusable healing item like an Estus flask is a common complaint.
- Limited character and equipment variety (weight 0.13): The game suffers from a lack of variety in character customization, weapons, and armor. The shell system, while interesting, limits player choice and build diversity, with only a few viable options. This lack of customization restricts player expression and replayability.
- Few, uninspired, and easy bosses (weight 0.12): The game features a small number of bosses, many of which are considered uninspired, easy, and repetitive. The final boss is often singled out as a disappointment. Some bosses are just reskins of previous encounters, further reducing the sense of variety and challenge.
- Tedious and poorly designed achievements (weight 0.09): The game's achievements are poorly designed, requiring tedious grinding, no-hit runs, and multiple playthroughs. This detracts from the fun and can lead to a negative experience. Some reviewers also noted a lack of checkpoints and an imbalance in difficulty progression.
- Inconsistent parry and flawed hitboxes (weight 0.08): The game's parry mechanic is often criticized for being inconsistent, difficult to master, and unreliable. Hitboxes are also flawed, leading to unexpected hits and frustrating combat encounters. Some reviewers also noted issues with enemy attack tracking and camera control.
- Uninspired and repetitive DLC (weight 0.05): The DLC is often criticized for its lack of new content, repetitive gameplay, and roguelike elements that may not appeal to all players. It recycles content from the base game without adding meaningful new experiences. Some achievements are tedious and require excessive grinding.
- Lacks enemy variety; excessive density (weight 0.04): The game suffers from a lack of enemy variety, with repetitive encounters and limited enemy types. This makes exploration and combat feel monotonous and uninspired. The game also features excessive enemy density, with too many enemies crammed into small areas.

Gameplay feedback:
- Unique 'shell' system as classes (weight 0.3): The game features a unique 'shell' system where players inhabit different bodies, each with unique stats, abilities, and playstyles. These shells function as classes, offering varied gameplay experiences and customization options through unlockable skills and upgrades. However, some reviewers noted that the differences between shells can be subtle, mainly affecting stats like stamina and health.
- 'Hardening' mechanic for invincibility (weight 0.14): A core mechanic is the 'hardening' ability, which grants temporary invincibility and can be used strategically during attacks or dodges. Mastering this ability is crucial for both defense and offense, allowing players to absorb hits, stagger enemies, and create openings for counter-attacks. Some players found it overpowered once mastered.
- Limited weapon and enemy variety (weight 0.14): The game features a limited selection of weapons, with only about four or five types available. Each weapon has unique movesets and unlockable abilities, but the limited variety restricts combat options. Some reviewers felt the game copies enemy placements and other elements from FromSoftware games.
- Hub-based level design, aimless exploration (weight 0.06): The game's level design is structured around a central hub area with multiple distinct paths branching out. The world feels empty, with many locations having empty rooms or large areas with only a few enemies and one or two items. The game lacks direction or motive, leading to aimless exploration.
- Experimentation to discover item effects (weight 0.06): The game encourages experimentation with items to discover their effects, with better results gained through familiarity. The game does not provide clear answers or hints for actions, requiring players to figure things out themselves. Learning about items through using them reveals lore and provides boosts for repeated use.
- DLC adds roguelike mode (weight 0.02): A DLC adds a roguelike mode to the game, increasing replayability by randomizing enemy encounters and adding unlockable effects. This mode challenges players to complete the game in one life, upgrading skills and clearing the map.
- Lacks leveling and customization (weight 0.02): The game lacks a leveling system, reducing player freedom to adapt stats to their needs. Stat loadouts are predetermined, limiting player choice to four options. There is no character creation, customizations, armors or jewelry.
- Soulslike with questionable design choices (weight 0.02): The game is a Soulslike. Some reviewers felt that the game borrows elements from Soulslike games, but this is a negative aspect because it copies questionable and problematic game design choices. Some reviewers felt that the game is easy to learn, hard to master.
- Second chance upon death mechanic (weight 0.02): The game provides a second chance upon death, ejecting the player from their shell and allowing them to return with full health if they can reach it in time. This mechanic offers a safety net and encourages more aggressive play. Healing consumables are hard to come by, requiring near-perfect play to progress after death.
- Stamina-based combat loop (weight 0.02): Combat loop involves managing stamina, dealing damage to gain resolve, and using abilities. Movement and combat rely on stamina, visualized by a green bar that regenerates when pausing or hardening. Combat includes normal and heavy attacks consuming different amounts of stamina.
- Hardening benefits are low (weight 0.02): Petrifying enemies isn't always the best strategy, and sometimes dodging won't save you. The game encourages the use of hardening, but the benefits of successful hardening are low, and the cost of failure is high; dodging feels more useful.
- Fog mechanic after boss fights (weight 0.02): After defeating story bosses, a fog appears, increasing the number of mobs and reducing visibility, but unlocking previously closed chests. The gland/fog mechanic replaces enemies with a single, annoying enemy type, feeling like developer trolling. This mechanic can make navigation confusing.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent performance, optimization issues (weight 0.12): Reports on game performance and optimization are mixed. Some players experience smooth gameplay and good frame rates even on modest hardware, while others report significant performance issues, optimization problems, and high hardware requirements. Some specific areas are noted as particularly problematic.
- Various bugs and crashes (weight 0.08): Players have reported encountering various bugs, including getting stuck in the environment, camera issues, and crashes. While some reviewers found the bugs infrequent and non-disruptive, others experienced them more severely, impacting their overall experience.
- Area-specific performance/visual issues (weight 0.02): Several reviews highlight specific areas (Crystal area, Flame Grave, Obsidian areas, and Castle location) as having significant performance issues, lighting glitches, or visibility problems due to fog or other effects. These issues seem to be localized to certain in-game environments.
- Miscellaneous minor technical issues (weight 0.02): A collection of minor or less frequently mentioned technical issues were noted, including menu animation delays, black screens, rolling bugs, resolution-specific graphical glitches, haze effect tied to shadows, controller vibration problems, audio weirdness and input lag.
- Specific technical issues/crashes (weight 0.01): Several specific technical issues were reported, including crashes when tabbing out, Windows Defender blocking game files, and certain key combinations causing unresponsiveness. These issues may require specific workarounds or fixes.
- Enemy animation/spawn glitches (weight 0.01): Some players have observed issues with enemy behavior, such as enemies materializing out of thin air, animation glitches, and pop-in. These problems can disrupt gameplay and immersion.
- Steam Deck performance issues (weight 0.01): The game experiences frame rate drops on the Steam Deck, even with reduced graphical settings. This suggests that the game may not be well-optimized for the platform, despite not having particularly impressive graphics.
- Other (weight 0.01): The game was able to run near the monitor's max refresh rate. Experienced one big FPS drop bug but found a workaround. Game size is workable.
- Long loading times after death (weight 0): Long loading times after death were mentioned as a negative point. This can lead to frustration, especially in challenging sections of the game where frequent deaths are expected.

Recommendations:
- Recommended Soulslike experience (weight 0.41): Many reviewers recommend the game, especially to fans of the Soulslike genre or newcomers to it. They praise its unique mechanics, captivating world, and challenging gameplay. Some suggest trying it on sale to mitigate potential regret.
- Only buy on sale (weight 0.34): Many reviewers suggest purchasing the game only on sale due to its flaws, short length, or limited content. Some reviewers even recommend refunding the game or buying a beer instead. This point shows a strong sentiment that the game is not worth its full price.
- Good entry point Soulslike (weight 0.21): Some reviewers suggest that the game is a good starting point for players new to the Soulslike genre, while others recommend other games like Dark Souls 3 or Elden Ring as better starting points. Some experienced players may find the game too easy or short.
- Extremely disappointing experience (weight 0.04): Some reviewers express extreme disappointment with the game, calling it boring, frustrating, and unfinished. They feel that the game had a lot of potential that was not realized. Some reviewers consider the game to be the worst game ever seen.
- Mixed score ratings (weight 0.03): Some reviewers provide a rating for the game, ranging from 0/10 to 11/10. Some reviewers are not satisfied with the current state but can see its potential. Some reviewers feel misled and scammed.
- Miscellaneous recommendations (weight 0.02): Some reviewers recommend playing the game with a controller, even though they are typically keyboard players. Some reviewers recommend using the character Til for the entire game. Some reviewers specifically recommend the game to masochists and hardcore players.
- Use/avoid guides (weight 0.01): Some reviewers suggest that players should avoid using internet guides to fully experience the game's unique sense of discovery. Others suggest using a guide for locations, implying that some locations may be difficult to find without assistance. Some reviewers suggest that many negative reviews seem to come from people trying to play it like a Dark Souls game, which doesn't work; you have to learn and master its own mechanics.

Other player notes:
- Short, incomplete, demo-like experience (weight 0.05): Several reviewers felt the game was short, incomplete, and more like a demo. Some also mentioned that the price, especially on sale, reflected the game's overall quality, suggesting it might not be worth the full price.
- Cryptic, convoluted, unclear narrative (weight 0.04): Many reviewers found the game's narrative cryptic, convoluted, and difficult to understand. The story is revealed through item descriptions, cryptic NPC dialogue, and environmental details, but lacks clear direction or motivation. Some compare the story to Dark Souls, where the player is an undead being put through trials.
- Developed by a small indie team (weight 0.03): Reviewers frequently mention that the game was developed by a small indie team, often around 15 people. This context is used to highlight the team's commendable effort and the 'indie game feel' of the project, suggesting a labor of love.
- Appealing dark fantasy aesthetic (weight 0.02): The game features a dark fantasy setting with appealing visuals and armor aesthetics. The soundtrack, composed by Atrium Carceri, enhances the game's gloomy atmosphere. The game is similar to Dark Souls in terms of playability and setting.
- Cool and unique core concept (weight 0.02): The game has a cool and unique core concept that excites reviewers. Some reviewers feel like the game is a proof-of-concept or vertical slice showcasing core concepts, and they are excited about the future direction of the game.
- Poor ultrawide monitor support (weight 0.01): The game's ultrawide support is poorly implemented, cropping the top and bottom of the screen and reducing the vertical field of view. Playing at the proper aspect ratio (16:9) on an ultrawide monitor requires windowed mode.

Emotions:
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