Mortal Shell II Review Summary

Offers weighty combat, stunning visuals, and excellent performance as a massive improvement over its predecessor, but high difficulty and frequent bugs hold it back.

Combat is satisfying and weighty: The combat system receives widespread acclaim for its heavy, impactful feel and satisfying feedback. Multiple clusters emphasize the combat's fluidity, responsiveness, and depth, making it a central pillar of the game's appeal.

Massive improvement over predecessor: Players consistently praise the game as a major step up from the first Mortal Shell, highlighting vast improvements in combat, environment, and overall polish. This sentiment appears frequently across multiple clusters, indicating strong approval of the game's evolution.

Graphics and visuals are stunning: Reviewers consistently praise the game's high-quality graphics, beautiful art direction, and striking visual presentation. The game is often described as gorgeous, with top-tier visuals that enhance the overall experience.

Top-tier souls-like entry: The game is considered one of the best souls-likes outside FromSoftware, often cited as a standout in the genre. Its balanced difficulty, refined mechanics, and engaging combat set it apart from other titles.

Overall game is fantastic: The game is frequently described as amazing, incredible, and a masterpiece, indicating high overall satisfaction. Reviewers express strong enthusiasm and recommend it to others.

Difficulty too high overall: The game is widely considered very difficult, especially when relying only on parrying. Enemies deal heavy damage and night mode introduces one-hit kills, pushing challenge beyond a fair threshold.

Enemy density and placement frustrating: Players report excessive numbers of enemies stacked tightly together, often hidden in dark corners near doorways. This makes encounters unfair and contributes to a frustrating combat experience.

Boss design is unsatisfying: Bosses are consistently described as annoying, poorly designed, and not fun to fight. Defeating them feels unrewarding, and specific bosses like 'the lost child' suffer from bugs.

Significant bugs on release: Players report many bugs present from day one, ranging from minor glitches to crash-inducing issues. While some are tolerable, the sheer quantity detracts from enjoyment and feels unpolished.

Game crashes frequently: Multiple reports describe random crashes, crashes after a few minutes of play, and crashes looping after death. The instability is severe enough to ruin the experience for many players.

Parry and dodge combat mechanics: The game heavily emphasizes parrying and dodging as core combat actions, with multiple types of parries and a perfect block/parry mechanic that operates on a cooldown. This is the most frequently mentioned feature across feedback clusters.

Souls-like gameplay genre: Reviewers consistently identify the game as a Souls-like or Soulsborne-style title, noting its dark fantasy theme, weighty combat, and familiar mechanics such as bonfires and challenging difficulty. This genre classification shapes player expectations and comparisons.

Satisfying tactile combat system: Combat is described as fluid, smooth, visceral, and weighty, with impactful hits and responsive controls. The fighting includes parries, counterattacks, block mechanics, and dismemberment/gore for a satisfying and tactile experience.

Shell system with classes: A unique Shell mechanic serves as a class system, offering eight distinct shells (like Harros, Tiel, Solomon, Eredrim), each with different stats, strengths, weaknesses, and skill trees. This provides build diversity and varied playstyles.

Open world with exploration: The game presents an open world that allows unrestricted traversal and exploration, featuring expansive interconnected areas and over 60 dungeons. This encourages player freedom in choosing the order of locations and rewards thorough exploration.

Excellent smooth performance: Many players report the game runs smoothly with high frame rates across various settings. With comparable hardware, users experience fluid gameplay without noticeable issues.

Good optimization praised: Players consistently praise the game's optimization, often noting no performance problems. The feedback indicates the game runs well on a variety of hardware configurations.

High FPS at high settings: Players with modern GPUs achieve high frame rates (80-160 FPS) at 1440p or 4K with ultra settings and ray tracing. Frame generation further boosts FPS but can introduce input lag.

Frequent crashes disrupt experience: Players frequently encounter crashes, sometimes every few minutes and multiple times per hour. These crashes occur on high-spec systems and significantly harm the gameplay experience.

Stuttering and freezing issues: Some players report occasional or frequent stuttering and freezing during gameplay. These performance hitches can interrupt the experience, though they are not as prevalent as crashes.

Highly recommended for soulslike fans: Multiple reviews strongly recommend the game to fans of soulslike games, describing it as a must-play and essential for the genre's enthusiasts.

Overall strong recommendation: Several reviews give an absolute and enthusiastic recommendation, urging players to buy and play the game without hesitation.

Worth full price: Reviewers affirm the game is worth its price tag, with some specifically recommending purchase at full price, citing good value for money.

Negative or conditional recommendations: Several reviews advise against buying the game at this time or not recommend it due to various issues, including one that rates it below Dark Souls.

Fans of similar games recommended: The game is recommended to fans of dark fantasy RPGs, Elden Ring, Sekiro, and Lords of the Fallen, noting its thematic and gameplay similarities.

Community fair range: $30.00 - $45.00.

Game completion: 40.0h.

Story completion: 40.0h.

Session length: 8.0h.

Mortal Shell starts with a challenging and punishing opening that can frustrate players, but after about 20 minutes of leveling up and acquiring initial shells, the combat becomes more manageable and the game's rewarding loop emerges.

Reported time to anchor: 20m.

Friction: high early difficulty with enemies that one- or two-shot the player; obscure progression with no clear main quest or goal; camera issues in tight corridors; random gank fights and traps that cause frustration.

Shell Build Artisan: Methodically tinkering with shell abilities, stats, and tarstone upgrades to optimize playstyle. Motivation: Deep character customization and build experimentation through shells and tarstones. Stance: buy.

Soulslike Connoisseur: Analytical combat, demanding precise controls and challenging encounters similar to FromSoft games. Motivation: Seeking a high-quality soulslike experience that matches FromSoftware standards. Stance: sale.

Technical Stability Seeker: Cautious purchasing; waiting for patches before playing. Motivation: A stable, bug-free gameplay experience without crashes or progress-halting bugs. Stance: no buy.

The game performs well on most VRAM tiers, especially 8-11GB and below, but the 16GB+ cohort experiences widespread crashes and stuttering. The 12-15GB tier is mostly positive with some isolated issues.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: positive. Most users report smooth high-settings performance, though some encounter crashes and audio bugs.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: positive. Reports indicate great optimization, high frame rates, and smooth gameplay across settings.

Windows 16GB+ VRAM: negative. Frequent crashes and stuttering dominate even on high-end hardware, significantly impacting playability.

Steam Deck: The Steam Deck experience is affected by an achievement bug that prematurely awards all collectible achievements, and technical barriers such as hidden advanced settings requiring a launch option workaround and a resolution lock to 2K. One user reports smooth performance under Proton, but the overall experience requires tinkering and has a notable platform-specific bug.

Linux and Proton: All filtered user reviews indicate that the game works perfectly on Proton, with smooth performance, no crashes, and no required tweaks. The positive consensus across multiple users places Linux/Proton compatibility in the lowest friction bracket.

Big improvement over predecessor: Reviewers consistently note this sequel is a massive improvement over the first Mortal Shell, with better polish, tuning, and overall quality. Many call it a huge evolution and a major step forward for the series.

Sequel to Mortal Shell: The game is widely recognized as a sequel to Mortal Shell, with reviewers referencing the original to frame their expectations. It is seen as a worthy follow-up by the same development team.

Top-tier soulslike outside FromSoft: Critics place the game among the best soulslike titles, often ranking it above competitors like Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen. It is considered a genuine contender even when compared to FromSoftware's own games.

Beta version played: Several players experienced the game through its beta phase, which was well-received. Participating in the beta could unlock rewards for the full game.

Playable demo available: A demo version of the game exists entry, allowing players to try it before purchasing. Some reviewers felt the demo was actually better than the full release.