Review Mortal Shell Game

Cold Symmetry brings us a little gem made with a small team of people who have pampered this Souls-style game with rage. Don’t miss the Mortal Shell review .

Our Mortal Shell Analysis

If you are a lover of demanding titles with a precise, rich gameplay that requires a lot of skill with a generous layer of RPG , we are sure you know titles like Dark Souls, Sekiro and Bloodborne. These references of A-RPGs or SoulsLikes were more than well carried by this study that undoubtedly set out to pay tribute and show its love for FromSoftware games with this new title. The question is the same as always … will it be just another plagiarism or will it have enough to create its own personality?

What will we find

Mortal Shell, originally nicknamed Dungeonhaven , might at first seem like a clone from the Dark Souls series. Cold Symmetry, a tiny studio composed of only 15 people, does not pretend to hide that it drinks and takes references from those of FromSoftware and definitely vindicates the influence that the Japanese studio had on its newly created title.

We will find many ingredients that made the success that is currently the cult Dark Souls saga.

And it must be said that in fact we will find many ingredients that made the success that is currently the cult saga Dark Souls ,  starting with the development of a dark and gloomy story that is only told in a particularly cryptic way . In Mortal Shell, you play as a completely emaciated humanoid character who finds himself in a dark world filled with chaos . Only a few characters and inscriptions in the form of slabs will splash us from time to time to gradually introduce us to the lore that will narrate the events that led to the current situation, while remaining particularly cryptic.

We must recognize that the whole story remains quite dark from beginning to end of the game, yet being completely clear to the player . The way of telling things, that way of telling the stories of the characters and their world in a totally gloomy and gloomy way will not fail to remind us of Cold Symmetry’s mentor.

Progression

The progression in Mortal Shell is perhaps unfortunately somewhat classic . Falgrim Forest will be our central axis, and exploring it will take us to different areas, each with a zone boss . However, the level design is far and away from what Dark Souls has us used to. The environments are varied when we visit a new area , but Mortal Shell has a level design that is quite far from the FromSoftware reference.

Mortal Shell has a very interesting gameplay and really original details that work especially well.

And speaking of the bosses, the six that we will have will leave us some with a bad taste in our mouths and others will make us pull our hair . If some are clear successes, others are much more basic, simple and predictable , in terms of artistic design, Mortal Shell knows how to shine with enough originality. At the end of very specific fights, you will be able to recover a gland from the corpse of the bosses, which will have the consequence of modifying the morphology of our return trip by wrapping it in fog and adding different opponents, as well as it will offer us the possibility of opening certain safes that we will normally find closed. If it is true that this creates a certain charm and avoids too many redundancies in the fact of crossing in the opposite direction the long road that has just been crossed to reach a boss, we probably would have preferred a more fluid progression in general and these comings and goings could perhaps have been mostly avoided.

Gameplay

The interesting thing about Mortal Shell definitely lies in its personality , and the fact that we have previously said that it has the Souls saga as a reference does not mean that it cannot have a personality of its own. As we said before, we are in command of a rather weak character who, to gain strength, can wear up to four different “shells” , which are all the armor of ancient heroes fallen in battle. These shells will not be available immediately and if the first of them we will get it in the first minutes of the game, it will be up to us to advance and explore to obtain and find the remaining three.

In addition to the additional resistance that “hardening” offers our character, they also have the peculiarity of having three fixed statistics, which govern your endurance or resistance . If we collect summon effigies corresponding to the packs or if you choose to return to the central axis of the game, to which believe me we will return, our armor will change to take advantage of different statistics. It is up to us to see if, for example, the number of life points favors us over the agility that a shell can provide us.

We will have unique skills that will seek to accentuate the strengths of each style of play.

If the statistics just mentioned do not change throughout the game, each shell will be accompanied by a different skill tree adapted to its own general characteristics.

We will be offered skills that will seek to accentuate the strengths of each style of play with each of our shells, offering us a percentage of probability of losing resistance points instead of life points. And to obtain these abilities, it will obviously be necessary to defeat enemies and collect flashes and effigies , which would be the equivalent of the souls of Dark Souls. However, keep in mind that effigies are not shared from one shell to another.

We must also say that Mortal Shell lacks flexibility in stat customization . The purely RPG aspect is a bit behind in this aspect and we will have to settle for the fixed statistics that each of the shells that we can obtain will provide us.

What makes Mortal Shell really shine is without a doubt its combat system, which has several very original details that work particularly well . In addition to the common light blows, hard blows, and energy-consuming dodges, encounters in Mortal Shell are governed by three different major abilities: Tenacity, Counterattacks, and Determination . Hardening is an ability that, just by pulling the trigger, covers our character’s body with a thick layer of stone that even the most powerful and unstoppable enemy attacks will not be able to penetrate.

Mortal Shell has a very interesting gameplay and really original details that work especially well.

On the cooldown, Hardenings can take a certain amount of damage before breaking . So if you notice, when your resistance is running out to avoid the next blow, it is interesting to activate the hardening again to avoid taking damage. And better yet , it allows you to be quite offensive as you can, when you land a punch, activate your hardening at the same time. So when you break through the enemy’s defense, you will immediately get rid of the hardening and strike back directly at the adversary. Therefore,it is necessary to manage this ability with some care, since it cannot be abused but once mastered, the hardening brings a certain freshness to the fights that we will really appreciate a lot.

The seal or parry is not easy to master, but once we achieve it it will make a difference in combat.

But this is not the only way to defend ourselves , we will quickly have a seal equipped, located on our back. If it glows red, you know that the approaching enemy’s blow cannot be stopped , allowing us to choose between dodging or hardening ourselves. If we do not have time or we want to opt for a somewhat more aggressive behavior, we can with a simple touch, make what we would all call a parry for the Souls . Here we will have to take something into account because doing this requires some skill since our character must take the seal from his back and will have to give him time to wield it when the opponent is supposed to hit us.

It is not instantaneous and requires a bit of practice to master, but once learned, this system will make a big difference in battles and especially in bosses thanks to the determination gauge that fills several boxes as we hit enemies.

If a counterattack without determination is still possible, performing it with a full determination box allows you to perform a powerful counter attack while regaining a portion of health.

Graphics and Sound

Mortal Shell has a really polished graphic section, where we can enjoy a very pampered and careful visual appearance both in its design and in its lighting and choice of color palette to create that gloomy and dark atmosphere that will surround us during the adventure

The ambient sound and the soundtrack know how to accompany us during the adventure and although they do not stand out in any aspect we must remember that this entire project has been done by a team of only fifteen people.

We have not experienced performance problems or frame drops, but we have been able to experience problems with the command control , where every few minutes for some reason the left joystick was “deconfigured” and we were forced to restart the game, losing part of our current progress . In the same way we have experienced unfair situations where we have died being caught between enemies and indestructible objects as simple as a small chest or a chair.

Conclution

Mortal Shell is definitely a good title that although it is not perfect , and we must take into account on more than one occasion that it is made by a small study of just fifteen people , if it will provide any fan of the well-known Soulslikes with a title that innovates and not it will leave no one indifferent, its tremendously dark and gloomy atmosphere will make us become imbued and want to know all its secrets.

Although if it is true that we will be able to live certain unfair situations when colliding with the environment or we will find a boss that will make us either very simple or terribly complicated, its appearance and artistic design, its atmosphere, and its own little touches and unique in the gameplay They will make this a truly enriching experience and one that will surely be worth it.

 

by Abdullah Sam
I’m a teacher, researcher and writer. I write about study subjects to improve the learning of college and university students. I write top Quality study notes Mostly, Tech, Games, Education, And Solutions/Tips and Tricks. I am a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

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