Mortal Shell II Review

Mortal Shell II successfully grows beyond its predecessor while preserving its strange identity, rewarding exploration, experimentation, and aggressive combat.

Cold Symmetry’s 2020 release, Mortal Shell, was a more condensed and experimental take on the Souls-like formula. Instead of competing on sheer scale, the original was based on one core idea: taking over the corpses of dead warriors and using their powers to survive in a hostile world.

Mortal Shell II expands on practically every facet of its foundation. The sequel is bigger, more ambitious, and more overtly an action RPG, while still retaining the unique identity that set the original apart. If you were worried that the sequel would be larger merely for the sake of size, Mortal Shell II surprisingly demonstrates that the increased scale serves a meaningful purpose. 

You don’t even need to have played the original to understand or enjoy this new journey, as Mortal Shell II works fine as a single game. Mortal Shell II puts you in the role of the intriguing Harbinger, a skeletal zombie on a quest through a unique fantasy environment with medieval gothic imagery and weird otherworldly elements.

Cold Symmetry and publisher Playstack have made a longer game that preserves the original's charm. You're tasked with saving some supposedly extraterrestrial eggs for a strange being, which gives you an immediate objective before the game very much leaves you to explore the world and its secrets by yourself.

The underlying story can become confusing and hard to understand, and it doesn’t always feel like the focus. Instead, the narrative's individuality is enriched by specific people and their histories. The shells you find belonged to warriors, monarchs, rogues, brutes, huntresses, and other odd people.

They all have their own unique narrative.

These simple stories give a sense of realism to what would otherwise be a fantastic realm. The story is most effective if you know who these folks were and why their skills and personalities suited the shells they left behind. Mortal Shell II is more about the journey than a dramatic plot that leaves you in tears, and this approach fits its framework.

The shell concept is at the core of the gameplay mechanic, but Mortal Shell II substantially expands on that. In the role of Harbinger, you can explore the globe and search for the remains of dead warriors. When you enter these shells, your powers, bonuses, and battle style change. One shell is stealthy and can disappear to deliver a specific backstab.

Another player can use a grappling hook or lose health to do powerful hits. These differences are more than skin-deep. Each shell is an opportunity to experiment. The sequel also has a much more relevant transition between shells, with better active abilities and progression systems.

You can also refund and reallocate points used to upgrade particular shells, so you can tweak your composition without having to commit to a single technique. Flexibility encourages exploration, especially when you encounter enemies that reward particular builds. Fire-based attacks giving you trouble? You can invest in fire resistance.

Other scenarios can require you to invest in different defensive or offensive benefits. Combine the shell mechanics with weapons and Tar Stones, and it gets a lot more fascinating. Mortal Shell II features eight major combat weapons and eight secondary weapons with ranged attacks, offering far more variety in gear than the first game.

Some weapons are fast and good at stacking debuffs; others have impressive range but take a long time to swing.

You have ranged choices like a crossbow, a shotgun-like thing, a strange magical lute that confuses enemies, and more strange things. You are able to improve your gear in the Tar Forge close to your home base, and the upgrade process costs currency and consumables for specific bonuses.

Tar Stones can then offer further passive and active effects ranging from increased damage and critical hit chance to elemental effects and even entirely new attacks. Some may even have skills such as a strong sword spin or destructive bullet rain in an area. Combat in Mortal Shell II centers around light and heavy attacks, dodging, defensive seals, ranged weapons, shell powers, and the resolve system.

One of the biggest impacts is a lack of stamina. Fighting is faster and more intense since you can strike and dodge to your heart’s content without waiting for your stamina bar to refill. Resolve removes some of the restrictions of stamina-based Souls-style combat.

You collect resolve by landing melee attacks and eliminating enemies, which you can then utilize on special attacks, shell abilities, ranged attacks, and other beneficial activities. Resolve primarily stems from aggression; therefore, the system encourages you to stay in close combat rather than keep withdrawing.

There are various seals that deal with defensive decisions, and each one modifies how you deal with incoming hits. One lets you stiffen yourself for a moment so you may take damage in an attack animation. One offers a standard block-and-parry method, while the other focuses purely on parrying for higher rewards and risk.

Adjust these settings for another chance to fine-tune the difficulty.

You can harden your security with a more defensive mindset, and more confident players can use precise parries. The combat feels rewarding, with its animations, impact, gore, and finishers; each successful hit carries real weight. The melee method might be tedious if you remain with the same weapon too long, though.

There aren’t enough combos or varieties of attacks to really shake the feeling. Your boredom with one weapon could lead you into exploration and experimentation, but it can be annoying if you have already spent a lot of time upgrading your selected weapon—this is this weakness turned into a strength.

The difficulty of the adversary type is around the same. Mortal Shell II has a wide variety of enemy types; however, some fights can seem a little identical mechanically, as the way you interact with some enemies doesn’t change sufficiently. There are times when technical glitches can affect running and auto-targeting, making what should be solid combat feel less precise.

Mortal Shell II’s advancement is driven less by a typical quest line and more by exploration. Exploring the open area in different directions might yield additional shells and weaponry; you can obtain Tar Stones and find enhancements that encourage you to explore locations that at first seem optional.

When you die, you will lose currency and progression resources, adding to the intensity of your adventure. If you fall, you may need to go back and get your stuff. Natural hazards can be just as deadly as enemies. Falling over ledges, falling into dangerous regions, or being knocked off the map can all result in a significant loss of progress.

One of the best things about the game is the world.

Mortal Shell II builds on the original's more limited scope to create a far larger, more interconnected world with bizarre biomes, crypts, hidden passages, false walls, quirky NPCs, and scattered dungeons. The inner hub opens up into a wide world with twisted flora, bleached mountains, ruined kingdoms, and six gates leading to massive dungeons.

It’s not huge compared to the biggest open-world games, but the way it’s designed makes the world feel so much bigger because you’re always being encouraged to look at something in the distance. The map is good for finding directions but could be improved with better markings or a clearer note system.

You can find something you like, go off to explore somewhere else, and then forget what you were originally interested in. Navigation can be confusing, particularly when you have numerous routes and findings competing for your attention. But this confusion is compensated for by the delight of discovery. 

Mortal Shell II often feels like there’s something worth having around the next bend. Mortal Shell II features a distinctive visual design that sets it apart from many other Souls-like games. The universe has heavy-metal-inspired medieval gothic imagery and weird alien inspirations from H. R. Giger.

The result is a universe of hideous monsters, bizarre warriors, decaying surroundings, and stunning pictures.

You don’t need AAA production values to make for an impressive location. Instead, it’s the art direction that carries much of the weight. The creature designs are especially great, with enemies ranging from armored knights and mad cultists to bursting bats and weird bosses.

Some of the boss designs, such as the moth knight and a weird bog witch in a flaming wheelchair, are some of the most memorable visual conceptions in the game. Some areas seem less crowded and emptier, especially those that appear to connect more interesting places. But these lesser pieces do not wholly spoil the whole presentation.

Mortal Shell II’s unusual visual personality comes from its unique blend of medieval fantasy, gothic horror, and otherworldly strangeness. Not enough information is provided to make a detailed judgment of the music, the voice acting, or the individual sounds.

The description of the fighting makes it clear that the whole thing is aimed at forceful, aggressive action, with effective assaults, gore, finishers, and a backdrop steeped in dark fantasy. So the sound design is part of the game’s overall identity. To conduct a more thorough review, we would need information not present in the source material.

Mortal Shell II succeeds because the expansion sticks to the concepts that made the first so appealing. The world has gotten larger, the number of shells has increased, the variety of weapons has expanded, and the progression mechanisms now allow for much more experimentation.

Its primary faults are equally evident.

The shell system remains the main thing of interest, but it is supplemented by Tar Stones, active abilities, ranged weaponry, defensive seals, and resolve, so you have plenty of alternatives for designing your own strategy. If you stick to one weapon, melee combat might become boring. Sometimes enemy encounters can feel too similar. Navigation can be a little difficult.

Technical problems sometimes interfere with mobility and targeting. Some later bosses can also feel underpowered if you put a lot into the right advancement paths. But such things never take away from the charm of research and testing. Mortal Shell II offers you fresh incentives to explore a new path, search for another shell, utilize a different weapon, or rethink your build.

Finally, Mortal Shell II feels like a sequel that gets that bigger-is-better when it adds to the original notion. It’s still a weird, hard, and often messy Souls-like, but it’s also a really interesting action RPG with its own unique visual identity and a rewarding sense of discovery.

If you’re into exploring new landscapes, messing with constructs, and learning through repeated failure, Mortal Shell II provides lots of reasons to keep pushing. It may not reinvent the wheel or have the most sophisticated fighting system in the world, but it doesn’t need to. Its greatest strength is that it feels like its own weird thing.