“Their Flesh Is Your Weapon. Mortal Shell II is a standalone sequel action-RPG with adrenaline-charged, high-stakes combat. Possess warrior Shells, dethrone false gods, redeem a ravaged world.” – Steam Description

Mortal Shell II is a Souls-like 3rd-person wander simulator. While you play, change out 8 different shells (aka characters) with 16 different weapons to suit your preferred playstyle and get lost in the world. While crafting your build, you will find unique bosses and enemies as you discover the unique story hidden underneath. The game gives you no direction, telling you only to find the Undermethyr’s eggs and return them to her.

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Discover Your Equipment

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The game starts by giving you your first-ever shell, Harros, with the ability to petrify enemies, allowing you to get in some good hits before shattering them apart. After the tutorial, you will be able to find and unlock all the other shells. The first two, Proxima and Tiel, are marked on your map to go find for free! From there, you’ll have to find the others by spending currency to buy maps of where they are or, if you’re lucky enough, just stumble upon them in the wild.

Each Shell comes with its own unique play style. Tiel is a cloak-and-dagger type with the ability to dash into shadows, sneak up, and plunge a knife into the gut of your foe. While Proxima plays a lot like Predator, using a biosampler embedded into her arm to shock enemies and grow stronger after taking samples of a creature. Each shell also comes with its own story and memories, because who doesn’t like to learn about the flesh puppet they inhabit! After searching through the memories of each, you deepen your bond with each shell, making it feel like your own, allowing you to understand the person of the shell you reside in.

After finding a shell you enjoy, you’ll also need a weapon to go with it. You start out with the Iconoclast (long sword) and Naylshotte (shotgun), which are both very basic weapons, but I found myself using them the most. The Iconoclast is reliable, and the Naylshotte liquefies enemies in beautiful shrapnel. After the tutorial, you can find up to seven other primary melee weapons and seven secondary range weapons. You can find these weapons by buying maps from a merchant named Merrick. After you buy a map, you will see the general location of the weapon in question.

Once you have a weapon you like and a shell you have come to love, there are tarstones. Tarstones give you passive and active boosts to your character. Granting you anything from increased max health for each kill you get to making your range weapon deal bleed damage each shot. These stones will take your build from basic to more refined as you play with each stat to make something special. Consider for a moment you really like the ranged weapons in the game; you could use the bleed damage tarstone and a tarstone that explodes an enemy after death, dealing damage in a radius around the corpse.

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What Everyone Wants: Combat!

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The combat in the game is a Souls-like player’s dream! Each combat feels like a life-or-death battle where one wrong move can put you in the dirt. With 2 weapons, a shell, and different combinations of tarstones, you can get a lot of variety when it comes to each battle, allowing you to find unique ways to fight bosses and even lesser grunts. Each fight is a blast! The melee attacks push back enemies, giving you space to back up and accept a charge. Then, at a moment’s notice, you could pull out your ranged weapon and deal with flying enemies. This exchange gives the fight a fluid feel. The animations are beautifully crafted, with some fights ending with an arm getting cut off or thrown into a wall with brutish strength. Not only are the animations amazing, but the care that went into the creation of each creature is something to admire. I’ve played a lot of Souls-likes, and at some point enemy variety starts to stop until you’re fighting the same enemy over and over again until you reach the next boss. Mortal Shell II did have this problem too. Each area after the first uses the same enemies. Then as they start to introduce new enemies those become shuffled into the mix and reused over and over and over again.

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Wanderlust

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Sometimes people, me included, like a game where you just wander and find interesting things to do while not being bogged down by the main story. This game perfectly fills that niche. After the starting tutorial, the game gives you a quest from the Undermethyr to find her eggs which were stolen from her and return them to where they belong. It states nothing else, not how to find them or even a proper direction to go. While it feels daunting not having a direction, I feel it’s what this game does really well. While you wander around the vast open area, you will find eggs to bring back along with shells, tarstones, and weapons. It reminds me of my time playing Skyrim, walking off the path to go find something that piqued my attention while on the main quest, only to get lost in ruins for the 100th time and never doing a main story mission again. It gives that feeling and rewards you for it with loot, battles, and unique lore to uncover.

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• Graphics– The Graphics are both beautiful and horrifying; each monster is created with such attention to detail that it makes every fight look amazing. The game really struck me with how realistic it looked while at the same time making it look unique to stand apart from other games.
• Gameplay– Gameplay is both exactly what you expect from a Souls-like (I.E., hard boss fights, dashing out of attacks, resource management) and has enough new mechanics to make it stand out from the rest. Your play style is determined by both your Primary (melee), Secondary (range), Shell, and tarstones, giving you a lot of options for different builds. Using each piece of your kit feels very fluid during play; at no point did I feel like there was something that would make fighting come to a grinding halt and ruin the battle. However, at a point the monsters and even bosses stop being unique. Some of them are just reskinned enemies with one or two new moves.
• Sound– The sound design was fantastic; each sound an enemy makes, the wind blowing, chirping sounds, and the creaking of old homes really bring together the dark fantasy vibe, making you feel immersed in the game.
• Controls– Controls are what to expect from a Souls-like, nothing special except some special interactions from tarstones giving abilities you can use in combat.
• Story– The story is a very minimal part of the game, keeping a lot of the story cryptic and short. Most of it is portrayed in the memories of the shells you find, but not much for the overall lore of the world.