Mortal Shell by the developers Cold Symmetry is yet another entry into a now somewhat crowded genre of dark fantasy RPGs that used to be quite a niche, i.e Soulsborne. After the meteoric rise of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s brainchild, the Dark Souls series, and with further additions of games such as Bloodborne and Sekiro Shadow Dies Twice, too many developers tried to emulate the ‘Soulsborne’ formula with varying degrees of success but the original games still stood stalwart. The announcement of Mortal Shell was received by the Soulsborne players with cautious enthusiasm and for most of them, the writer included, Mortal Shell could potentially be the very thing to sate our thirst for Elden Ring and Demon’s Souls Remaster. Did it succeed? Let’s find out in our review of the PS4 version of Mortal Shell.
Mortal Shell, as the name suggests, allows us to possess an otherwise dead body or a ‘shell’ and use it as our own. The game offers Four different shells in total, with unique unlockable abilities and varying degrees of physical abilities including resilience or stamina. The shells can be hopped into and discarded by the use of unique ‘effigies’ found throughout the game.
As soon as Mortal Shell loads we immediately sense a strong familiarity with this game. The aesthetics, the ambiance, cryptic and ominous lore …this most certainly looks like a Souls game.
One peculiar aspect of the Souls games is its minimalistic approach towards storytelling which is more or less a staple of the series so suffice it to say that Mortal Shell followed the same route with rather more enthusiasm where there isn’t even a proper intro to the game. Some ominous fog, ethereal sounds, and an albino….husk? of a man lying in a pool of water, suddenly jolted by the spark of life and slowly rises to gain footing.
This is the ‘Foundling’ a name given to us when we have traveled a bit further along the road by Sester Genessa, a mask-wearing mysterious woman speaking in riddles and acting both like the Shrine Maidens as well as the bonfires from Souls games. As the Foundling, we find our selves in a place that is clearly not the physical world but very much a Spiritual Plane. Our body, interestingly, isn’t completely a skeleton but still retains quite a bit of musculature. A series of Developers’ messages begin popping as we start moving providing basic information. We are told how to sprint, to dodge, light and heavy attacks, use items, etc which is all yawn inducingly familiar for a Souls player…but here is the first time when we learn about one of the completely unique features of Mortal Shell that actually sits at the core of Mortal Shell combat mechanics and can be used in a variety of ways….Hardening!
On the PS4 the L2 button is dedicated to Harden. One press of the button and the Foundling’s body instantly petrifies and essentially transforms him into a marble statue. Enemy attacks, be those claws or talons or sword strikes and projectiles harmlessly bounce off the petrified limbs of our character and in case of melee enemies disorient them long enough for a counter-attack.
When I was first given the Hardening tutorial my first thoughts were “so it is just a tacky replacement for shield’ and since it requires a brief cooldown period of about 05 seconds I wished the devs had given me a shield rather than this gimmick and didn’t really give much thought to it. Even when just a little further we are told that pressing L2 and R1 in midflight would actually guarantee a free hit or two it was still the same for me. It is so not that!
Hardening is deceptively simple and only when you’ve become a somewhat seasoned warrior that you begin to realize the sheer game-changing potential of this mechanic. You see since this is a Souls-like game, it goes without saying that you are never safe. Death lurks behind every nook and cranny and even the lowliest of grunts could surprise and kill you anytime. And then you’re given a power that if used wisely could even topple the fiercest of enemies or provide you with at least a single one hundred percent guaranteed effective shot when you are completely backed into a corner. Of course, there is always a possibility that this could be abused to cheese enemies but the cooldown timer at least keeps it partially in check (though later a passive ability can be purchased that reduces the cooldown time to a certain percentage as well). Oh, and it does one good to remember that you can Harden absolutely ‘anytime’ during combat, even in midswing.
Aside from the usual Souls combat mechanics and in addition to Hardening, Mortal Shell has also implemented the use of the Special Ability and what has become the bane of me, Resolve!
Any Souls and Bloodborne player understands how absolutely essential stamina management is in these games. Stamina is the very fuel that powers the engine of destruction that is a Souls player and all of their tools. Mortal Shell has, in addition to Stamina, of course, introduced the resolve mechanics, and personally I am not much of a fan.
Resolve is a sort of a third meter other than HP and Stamina bars that are directly and vitally linked to the combat mechanics. Depicted by a short series of golden-colored bars immediately atop the HP indicator, Resolve is either slowly gained when you consistently and successfully kill enemies or by drinking inferior or superior moonshine, former of which could be bought from a very interesting merchant. It is however what resolve is used for that makes you cling on to those precious reserves as Gollum did to his precious, let me explain :
Mortal Shell combat does offer a parry and riposte mechanic with slight variation. Unlike Souls games the ability to parry and riposte is not available from the get-go. It requires finding a special tower and a special NPC within that tower that gifts you with a ‘Tarnished Seal’, very much resembling an Egyptian Ankh, and thus unlocks parry and riposte. A successful parry would very briefly open up an enemy for a power riposte, indicated by a red circular glow reminiscent of death blow indicators from Sekiro, and pulling it off successfully would not only take out a good chunk of the enemy’s health but also heals us…provided we have the resolve. A parry without resolve would be almost useless to attempt really.
Our characters can also use a “special attack” after purchasing the ability that is, where our character draws out a long metal spike from the sword and impales the enemy. On PS4 the ability can be activated by pressing L1 + R1…and it uses Two bars of resolve. The damage caused by this ability is significant and if you were skilled enough to enter a boss arena with full four bars of resolve (the count varies with Shells. Some may only have 02 bars in total) you could bring down the health of the terrifying g monster in front of you to 50% within 30 seconds.
Another ability that also needs to be purchased is the ability to ‘Kick’ and stun the enemy , which again requires resolve.
Amongst the other interesting features introduced by Cold Symmetry in Mortal Shell besides Hardening and Resolve is how to leave or be driven out from your shells and repossess them. Something that Sekiro players would immediately feel at home with since it is very similar to the resurrection mechanics of the former. When an enemy attack or poison completely depletes your health, the Foundling sort of jumps out of the Shell it was possessing. Time stops for a few seconds and we could actually see that shell frozen in time that we inhabited just moments ago. Even in the Foundling’s fragile state, the player could continue the fight but it barely takes a single hit to end his life completely. So running back and jumping into your shell is usually a safer choice especially when it refills the health bar completely. But die again and it is game over. Though in true Souls fashion if you died and managed to reach the point where you shuffled off your mortal coil without dying you’d see a hologram of your shell locked in the last animation before your death and you could absorb that within you, reclaiming the lost tar which serves as currency in Mortal Shell similar to souls and blood echoes.
Mortal Shell also puts its unique twist on health gain by doing its own thing. Rather than Estus Flasks or Blood Vials or Healing Gourds, Mortal Shell gives us …Mushrooms. These mushrooms can be picked and when used they slowly regenerate health over a period of time instead of an instant refill. Other consumables, such as a roasted rat, may offer more health per second and can be bought from the merchant as well but the cool thing about the Mushrooms is they can be harvested. Once picked a cool down meter hovers over the mushrooms and after 5 long minutes, they are ready again.
Now lets come to the ‘not so good’ things about Mortal Shell.
Dark Souls games IIRC never wowed me with their beauty but Mortal Shell disappointed me very much. Within 02 minutes of starting the game, I had to stop and turn off the film grain effect from the settings which were ‘On’ by default. It did clean up the image but those ugly ugly jaggies and pixelated flame in burning torches really put a damper on my enthusiasm, though a 3.8gb file size had already prepared me for something like this.
Mortal Shell has done a splendid job nailing the Souls ambiance but unfortunately, its level design leaves much to be desired. Far from the remarkably and organically interconnected world of Dark Souls, the vast swampy areas of Mortal Shell confused me and the narrow constricting catacombs bored me.
The way the character moves always has something off about it. Be it the sprint or dodge the Foundling always seems to hesitate first and the dodge especially isn’t nearly as swift or agile as in Souls games.
While the hitboxes of the game seem to work fine most of the time, the sprint and heavy attack move boggled my mind. Once I missed 8 out of 10 times. My character would just NEVER hit the enemy and would always hit the ground on either side. That was the most frustrating thing I had felt in a long time.
The A.I also didn’t win any prizes for me. Most of the time they’d remain completely oblivious to our presence, serenely doing whatever they were doing until we were almost under their noses. And sometimes, though not often, they’d spot us across a long frickin hallway.
Mortal Shell’s familiarity mechanics are a fresh shaking up of the old formula of how the consumables generally work in games. Here every consumable needs to be consumed multiple times before its effects are completely known. I can certainly see the value of this decision and how it encourages the player to actually use the items instead hoarding them, personally, it annoyed me very much since I wished I could have held on to some rare items to use them at appropriate times rather than wasting them to learn their effects.
Final Verdict:
All in all Mortal Shell is certainly an ambitious effort by Cold Symmetry and has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately its very modest production values cast a heavy shadow on this otherwise promising new i.p.
Lets hope that it receives spit and polish and some mending via patches later down the road.
Final Score: 7/10
