Mortal Shell (PS4) Review

Through our journey through Fallgrim, the temples, and its outskirts I cannot get over how beautiful this game is. My favorite gaming experiences are ones I can lose myself; the breathtaking landscapes, the creatures, the gameplay all drew me into this strange, but familiar world. Even at the outset, Mortal Shell had its hooks in me.

When walking through Fallgrim and the Outskirts, players begin to get a feel for the effort put into how this game is supposed to pop out at you. The beginning of the game sets the tone where you are drenched in the feeling of how oppressive and hollow the game’s early environments are. Walking through endless waters full of fog, we are taught the basics of combat and get a feel for the controls.

Once you enter into the temples and other dungeon-like zones, players are treated by these breathtaking views of a beautiful, albeit twisted, world. The moment this feeling popped for me the most would have to be once I climbed higher and higher into the Shifting Archives. The light reflecting off the tar-slicked environment and the sun shining in the distance was refreshing and stunning. I had to take a few minutes throughout the game to just look around, but once I did I started taking note of many more places where the environment looked like it was once a thriving and wonderful thing that was transformed into a monstrous abyss.

As far as character models go, I noticed something interesting with the design, specifically regarding their faces. There are only a handful of enemies that you can see their face, or that even have an actual face. While not the boss, you can also find a giant face that reminds me of an evil Bill Murray. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a real cameo. He does stuff like that. In this case, the Stone Slinger and the Brigand Ranger are the only ones with a real face you can see that are human; there are the Noctsurpers with their monstrous faces. Also, you have the Slave of Scorn that is undead with what looks like a wrap around their eyes, so like a half-mask. Anyway, it seems like the rest of the cast, including bosses, all are wearing a mask or have their faces completely covered or destroyed. 

To push this further, when you are fighting with Imrod the Unrepentant you meet him with his mask and armor on. As you enter into phase two of the fight, you break his mask off and reveal his armor-covered body parts that look like they are burned to show patches of missing flesh along with his glowing yellow eyes. He kind of looks like a hulking piece of burnt meat. 

A final noteworthy example would be Crucix the Twiceborn. He comes out with his weird twin attached at the waist and one of them wears a mask. During phase two, the big one’s mask is destroyed and knocked off. This kills the little one and shows the big one’s face and head, which are surprisingly normal-looking. Changing gears thematically in the Twiceborn fight was interesting. The surviving “brether” lifts and tries to speak with the smaller twin to his horror. When he realizes that the smaller one is dead, the camera pans about in confusion like the world is spinning and shaking to convey the pain that it feels. 

This was really cool because I don’t feel like it did something similar throughout my run, but I definitely noticed the moments where it would pop because of it. It almost let me have sympathy for the bosses.

Speaking of the camera, I have to say that the way the camera dramatically pans in the wind-up for the Molten Spear or other powerful weapons and abilities feels amazing. I don’t feel that I had a bad time overall with the camera in this game. Aside from enemies spawning in late in some instances and me being hit by something invisible before they registered they were in, Mortal Shell runs like a tight ship. This could have been due to my hardware, too much stuff on my PlayStation, or the game not loading correctly. Since I have no idea, I’m not going to call it a negative. 

I found the combat to be pretty fluid depending on the character. I spent the most time with Harros, secondly Teil, thirdly Eredrim, and finally Soloman. They all have their own unique quirks, which I found to be the following: Harros is balanced but focuses on hardening to help win fights, Teil focuses on not getting hit and uses I-Frames to avoid damage with doing quicker hits, Eredrim is beefy without much stamina so he benefits from being able to take a hit and dish out hard damage. Lastly, Soloman really focuses on being able to use the Riposte well. 

The story flows well enough. There are a lot of backstories to find through lore pieces and dialogue. You may not find any of it though if you don’t converse with characters or if you’re rushing through things. The game makes itself pretty straightforward and simple but can lend a complexity once you start chasing the lore through the game in each area and in each temple. The lore and world-building in Mortal Shell is great; I love it! 

Sounds in the game are primarily groaning, moaning, and “raaahhh”. It’s good for most of the characters and creatures but sometimes they linger on a bit too long. Most of the time it’s totally fine though. I use audio a ton to get an advantage in gaming so I am used to listening for the finer details probably than the average person. That said it causes things to get muddy here and there for me. 

There are some great noises that come from hardening and un hardening in combat. The audio cue for them is so crisp. I can really handle a lot of great situations just by sound. The clear hit noises really help flesh out if players are making contact because sometimes the depth perception can be a little funny and cause a miss when you are sure you had been hitting. 

As far as the gameplay itself is concerned, it was fluid and direct. You take risks and you are rewarded for successfully practicing those risks into a proper strategy. There was a section of the game where I was unsuccessfully fighting with enemies until I found a combo trick that helped propel me through the rest of the game, aside from a few niche situations. When you use the sword and thrust, if you harden just right you can score a hit, harden before your swing is complete, wait for the enemy to attack you, and cause them to take an additional hit for free as well as restore stamina and be ready for more of a combo. This basically carried me through the entire game afterward. 

Outside of this, I had a few small bugs that were just unfortunate things like getting stuck in the floor on a boss fight. Looking at you Crucix. . . This bug had me use harden near a small divot in the floor and while in Phase 1 he slammed me and we basically merged, stuck in the hole together. He killed me because I could not hide or harden fast enough in Phase 2 to try and cheese it.

Each enemy have their own attack patterns that you need to learn in order to advance at a good pace. I found that no matter what, the enemies would do the same things ritually which was very nice for puzzle-solving my way through many areas and battles. I felt a little down that the fire line of crossbow ladies I ran into didn’t just try to rain hell down on me and instead only one or two decided to shoot at me while the rest turned their crossbows into clubs to chase me. Mostly, I thought there were a few places where the AI was lacking for the way it was presented and kind of let me down for the difficulty I was hoping for. In addition to the cheesy attack I explained before, I wanted to note that I found the AI has an issue with height as well. After climbing to the Shifting Archives, I stumbled across the fact that the enemies would not “fall” down very often. I also found out that with a lock on I could easily aim upwards and kill enemies that crowded to hit me from above through the terrain. The enemy cannot aim down but I can aim up. Well, the bow can but not melee.

Now, this next section is VERY spoiler heavy. I’m going to denote that area with the asterisk in a line. Then afterward the same thing so you can clearly see the section. Also, I will be mentioning a detail in Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series, so if you ever plan on reading it to the end don’t read this next part whatsoever.

******************************************SPOILERs*************************************

When considering the lasting impact of Mortal Shell there’s a comparison I keep coming back to. It’s similar to what was found in Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series; Roland experiences the present he’s been given and is sent back to repeat time with an item he was previously missing. Mortal Shell takes players through the entire process of ascending out of the world and back into the same one. It feels like a letdown if you look at it from the outside, but honestly, it fits just fine. What desire does the main character have? What is the main character’s name aside from Foundling? Does Foundling lend context to Changeling like in folktales? By the end of the game is the main character just a machination, a puppet, or an agent of chaos?

I keep finding more and more questions about more and more details. I guess you can say that time passes and you come back into the world to repeat it again or something along those lines but at the end of the day, the cycle will just keep repeating and you can just keep playing.

SPOILERS

So for everyone avoiding the Spoiler Area above, I strongly believe there is a lot of replay value in Mortal Shell. There are four shells and one no-hit foundling that mixes up the dynamics a lot. There are also have four weapons and a ballista to use so by using these options, players can easily end up with a dozen great or challenging runs with the no-hit challenge being a huge display of skill. Between New Game Plus and the opportunity to unlock missed details, players have plenty to be satisfied with.

There’s no better way to wrap this up than to say a big thank you to Cold Symmetry for giving us a great soulslike that that hits the spot. These developers clearly crafted this game with love and attention and I personally hope that everyone can get a chance to try it out. After beating the game before getting to the review, and life stuff slowing it down, I am still blown away. Kudos to the developers, and kudos to the players who pick up this gem.

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 9/10

VISUALS - 8.5/10

SOUND - 7/10

CONTROLS - 7.5/10

REPLAY VALUE - 8.5/10

OVERALL - 8.1/10

More information about Mortal Shell can be found on the official website. A physical version is in the works and will likely be available by the end of the year. A digital PS4 copy of Mortal Shell was provided for the purpose of review.

For more Soulslike action, read my thoughts about why Hollow Knight is a perfect game for me. We also recently covered a 2D take on the genre in our review of the beautifully violent Blasphemous.