The original Mortal Shell, first released in 2020, was something of a refreshing take on the Souls genre by emphasizing a more aggressive playstyle while limiting the player’s healing options. Both the combat and level design, while both heavily inspired by the genre’s forebears with an amateur touch at the same time, felt more like early drafts than the level of polish that one would see from other titles in the genre. Has Cold Symmetry taken the critique to heart and used that inspiration to carve out something unique in the pantheon of hardcore action RPG’s with Mortal Shell II?

Mortal Shell II opens as most any other Soulsborne title would: a world that’s been destroyed and scarcely inhabited for what feels like centuries, an ancient evil that’s taken over the land, and a vague goal in mind but no direction as to how to achieve it. As the Harbinger, the player is tasked with tracking down the ovum of a comic and mystical mother figure, and it won't just be a dozen or so, but rather eggs by the hundreds. Guarding these eggs in containers are bosses of all sizes and scales, from your standard human-sized knight with an eternal grudge against anyone in his line of sight to morbidly obese babies with swords sticking out of their faces from those who came before and tried.

As the Harbinger, you're just a formless being without an identity. That's where the Shells come in. Fans of the first Mortal Shell title will recognize some of these various husks, such as Tiel the rogue or Eredrim the armored knight. These embody the so-called classes of the game but realistically only determine what skills and abilities can be acquired, and players can freely swap between any shells they've unlocked by resting at a beacon, the land's version of everburning bonfires. For all intents and purposes, I stuck with Tiel to the end as soon as I exhumed his lifeless corpse from a grave site, giving my Harbinger both a sneak attack and an upgraded dash ability.

There's a modest and compact skill tree for each Shell, with new skill points conferred at specific character levels. Investing a currency known as Glimpses and diving into the memories of these fallen heroes builds up trust with the shell and unlocks a new tier of skills. Leveling up is a far simpler version of what players have come to expect from a Soulslike: slay enemies, gather up a currency that's lost on death (unless you retrieve it from the blood stain or corpse left behind), and invest it back at the resting points to earn another character level.

In Mortal Shell II, the leveling-up choices are done for the player, with additional health, damage, and other key stats assigned to each level. No need to dump skill points into one stat for a weapon you just picked up only to find out it doesn't fit your playstyle at all and need to burn a valuable item to respec those stats. In a way, I both appreciate what Cold Symmetry has done here to take the burden of choice from the player while at the same time feeling like each level feels inconsequential, with only a couple of hit points here or an extra point of damage there.

Combat is the real meat and potatoes of any Souls stew, and Mortal Shell II has gone back to refine its recipe in plenty of ways. Players have multiple defensive options at play here, from blocking to parrying and stiffening up to endure a blow by hardening the shell they inhabit. The Harden mechanic, a staple of the first game's defensive states, has been changed to be a defense against a single strike, but timing it perfectly will both deflect the enemy's attack and fill up their break gauge bit by bit to counter with a deadly riposte counter that not even boss enemies are immune to (in fact, many fights feel like they're intended to be parried with their massively telegraphed attacks). The immediate downside to the Harden change is that other enemies won't wait their turn to swing, and you'll often come out to counter one enemy just in time to get smacked in the face by another.

Each of the dozen or so weapons that the player picks up gives a drastically different playstyle, similar to your typical medieval fare but with unique twists. There are plenty of heavy two-handed weapons for players who want to live out their power fantasy as a heavy-plated knight; however, the combat in Mortal Shell II instead favors those who can predict the enemy's attacks and get in with quicker strikes. I suffered many a death with the iconic two-handed sword that the player starts with, due to getting struck mid-attack or just not being able to keep up and get a jab in during critical openings; as soon as I picked up the axe and hammer, that became my sole tool throughout the rest of the journey. Striking enemies builds up an energy known as Resolve, and this powers everything from the ammo to your secondary ranged weapons to abilities unique to each weapon or shell. These give the combat a more dynamic flow, and fights where all you do is tap on R1 until the enemy is dead are few and far between in Mortal Shell II.

The combat animations are another thing that I take issue with in Mortal Shell II, as while most enemies only feature two or three attacks they can reliably do (even bosses), sometimes the attack animation will come out so quickly or offtimed from what the animation appears to be that you'll try to take a defensive position only to whiff and get struck by the rest of an enemy's combo attack. In a game where the player can be slain in just a few hits, this is a mortal sin. Being slain for the first time only means being knocked free from your shell and returning to the weakened husk that you are. Land enough strikes with your melee weapon, and you can be granted the ability to return to your shell, with each subsequent shedding requiring a far higher investment of damage to continue. It's a novel comeback mechanic at times, but the lack of healing often restores you to the point where one more hit is enough to take the player out.

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Yes, there is a standard flask-style healing in Mortal Shell II known as the Mother's Pulse, but even after seeking out a plethora of materials to upgrade both its efficacy and number of charges, it felt more like sticking a band-aid over an arrow wound. Players can also pick up weltcap mushrooms to confer a minor heal over time. Still, with only two charges at a time and a pitifully minor amount of healing, I would rather dedicate that slot towards something with more impact on the gameplay. Other items that the player picks up can be equipped to one of two slots: an active slot that's better suited for something like an antidote or anti-paralysis tonic, and a passive slot that gives a growing bonus based on how many of that specific item the player has picked up during the course of their adventure.

Mortal Shell II completely reworks the level design of the original game with what the developers have called a tight, interconnected world. In truth, this is a sprawling bit of open fields that connect into corridors meant to guide the player towards one of the various beacons and gates that house the champion bosses in each region of the game. It's all too easy to get lost in the world with poor signposting or guidance in just about every area, whether you're raiding a castle town under siege or walking across planks through a poison swamp. The beacons that players can use as checkpoints and rest up are scattered around the world in seemingly random fashion, with some areas having multiple in close proximity, while others take 30-60 minutes before the player might accidentally stumble upon one. In a game with runs to retrieve your body after death, often taking the player through the same hordes of enemies that they just barely survived the first time, the distribution of waypoints can be seen as little other than a negative on the world design.

Patches have been coming in hot and fast during the review period for Mortal Shell II, with PlayStation 5 copies only getting around a week of lead time to play through and put together a review. During this time, the developers have been issuing multiple patches ahead of today's release for owners of the higher-priced deluxe edition. Most of these patches have been intended to rebalance the game, but, in all actuality, have just made most of the late-game encounters harder and more frustrating to go through, rather than feeling like actual balancing.

Glitches were a routine occurrence in my time with Mortal Shell II, with falling through the world, getting knocked into the stratosphere and falling into pits, crashes to the PlayStation 5 dashboard happening at a high frequency even with the day's latest patch. Midway through the game, I stumbled upon a repeatable glitch that would simply break the enemy AI and leave them mindlessly wandering around their preset paths or the occasional skirmish between two different groups of enemies. I am willing to admit that I certainly took advantage of the ability to get free hits in on the enemy and snag a few levels to help make the beacon-hunting smoother, especially as Cold Symmetry seemed dead set on making Mortal Shell II more frustrating and less enjoyable with each attempt to rebalance.

In its current evolution, Mortal Shell II is a tough sell to players who don't have the stomach for jank and repeated cheap deaths. Over time, I could see Mortal Shell II as a worthy successor to the original, especially with its sense of scale and world exploration, but with frustrating glitches and unforgiving combat, this is one Souls-like that isn't for the easily annoyed.

[Editor's Note: Mortal Shell II was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Review code was provided by the publisher.]

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Both frustrating and intriguing all the same, Mortal Shell II vastly improves on the original title with a world filled with secret dungeons about while routinely kicking the player's teeth in without mercy.

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