On the Epic Game Store there was an open beta going on for this upcoming Souls-esque-lite-like game. The game is being made by a relatively small team - from the press release stuff it's apparently four industry veterans, although veterans of what other games I do not know.

The game itself is very much another riff on the Souls formula. You have your dark fantasy landscapes with moody undertones and a very Dark Souls inspired overlay for lore and item descriptions. Enemies I've encountered ranged from typical humans to otherworldy monsters. Despite the obvious influences there are a few small gimmicks that do set the game apart in somewhat interesting ways. The game revolves around this mechanic of inhabiting "shells" or rather bodies of fallen soldiers. Each shell has it's own skill tree with unique abilities. During my time with the beta I played two of them which were the classic 2 handed knight and a rogue archetype. These differed from one another in expected ways - the knight had more health and less stamina, the rogue was more agile with his dodging. The shells offer a second chance of sorts for the player during combat. Should you get killed, your ghastly white body gets pushed out of the shell and you can continue fighting with a sliver of health, and even eventually get back inside your shell. It's something different and can be used tactically as re-entering your shell will also top up your health, but this can only be done once as a second death will send you back to the spawnpoint.

Combat is also fairly recognizable. You have your sidestep, your roll, a light and heavy swing with appropriate amounts of animation priority. The new wrinkle introduced in Mortal Shell is the hardening skill. During any animation you can "harden" your shell, becoming a rock like statue thats invulnerable to attacks. This can be used to mitigate oncoming damage or to stagger your enemy and open them up to attack. The game winks and nods at the beginning to try swinging and hardening, in order to show a possible trick to stagger your attacker and then come out of the hardening with a downward swing while they lay defenseless.

Overall the game looks real nice and feels... OK. There is a strange clunkiness to it all. It's hard to describe really, like a mix of input lag and overly long animations? There is no actual block, and your primary means of gaining back health is through a parry and riposte mechanic tied to an energy bar fueled by attacking. The parry felt strange and I didn't really understand the timing of it very well. Sometimes it would wiff real early while other time my hand would be up but the attack hit me anyway. Items have this weird familiarity mechanic tied to do that seems more clever on paper than in action. Each time you use an item you get more familiar with it and can potentially unlock new ways to use it. For instance a poison mushroom will poison you, but with enough uses it will offer poison resistance. This essentially means you need to pointlessly poison yourself 10 times before you gain the antidote ability for that item.

My overall impressions is ehhh OK? I guess. The hardening gimmick seems awkward and doesn't seem to really go beyond the act of replacing a block, but now it's on a cooldown. Games like The Surge seemed to have at least attempted to create their own identity with their own unique systems that seem a lot more integral to the entire game. This is another dark and moody games where upon death all the enemies respawn and you get sent back to the beginning of the level. I think we've had enough of these already that a game needs something more than a fancy block button to set itself aside from the flock.

That said, if you aren't disgusted by the Epic Game Store and the beta is still active maybe give it a try.

I didn't get too far, because I had a crash to desktop, but I dug it enough. I doubt that I'll buy on launch, but it seemed fun enough for a Souls-like. I certainly dug the black metal vibe of the style - almost more than I liked playing the game itself.

Do need to give The Surge 1 & 2 a go at some point though... Huzzahs for Game Pass!

Like you, I couldn't get past the clunkiness of the game. I don't think it's me as I've beaten every Souls game but 3 [learned the hard way that DS3 somehow still didn't have cloud saves] and yet I was constantly dying in Mortal Shell when my character simply wasn't doing what I wanted. I can't tell if it's some issue with reading inputs or stitching animations: just testing it in safe spots away from enemies, mashing R1 and R2 I couldn't even consistently get the standard attack sequences to complete. Same with hardening, where I was able to harden mid-attack in maybe 5% of my attempts.

You're right actually, it did have a clunkiness to it! I thought it felt 'ok', but couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that was 'lacking' either. I might still get it if it goes on a deep enough discount down the line; maybe they'll fix it?