Quick Look: Mortal Shell

I finished this game last weekend and really enjoyed it. It's far less complex than dark souls and shorter, but it has some cool ideas. It's one of the few souls-likes I've enjoyed (Nioh 2 is still my favorite non-From games in the genre).

Best lute machanics in a game this year

Souls like, hack n slash luter. Sounds good to me.

can you jam with the enemies and have a lute circle?

Edit: man, that sucks that this wont be on steam until 2021 - i really want to play this game, but fuck epic.

I got it in my hand right now and it's gettin' hard.

This new ghosts 'n goblins game looks great.

I got through 75% of the game without figuring out those poison mushrooms and it was a real "F***!" moment. I highly recommend parking yourself next to a Bonfire Nun and chow down on poison mushrooms, it will make some painful parts of the game much less so.

I was in the mood for some more Souls, so I decided to check this out, and was immediately afraid it was going to be another "The Surge" situation where I'd run out of patience for it and give it up after a session or two, but I ended up getting to the final boss in one (long) sitting. If you're looking for a more classic Souls experience (defense/patience oriented) I think this is a really tight and intimate one, especially for the price.

pulling a brad @41:30

low health

stops in front of fire devil throwing 100mph fastballs

eats heath item

lol

The poison mushroom

If you become familiar with it it changes to cure poison.

@99bajakid: The lute is actually the "pull" item that Brad was looking for. It pulls/taunts guys from really far, letting you aggro from range. Often you'll get more than you bargained for but I found it useful in the early game on some of the more populated camps in the overworld.

A lot of hardening and whackin' it in this video :)

In all seriousness, I'm down for a leaner Souls-esque experience that is trying new ideas, I think I may check this out. Thanks for showing it off.

Damn this thing is drab.

Did Brad say what he was playing this on? I must have missed it. I know he said it's available on Epic, PS4, and Xbox.

For those looking for a DS lite; I would suggest Ashen as well. It's kinda similar to this where there are no stats, only weapon and item upgrades, as well as swappable armor.

It's also fairly short. I think it took me 12-15 hours to finish, but I wasn't timing myself well.

@tayliastwist: This game wishes it was The Surge. They took some of the worst aspect of the Souls games and then doubled down on them. In theory the idea of object familiarity is neat. In practice having to poison yourself 10 times in a row to get poison resistance is no as cool. The combat somehow manages to have even more animation priority added with a dash of floatiness. The hardening mechanic is a neat gimmick that seems very odd and out of place. Whereas the Surge has a central conceit of ripping off body parts and this idea feeds into nearly every aspect of the game from crafting to combat tactics, Mortal Shells hardening is a one of thing that is just kind of there.

I dunno I wanted to give something different a chance but while games like the Surge are not perfect and clearly lower budget than Souls proper productions, at least it's doing something radically different with the formula. Another grim dark fantasy game that tries very hard to be obtuse for the sake of being obtuse with clunky combat for the sake of clunkiness is not pushing the genre in a meaningful direction.

This is the dessert to Hellpoint’s 3-course-meal. If you want a new really chock-full indie soulslike check out Hellpoint. Stopped playing Mortal Shell halfway through but I’m on my 6 or 7th Hellpoint playthrough

@humanity:You don't have to use all of the items ten times to become familiar with them, the poison shroom included.

But ultimately it sounds like your expectations did you wrong in this case. I didn't want something radically different, I didn't want something that was going to meaningfully push the genre forward (other games have done that well, but I largely haven't liked those); I wanted a comfortably familiar snack that I could kill an evening with, and for a budget price I got that in spades. I respect The Surge a lot for what it is and totally understand the appreciation that game receives. But as someone who's spread hundreds of hours across the Souls series, I far more enjoyed the dozen hours I spent with Mortal Shell than the dozen I sank into The Surge. And I don't think it's unreasonable to say there's surely a sect of players out there who prefer the more deliberate pacing of the original Souls games to their newer, faster counterparts that are going to feel the same. That's just not you, and that's cool too. =)

@dirkins: PS4. Jason said he was playing it on PC.

Breaking Brad shellless run?

I am glad this kinda game exists and has found its audience. But holy shit some of the stuff I hear about it is just, grusome and borderline abusive seemingly. Like, the thing people above are hiding in spoilers? You'd be hard pressed to convince me that is good game design with player enjoyment in mind.

I dunno, the trend of "Hard as hell, obtuse by design and not just no hand holding but a active "hide stuff from the players instead" mentality has clearly been latched onto by a big chunk of fans. So, far be it from me to tell ya'll its wrong or such, wrong for me maybe but clearly not for everyone.

I just still can't believe a big chunk of people rave and praise the obscurity of a given games story, mechanics or basic concepts, yet it feels like practically everyone who does so also admits to either having to check a fan-made wiki at some point, wish they did, or have at least one big "F you devs!" moment specifically because they tried to avoid such fan-made guides.

Its very much a "Old man yell's at clouds' moment for me. But damn if "Back in my day" such obtuse BS was seen as..well, BS, and not "Good game design we want in more games!" by most of the audience.

@tayliastwist: Oh I’m certain there are a lot of players that just want more Dark Souls and I don’t begrudge them one bit. I played the open beta this game had on the Epic Game Store so maybe they smoothed out some edges since then, but in that beta I do remember having to use items quite a bit before they revealed any secondary uses. But ultimately yes I agree that for folks that want more of the same but with a different coat of paint then this is a fine little diversion. At the same time, all these years later, I do think it’s strange you still have teams trying to so faithfully capture that Dark Souls vibe again and again right down to the losing screens. Mortal Shell does enough things to hold its own but there are still parts of it stubbornly anchored to the past that I think would do this whole genre a lot more good if we collectively moved past them - of course once again like you said, and I agree, there plenty of folks that are fine with the past.

This game is neat, but it's ultimately too short. I felt like I had just started hitting my stride with the mechanics, and then it was over, and there doesn't seem to be much reason to replay it.

I do like that the enemies drop lots of lute

Just want to pop in here and say that once you get the item that lets you party, you can party anytime. The resolve just lets you use empowered riposte, which gives you back health. If you don’t have any resolve, a successful party will give you one bar of resolve.

Seems interesting enough and I kind of appreciate it being a shorter game that you can run many times to get real familiar with it. Some of the trophies needed to get the platinum though, oof...

Despite being a $30 game, I think I’ll wait for a sale before I dive in. Enjoying replaying Bloodborne right now, despite my tremendous backlog...

you can tell they really smashed a lot of watermelons when doing the sound for this game. Kinda gets distracting after a while

Looks like they didn't fully understand the parry / riposte system. You can parry as many times as you want, but parry doesn't do any damage, instead, it immediately fills up one bar of resolve. Once you have at least one bar of resolve, you're able to perform a riposte after successfully parrying an attack.

Two things that I appreciate over DS:

I like the softer aesthetic. DS/BB is a harsher look and sort of ugly on purpose. The nature influence for the art style is more pleasing to me personally.

The harden mechanic is super interesting! I love the bait-and-punish loop.

PS

Brad and Jason on QLs are one of my fav pairings.

Wow this is very impressive for a team of 15 employees. It's like a mini-dark souls with new ideas. Especially the physics, camera and the movement of the character is almost 1:1 to what i remember of Dark Souls. Not sure if all these ideas improve on the original, but i want to give it a shot for sure.

This could be the best Luteslasher of the year.

Right when the video started and I saw the health and stamina in the lower left I knew it was yet another souls game.. I am so exhausted with souls games at this point. They have got to come up with something new.

Really enjoyable quick look! great balance of expertise and banter. And the game looks interesting! I actually really like the art style.

I love lute games.

I like this games look. But no other genre of games has made gone from loving it to hating it like The Souls games and their progeny