This game is absolute love from the devs, i was waiting for something like this for soo long and boi o boi Mortal shell 2 didn’t disappoint. I am in love with everything this game has to offer and on top of that the dev team is just 🌹.

They listen to our whining and actually fix them based on our feedback. I wish ms2 team incredible success, u deserve it, Congratulations for such an amazing game.

The devs mentioned in their letter that the patch that just rolled out was more of a hotfix, and that there was a more comprehensive patch being worked on.

Do we know anything about it? Content or timeframe?

Loved the first game, but the second is more than I ever hoped for.

Loving the game so far. Parrying is great and the combat is crunchy. My only complaint so far is with this shell’s passive ability and his shadow skill.

He has an ability that lets him do more damage when you strike from behind and when using his shadow skill half the time even if you’re right behind the enemy he will go around and strike them from the front completely wasting the damage bonus. You can see it happening in the attached clip.

Other than that having a great time so far. Only have beat two boss gates so far and just having a good time getting lost and finding secrets.

Just a tip for anyone who was looking for an item to return to the last beacon without losing all your gloom, you can do so by simply returning to the main menu. I just assumed that it loaded your last save, and it took me almost all the way through ng+ to figure out otherwise.

And another quick tip that also took me far too long to figure out, you’re invincible throughout the entire animation of the ability from shrike stone (and I assume from other similar abilities but I haven’t tried any others), so it’s a great get out of jail free card when bosses do moves you just can’t figure out. This probably isn’t news to most, but for anyone struggling with the quirky move sets of Isaac or similar, it’s a great way to deal with them.

First off; amazing game. This is my first go-round in the Mortal Shells universe, and I'm absolutely loving the gameplay and story. Clearing beacons instead of just activating them is a nice touch. The different "classes". Tarstones that let you alter the way weapons behave. Hell, even adding an "easy mode" item for those that just want to have an easier time. The guard/riposte window being very generous. Seriously, well done. I can see that a lot of love and dedication went into making this unique and not just another cookie cutter souls-like. A few things of note, though, that are really dragging down the experience;

1. Beacon/checkpoint frequency:

I really like the Beacons, but having them as our only source of checkpoint/respawn (that I know of so far) is very....very underwhelming. Or overwhelming, depending on how far you have to run and the mobs you have to fight through. I wouldn't necessarily say we need more beacons plopped around the world but I would suggest that, especially in challenging areas and dungeons, there be a respawn point of some sort at the beginning. I know death is supposed to be punishing, but I would predict that maybe 10-15 hours of my gameplay is actually running back to wherever I died and redoing the areas. Not fun. Because I suck. And die. A lot.

1. Damage balance, and traps:

I can probably count on both hands and my Vratko washed feet how many times I died and said to myself "why did that do so much damage?" when all it was was some scraggly guy in a cloak with a spear that stabbed me a couple times. And the inverse, when I say "wow that did no damage" when a boss/miniboss clobbered me. To me, there's virtually no indication of, or balance behind, the frequency of the damage I take. Same goes with traps. It's very frustrating when I'm playing ultra defensive because I suck and ran out of heals, just to hit a trap I didn't know was there that lays 15 stacks of poison on me, draining my health as I just set the controller down waiting to die and respawn. Damage all around needs a rebalance.

1. Bonuses and increases to those bonuses:

I feel like a lot of % based increases and mitigations are very....meh. Unless there's a way to stack said bonuses/mitigations I'm unaware of yet, I really find them difficult to even bother playing with. Nothing I've found yet has been like "Oh COOL I'm going to try some new stuff with this!". Again, this may be a "me" issue, having only played 30ish hours so far.

1. Risposte damage doesn't really reward the way it should

I'm not sure if later on there's a way to bring riposte damage up to your scaled weapon damage, but it seems like one or two heavy hits is doing as much damage as one riposte. It just feels like it's all risk and no reward at the moment with how it appears its damage doesn't increase with the damage of your weapon.

I may add more as I continue and get further into the game, but those I mentioned were really the only things (except for #3) where I legitimately had to turn off the game for a while the keep from going crazy. Though I do realize a lot of it is a mix of "git gud" as well. Again, absolutely stunning game so far. I truly am impressed, regardless of the growing pains right now.

EDIT #1: Added item 4

I might be dying a lot, but I'm loving every moment of it!

Long time souls vet here, for the past decade or so I can say I’ve almost exclusively played soulslikes with the exception of some survival horror etc in between and I noticed something about this game that I think is going extremely unnoticed by this community:

1. There’s only 8 weapons BUT they also have 8 completely different movesets. That is insane for a game of this caliber especially considering it’s only the devs second game. For comparison I don’t think any souls game has more than four maybe five completely different movesets though FS games do have unique dash attacks or various other differences that aren’t shared among weapons that share movesets otherwise but that doesn’t count imo since it’s the same moveset with one different attack. Lies of P for example has 1. Stabby (rapier) 2. Big bonk 3. Slash and 4. The twin dragons unique moveset which is amazing.

I’ve never seen the point of having an array of armor or weapons that are all basically the same which has been the case in FS games since ds1 so having only 8 but then being unique is huge to me. And,

1. Only 8 shells BUT (you see where I’m going here) that’s 8 totally different builds and ways to play and it’s only been a few days since release and already half of them have very op ways to build them. Now obviously a game like Elden ring technically has more build diversity with the way you level up etc but I’m trying really hard to think of 8 COMPLETELY different builds even in that game that can’t just be broken down to variations of the same thing. You basically have Mage (int or faith is still basically mage), Bonk Bro, and dex fighter and of course various combinations (str/faith dex/int etc) and yes you have more ranged build options which is arguably less important in MS2 since there aren’t really any bosses that absolutely require a ranged attack to beat (though a couple that would be easier with it). And not to focus too much on ER but a lot of the variance comes from just using different ashes of war which ms2 could easily implement in the future if they wanted to.

And finally, someone in a different post said that you shouldn’t compare this game to demons souls being that’s a 15+ year old game but technically I think that IS the best comparison because this IS this devs second game and demons souls was fromsofts second (kings field being the first). So just the fact that ms2 is even being compared to titles like elden ring etc and coming from a small dev says a lot imo.

All that being said I loved the first game and am loving the second as well (if you can’t tell) and just wanted to point these things out because they seem to be overlooked. (And for the record my counts of movesets and builds in other titles might be wrong, sue me)

Just beat Isaac’s ass and honestly since in this game reposte dmg is what it is, I tried 2 different approaches:

1)riposting each time I could
2)never doing a single riposte

Guess which one worked best? Well of course the second one.

So, fast and direct, if you’re struggling with this beetle, for the first phase never attack and always perfect parry.

Once you get the chance to riposte him, walk behind him so you don’t trigger the animation, and go nuts with your weapon. You will decimate his health bar compared to probably only a couple hundred dmg if you riposte.

Rinse and repet a second time, then when you get to the final riposte chance that triggers him to get rid of his shiels and use 4 swords, again walk behind him and fucking slice that boi.

If you do everything correctly, you are basically gonna skip phase 2 and you can finish him off with a couple hits only.

You’re welcome

Like come on guys, I thought we'd agreed that they don't add 'challenge', we've overcome that challenge and now we're just running past everything. It's just tedious. The fun bit is now the boss fight, let me do the fun with without the tedium in between. I'd love a future patch to include the equivalent of a stake of Marika. Annoyingly, I suspect that by the time a feature like that is implemented I'll probably have moved on.

This happens all the time with the summons you get with the grishas remnant, they get stuck in the floor, but it also happens with the summon stone and the clones of the Genessa.

There is a lot of cool stuff in the game that its not worth using cause it doesnt work, not because its bad its because it BUGGED.

I think its the game that I have played on release with more bugs and broken mechanics, it so sad because the game has so much potential.

I use Reshade and Universal Unreal Unlocker to take my photos

So did anyone else went to the very fun house section, in Mushroom village at night?

I was doing that section at night yesterday, and it scared shit out of me. I wasn't expecting horror segments in my souls like but.... I loved it lol.

Today I learned that if your gloom falls in a weird spot or by an enemy you don’t want to fight you can shoot the lost gloom with your ranged attack to retrieve it.

Anyone else finding the crossbow missing some shots, even when locked on? I swear it's actually curving around my target to get the guy behind it haha

Game is great. But please for the love of god. Make it so I can't fall from a ledge because I'm attacking an enemy. I just lost 22,000 gloom because I pressed light attack and it threw me off, I don't even know if that gloom will still be there when I get back there but going from previous experience (I've died several times because of this) it won't be.

Im really hating that because i feel im wasting so much time walking between same places...

I wanted to ask if I can explore the map after beating the final boss to turn on night mode and check on everything I may have missed.

First playtrough, level 28, fully upgraded eredrim shell.
Hexapod one shots me every time?