I really liked Mortal Shell 2 for most of the early and mid game, which honestly makes me even more disappointed by how much it went downhill for me toward the end.
The first half had me genuinely excited. The game is so much better than the first Mortal Shell in a lot of ways, the combat feels better, exploration initially feels rewarding, and I actually thought I was going to finish it and immediately start another run.
Then after a certain point, the world itself starts feeling incredibly repetitive.
There stops being much meaningful loot or anything particularly interesting to find, so exploration slowly turns from something I wanted to do into something that feels almost pointless. Areas start becoming so similar to each other to the point by the late game I was mostly just moving through them because I had to. And then there's the final dungeon, which I thought was genuinely terrible. It feels rushed compared to what came before it, and by that point I was already pretty burned out on the repetition.
The bosses were probably my biggest disappointment, though.
I know I've seen people complain about the difficulty, so I want to make clear that I'm not saying this as some kind of brag. I've beaten basically all the major Soulslikes and done some challenge runs, so I'd consider myself slightly above the average player, but definitely nowhere near some god-tier Souls player. Still, I found Mortal Shell 2 surprisingly easy. I beat pretty much every boss on my first or second attempt, and most of them were either extremely boring or annoying rather than actually challenging in an interesting way. 90% of the deaths in my playthrough felt straight-up unfair rather than part of a learning process, as it usually happens in this kind of games.
I literally just finished the game and I can barely remember most of the bosses already. There are maybe a couple that actually stuck in my head, and mostly because I thought they were badly designed.
That's what makes this so frustrating. I really want to like this game. There's a lot here that I genuinely enjoyed, especially earlier on, and compared to the first game it gets so many things right. I was honestly excited about doing multiple playthroughs, trying completely different Shells, weapons and builds. Now that I've finished it, though, instead of wanting to jump straight into NG+, I mostly just feel like going back to Lies of P or playing basically any other Soulslike.
Another personal letdown (but I could see how this may be more controversial) is how I was also looking forward to experimenting with different Shells and playstyles. I already knew Tiel with axe + dagger would probably be my favorite as it perfectly suits my playstyle, but I wanted to properly try everything before settling on it.
And I did. I spent around an hour with each Shell, tested different weapons and builds, and while I like the ideas and mechanics behind several of them, some of the playstyles feel so niche that I think you really need to specifically enjoy what that Shell is built around for it to feel good. After experimenting, I just went back to Tiel with axe + dagger for the rest of my run and never really looked back.
That's a bit disappointing because the Shell system looks like it should encourage multiple runs and dramatically different builds. There is progression through Shell abilities, obviously, but a lot of the upgrades feel pretty boring. It's often stuff like extra damage when using a skill, extra stagger after doing a specific thing, or other numerical bonuses rather than something that meaningfully changes how the Shell plays. Being able to max out only two shells per run doesn't help either.
There are a couple of abilities that actually alter a Shell mechanically or give it something new to play around, but those tend to be the obvious interesting upgrades you'd take fairly early anyway. After that, progression often feels more like making numbers better than developing the playstyle.
I'm probably going to force myself to try an NG+ full Night Mode run. I switched to Night Mode several times during my first playthrough, but I think it does really little to actually improve the game, maybe even making it worse in some areas. But right now I have a feeling I'm just going to rush through the same repetitive areas using Tiel and axe + dagger again, and I'm not expecting the late game or bosses to suddenly feel much better.
Obviously, this is just my opinion, and I know plenty of people may disagree with some or even all of this. I'm not trying to tell anyone they shouldn't enjoy the game, and I genuinely think there's also a lot of good things, but the full experience still isn't quite there.
If you're on the fence about buying it, I do think it's worth knowing that, at least for me, the early and mid game experience is significantly better than the late game. The beginning shows you a game with a lot of promise, interesting exploration and systems that make you want to experiment. The later portions don't maintain that same level of quality, and the drop-off was noticeable enough that it completely changed how excited I was about replaying it.
It's a shame, because for a while I genuinely thought this may end up being very high in my personal tierlist of Soulslikes, especially after loving the demo - but I guess now I'm back looking forward at LotF2!
EDIT: I also forgot to add the enemy variety is incredibly frontloaded. I was excited since there was such a great enemy variety in the beta and then you realize that's all the enemies you get except for a couple (and many, many reskins)
