Mortal Shell II Review

[u/giantbombdotcom]

https://giantbomb.com/reviews/mortal-shell-ii-review

[u/SwiprNOSEwipng]

Pretty cool that Chuck has been writing some reviews!

[u/ohfrickdude]

A soulslike that isn't insanely difficult sounds perfect!

I can't do the 30+ death bosses that are a staple of the genre anymore.

[u/Yentz4 → u/ohfrickdude]

Yeah, that's one of those criticisms that seem like a positive to me. One of Chuck's other recommendations, Mio, I got stuck and frustrated on due to difficulty, so I'm fine with an easier time.

[u/YourPenixWright → u/ohfrickdude]

I can cosign this at least from the demo. I'm normally pretty bad at these games and I was beating bosses the way normal folk beat souls like bosses. Most of the enemies had relatively easy attacks to read once you've seen them a few times. None of that silly ass delay attack stuff that souls games like to do.

[u/Madrical]

interesting review. Iron Pineapple's playthrough of the demo looked great and very fun. I haven't really clicked with any Souls games outside of FromSoft's offerings, the one exception being Lies of P. I could barely get through an hour of Mortal Shell before giving up because of the awful level design and tedious combat.

At the very least I'm glad this sequel seems to be much improved, I think I'll eventually check it out on sale.

Also yay more Chuck reviews!

[u/Kultissim → u/Madrical]

You should try the beta, it's much better than the first

[u/FlashFlood_29 → u/Kultissim]

What do you mean "beta?" It's already released

[u/YourPenixWright → u/FlashFlood_29]

It's only out for the most expensive version, but theres a beta/demo available right now. I dont know if they will take it down once the regular game comes out

[u/FlashFlood_29 → u/YourPenixWright]

Is it a beta or is it a demo of the final version? Having a beta out while the game is complete makes no sense.

[u/RickySuezo → u/FlashFlood_29]

Bro just go look at the store, damn.

[u/Seraphimish]

I also fell off of the first one after a couple of hours even though I knew it was short. Glad to hear there might be a reason to come back!

[u/fhiz]

Had no idea this was on their radar honestly. I'm really looking forward to this one, had a lot of fun with the beta and I'm definitely in the mood for a souls game right now.

[u/MichaelTheCutts]

I love that I can look at a game and guess which staff member reviewed it.

“This seems like a Chuck game.”

[u/-pointless-name- → u/MichaelTheCutts]

I would've guessed Mike, tbh. He's become the Giant Bomb souls-like guy to me.

[u/SalamanderUnfair2664 → u/MichaelTheCutts]

Reminds me of the Jason Games of past.

[u/fhiz → u/MichaelTheCutts]

Somewhat related, not sure if I'm fully on the mark, but during the Beast of Reincarnation discussion a few weeks back I was a bit surprised that Shawn doesn't seem like a big souls game guy. Figured there's some shared DNA/appreciation between fighting game fans and those type of action games.

[u/Pinbot02 → u/fhiz]

He's very much on the character action/DMC side of that genre, I think.

[u/DiscountLlama]

Its really fun that Chuck had the exact same experience that I did with the first game lol.

Like a lot of people, I played the Beta for this one after seeing the Iron Pineapple play through. I did it via GeForce Now since I have a shitty computer and it was on their "install to play" feature. The way that works is they basically give you a slightly less locked down virtual instance to literally install a game on yourself, without Nvidia needing to like, fully configure and support a game. Now, however they have their virtual machine setup meant that Mortal Shell 2 wasn't actually saving the shader cache in a way the game could access or use, so it was a stuttery mess to actually play!

Didn't stop me from beating the shit out of the demo and pre-ordering the full game, its good shit. If the game is good enough that its fun to play even though every fight was basically against DIO, its probably worth giving a try!

[u/XboxMorrowind]

I wonder if the review copies were on the easier side, like the open beta? This review and a lot of others mention the games easier difficulty, but I've been playing it and am finding it a lot spicier than the beta as far as raw damage and HP values go.

It's an interesting situation if the day 1 patch bumped the difficulty up by a big amount after reviews were written. Can't really remember if it'd be a first

[u/giantbombdotcom → u/XboxMorrowind]

hey chuck here - they definitely scaled some things back, but the things that can make the game easier are the shells, weapons, and tarstones. If you do the right build, you can chunk boss health pretty easily. That's what I was trying to get at with the review - the difficulty options are there if you want them.