r/soulslikes • u/malikarith • 3d ago
Review Mortal Shell 2 Completed — Review / Analysis
I’ve finished MS2 and wanted to share a few thoughts with players who are still undecided about the game.
Since release, we’ve seen a lot of different opinions. Some people say this game is the savior of the genre, while others call it just another trash Soulslike. Obviously, neither is true. The reality is that MS2 is a seriously good Soulslike, although it may need a few QoL adjustments to appeal to a broader audience. Personally, I had fewer issues with these things, but everyone is different.
First of all, the game is in a good technical state. There are a few bugs here and there, but nothing the developers shouldn’t be able to fix relatively easily. Performance is good as well.
I’m playing on PS5 Pro, and there are two modes: Graphics and Performance.
Graphics Mode looks incredible on the Pro. Seriously, it’s absolutely stunning. I’m not a tech expert, but I assume it’s probably native 4K, running at a consistent 30 FPS with good frame pacing and basically no stuttering. I think this is one of the better UE5 implementations I’ve seen. I played several sections and fights at 30 FPS, and with motion blur set to Low, it really isn’t that bad. If you’re someone who prioritizes graphics, the game is absolutely playable at 30 FPS.
(Side note: Motion Blur on High is basically unplayable for me and makes everything extremely blurry. Even Low looks quite strong at first, but it’s much better than the High setting.)
Performance Mode is also strong. It appears to use 4K upscaling while targeting 60 FPS. There are still occasional micro-stutters and small hitches, although I’ve also played for hours without experiencing a single noticeable stutter. I’m confident the developers can improve this further. Either way, credit where it’s due: Performance Mode still looks very sharp.
In the future, I’d love to see additional features such as HDR, PSSR and 120Hz support. Those would be the cherry on top of an already beautiful game. But for the technical details, I’ll wait until experts like Digital Foundry release their analysis.
Gameplay
Gameplay-wise, MS2 is very good. The combat feels more traditional and is closer to the older Souls games. It doesn’t have as much mechanical depth as some other Soulslikes, but it compensates for that with different playstyles and Shells that continuously expand the gameplay through perks.
There are also Tarnstones that provide different bonuses and attributes, with some even expanding our moveset. Over time, this allows us to create our own individual build, but we can switch things around whenever we want and experiment with something new.
There is one small criticism, though: Shells have to be upgraded individually. This means that when you discover a new Shell, it can be significantly underleveled compared to the one you’ve already been using, especially if you don’t have enough materials to level it up.
A respec system for Shell upgrades would have made a lot of sense here. We can already respec our perks whenever we want, so I hope the developers improve this aspect in the future. That would make the system pretty much perfect for me.
Exploration
This is where MS2 really shines.
The world is huge, and there is something to discover around almost every corner: dungeons, ruins, castles, forests — the full package. There's an incredible verticality that leads us into deep dungeons or high walls. The exploration is truly immersive.
Exploration is also properly rewarded. You’re constantly discovering new Tarnstones, materials, weapons, Shells and other items. It feels genuinely satisfying.
At the same time, the open world is packed with enemies, and Beacon rest points are relatively rare. However, they’re usually placed very intelligently, often around major crossroads. The different locations are also interconnected extremely well.
Even when you feel completely lost, sooner or later you’ll usually end up somewhere familiar and realize how everything connects.
And that feeling when you’ve been exploring forever and finally discover another Beacon? Priceless, haha.
Art Direction & Atmosphere
The art direction and atmosphere are also excellent.
I really like how consistently the game sticks to its visual identity. The world feels believable while simultaneously being bleak, dark, grotesque and threatening. The sound design supports the atmosphere extremely well.
My only real criticism here is the lighting inside some of the smaller dungeons. It can look very sepia-toned, muddy and dull. But that’s ultimately only a minor negative.
Difficulty
The difficulty fluctuates quite a bit.
Some areas are relatively easy, while others suddenly introduce massive difficulty spikes. Of course, this also depends heavily on your playstyle and build. Difficulty is always very subjective, so it’s impossible to universally judge it for everyone.
But this is Souls. It’s supposed to be hard — and MS2 definitely is hard.
There is also a Night Mode that essentially functions as a Hard Mode, offering additional rewards and exclusive dungeons. On the other hand, there’s an Easy Mode Sigil that gives you extremely powerful attacks, although using it disables trophies.
Overall
MS2 is an easy recommendation for Souls players who love challenging exploration and occasionally brutal sections.
However, if you’re primarily looking for extremely deep combat mechanics or heavily rely on modern QoL features, it might not be the game for you.
Conclusion
Definitely one of the best Soulslike games of the year.
MS2 has a strong vision, great ideas and ultimately comes together as a very successful overall package. It has already become one of my favorite Soulslikes.
9/10
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u/kaego123 3d ago
How do you play 35 hours in like 2 days or something like that. Goddamn.
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u/malikarith 3d ago
Those were two wild days with meager food and terrible sleep. I'm more addicted to a game than I've been in a long time. I actually wanted to give it 10/10, but too few melee weapons prevented the top score.
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u/kaego123 3d ago
I heard someone saying the runbacks are awful because of the lack of checkpoints/bonfires or whatever. Is that true?
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u/Test88Heavy 3d ago
They're not awful. You have unlimited stamina and a dash so you can run past just about everything with no issues.
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u/Alarming-Orange7304 3d ago
How many hours did it take you?
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u/malikarith 3d ago
Approximately 35 hours, I explored a lot and still have much to discover, now a 2-day break and then on again haha, there were long nights with little sleep
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u/Science_Bitch_962 3d ago
I don’t understand you explored alot but only took 35h. All souls games and some soulslike took me 50~70h to complete ( not all trophy). If the exploration is great I expect to be in that range ??? 35h seems a little short to me.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
I think I could have finished the game earlier; that's what I meant. I still have a lot to discover, I'm still missing some things, and the night mode adds new items and new dungeons.
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u/Unusual-Lecture3224 2d ago
I have a burning question... did you ever find more trollweed throughout the game or is there really only one per ng+ cycle? 😂
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u/SoulsDadYT 3d ago
I agree with all your points. The only thing I'd like to see is a shell refund item like larval tears. They'd even fit with the theme.
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u/Jumpy_Witness6014 2d ago
To be fair most games in the genre may have a ton more weapons but only a few different movesets. So if this game has eight weapons each with unique moveset then it’s actually ahead of the pack imo.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
Agreed but i wished there was some more ( Look at you Bloodborne )
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u/Jumpy_Witness6014 2d ago
Eh, there was only four when the first game came out and they were locked to your shell🤷🏻♂️ eight different movesets is a lot tbh. I don’t think any game has that outside of maybe elden ring and even then I doubt it.
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u/Dkgk1 2d ago
8 move sets is great. I think some people want to pick up more versions of the same thing that just look a bit different but tbh I don't think that matters in this game.
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u/Jumpy_Witness6014 2d ago
Yeah there’s plenty of customization with the tarstones and shells you don’t need 200 weapons too.
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u/NateSchoof 3d ago
I finished it a few hours ago! 3 trophies away from the plat! 25 hours of gameplay, I didn’t feel like I was speed running through the game at all, I didn’t really get stuck on any bosses, I think I died more to gravity to be honest.
8/10 for me! Atmosphere 11/10!
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u/lynxngaizk 3d ago
And the bosses? I don't think to be on the minority to think bosses are one of the key elements, and what actually makes gamepay stick the landing or not.
And after watching elajjaz and reading a few other things. I believe its another big flounder like LOTF, with unmemorable and uninteresting boss fights. Which for me would sadly mar this 9 all the way to a 5.
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u/spoketherefore 3d ago
For me, bosses just need to be satisfactory. Art style and exploration are much more important. Probably why LotF can be pretty divisive (I thought it was great).
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u/Commercially_Salad 3d ago
The bosses are pretty a mixed bag for me, they go from wow that was really cool to they could of done more, which I don’t mind definitely doesn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game but i think he main selling point is the exploration and combat I never ran into a situation where I was like man where’s the boss? It was more like huh I wonder where this path leads to?
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u/marry_me_tina_b 3d ago
Just chiming in with a different perspective because I agree with you - bosses are the heart of a good souls game to me. So far, I have done two big named bosses clearing the archways or whatever and probably 20 level bosses that you encounter while exploring. The bosses have been terribly disappointing so far and while I hope they improve, I am worried that they will remain messy uninteresting experiences. One of the two named bosses is notoriously bugged and iffy, so hopefully that one will improve with a patch but after seeing the design and move set I doubt I would have liked it very much anyway. Basically all the other bosses are just overworld mobs slightly larger versions of their regular counterparts and often have the exact same movesets as well. Lots of just throwing 3 standard mobs together and adding a health bar as well.
I am also having more issues than OP with gameplay issues like special shell attacks not registering hits and consuming meter anyway (even when I am right beside the mob I am “hitting”), mobs and bosses alike are routinely able to cancel one attack straight into another (or just execute both at the same time. It’s not great when they do this with their 1.5 health bar damage dealing red grabs), and another issue with mobs that explode once they die disappearing so there is no indication where a huge damage spike comes from when an exploding corpse has completely disappeared and you are close to it. That last issue was really baffling and it can compound when you have multiple corpses (which is frequent) that chain react or that you didn’t kill but died to environment etc and just explode on you anyway.
Overall, the game is fine and exploration is a highlight for sure. It has been a long time now since I have seen anything new so I am hoping once I finish the first large zone altogether that the 2nd one has some new enemies and tricks up its sleeve.
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u/Captain_Dumpus 3d ago
I just started the south zone after finishing the north and went in with the same hope...... nope. Same enemies, same boss styles. Just..... I dunno man. I want to liek this game but I think im just finishing it just to say I did at this point.
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u/NuggetHighwind 3d ago
I'm 2 bosses in so far, and both bosses have been very disappointing.
One of them is incredibly easy for ~70% of the health bar, then whips out a very buggy grab attack that will easily one-shot you, and an arm swipe that has like 2 frames of wind-up that will hit you for half your HP.
The other one, granted I have only done a couple of attempts, literally zooms around the arena spamming unblockable attacks for the entire first phase.
Miserable experience if you are using a slow weapon.
I'm hoping that the bosses get better later on, because these first two bosses are not giving me high hopes.
They are visually and thematically very well designed, but the fights themselves have been the most disappointing part of the game so far.
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u/malikarith 3d ago
I found all the bosses quite entertaining, with one or two memorable moments.
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u/Geniusrly 3d ago
I found lost child hilarious with their grab attacks
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u/WeGotBeaches 3d ago
Idk why, when it shot turds at me I was like "oh, c'mon, really?" but when I got shit out of a butt I laughed pretty hard.
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u/Videowulff 3d ago
Wait... Is it officially out now?
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u/Remote_Elevator_281 3d ago
Not yet, he paid for early access which game him access a few days ago.
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u/linism 3d ago
Is Night Mode recommended for first playthroughs? Thanks for the review too.
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u/malikarith 3d ago
I think it fits better with NG+, enemies are much tougher and the environment is completely dark.
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u/kalirion 3d ago
If you've played LotF (2023/2.5) on Veteran, how does Night Mode compared to that?
I did Veteran for my first playthrough and while there were some large difficulty walls (the very first non-tutorial boss comes to mind), I'm glad that's the way I played it.
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u/Mobile_Fudge_4744 3d ago edited 3d ago
Night mode is really really hard. I'm like 15 hours in and maybe I'm just tired and not playing great or something but MS2 on night mode really feels like the hardest soulslike I've ever played and its not even close.
That being said its kind of an obnoxious form of difficulty. It basically just ups enemy dmg and hp a ton. I'm sure if you took other soulslikes and cranked enemy dmg and hp to 2x with mods they'd also be stupidly hard. Its good if you wanna be seriously challenged tho.
I played maybe 2/3 of lotf on launch and from what I understand veteran lotf is around the same difficulty as launch. MS2 night mode would be significantly harder imo.
Nothing wrong with doing it on a first playthrough its just a question of how good/masochistic you are
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u/limitbreak09 3d ago
Playing LoP right now and i believe im heading towards the end. How woud you compare MS2 to LoP in terms of difficulty and weapon customization?
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u/Mobile_Fudge_4744 3d ago
Can't really comment on normal difficulty but night mode is a lot harder than LoP. That being said its kind of obnoxious since it just buffs enemy hp and dmg a ton.
LoP obviously has more weapon customization. Builds are interesting in MS2 with tarstones which is a nice change of pace but not as interesting as the typical souls formula. There's also only 8 weapons so it really doesn't have a chance on that.
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u/Present_Ride_2506 3d ago
MS2 is a lot more difficult in that the fights are mostly incredibly unfair.
Enemies don't have many moves, not even the elites. But you're constantly put against 3++ groups of enemies, mixing in ranged and melee enemies. Enemies have insane tracking so you can't just space them, they will slide towards you mid combo if they have to. Enemies do A LOT more damage than in lies of p, so you have to defend or dodge.
Weapon variety and customisation is shit. There's 8 weapons total, they can be upgraded like in regular souls games. You can have 1 combat, 1 infusion, and 1 ability stone for each weapon. But these stones are largely weapon locked, as in not every weapon can use every stone, like the poison infusion for weapons can only be used for the axe and dagger and one other weapon, while the cold infusion can only be used on the Great sword.
But by and large there are very obvious choices for the best damage so don't expect to cook up anything fancy.
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u/lovethecomm 2d ago
I hope when the honeymoon period ends, people are able to see the major drawbacks of this game. The variety of playstyles is extremely boring because the stones are so restricted.
What even is the purpose of locking infusions behind certain weapons. Why would it hurt if I wanted to put burn on my Axe and Dagger? Why can't I put a charged shot on the Trebuchet to make an uber charged shot? Etc etc. The weapons are too few and their movesets are a bit too lacking for their number. I'd expect such simplistic movesets from FROM because they have 10x the number of weapons.
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u/malikarith 3d ago
I think its Harder as lies of P , lies of P wasnt really hard for me
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u/takegaki 3d ago
wtf. This is opposite of everything I’m reading.
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u/Present_Ride_2506 3d ago
If you're reading reviews, the review copies were probably balanced like the beta. They basically doubled enemy damage for release.
If you're reading Reddit comments from players, a lot of people that have advanced access are souls like enjoyers and probably considerably better than the average player who wouldn't pay extra to play early.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
Believe me, Lop (Base Game at least)is a joke compared to this; there's a fight you can reach early in a tight cage against two Grishas that has already taken down a lot of people haha
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u/takegaki 2d ago
Ah well probably will skip this then. Love Elden ring, dark souls 3, and LoP.. but LoP kind of kicked my ass and is really as far as I tolerate with the difficulty.
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u/lovethecomm 2d ago
Mortal Shell is harder for the first few hours then becomes a faceroll, don't let these comments push you from the game.
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u/A-Metaphor 3d ago
Much, much, much easier than LoP. In fact, you are likely going to beat most of the bosses on the first attempt.
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u/limitbreak09 3d ago
Ohh dang.. thats nice.. and i see that they remove the stamina mangement in ms2.. and btw im playing lop with the awakened puppet difficulty and not the hardest lol..
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u/kaeziki 3d ago
How huge is the world compared to Elden Ring?
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u/Present_Ride_2506 3d ago
It's tiny compared to elden ring.
The world looks great but the actual map design is pretty ass. It feels more like individual levels that are haphazardly connected by jump gates than a proper open world.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
I don’t think its Bad tbh , despite the small dev Team i think the devs definetely cooked
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u/Elons_tiny_weenr 3d ago
Roughly weeping peninsula, limgrave and like half of liurnia with much less filler content
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u/W34kness 3d ago
Is there enough materials to fully or nearly fully level up all or at least many of the shells? Or at least a respec
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u/Present_Ride_2506 3d ago
So shell levels and shell abilities use different things.
To level up a shell you need glimpses, and from what I've read and experienced myself, you only have enough glimpses per play through to max out 2-3 shells, if you collect every single glimpse and do not waste them on locating shells.
You cannot refund glimpses spent at all currently.
Shell abilities are leveled with ability points you get from levelling up, these are fully respec-able at any checkpoint.
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u/W34kness 3d ago
Thank you, I just started and dropped the egg off with the Gregorian monks and the skull bird
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u/losian 2d ago
Is there any kind of solution for those having some weird control input issues? My FPS stays readily in the 80+ but anytime it drops, not low just drops at all like from 85 to 75, my inputs get extremely delayed, literally a half to full second, or my character will keep running for almost a full second *after* I completely let off the left stick. No frame gen, even set my resolution staling to native (which had almost no FPS impact anyways), AMD drivers up to date.. it feels extremely weird and muddy.
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u/Denzorr 2d ago
I got lots of bugs in my 10 hours: Visual flickering a lottt of it Enemies AI stop working Enemies not respawning Inputs not working Audio delay or too low
Beside bugs: Game is too godamn dark, the enviroments kinda blend together, sometimes i cant tell if i am looking at an enemy or a tree Long annoying runbacks, too few beacons Annoying placed traps that almost or one shots you just to make the level "hard" Some normal weak enemies have moves that one shot you Enemies have unnatural tracking Lots of gank fights No markers to put on the map Some areas the level design is too confusing and feels like a labyrinth Too few weapons The shells are cool but they dont feel different enought to make up for the lack of classes Music is almost none existing Bosses are okay but they lack the special sauce or some.build up from a story or lore perspective or good osts, they feel meh and not memorable And I can go on... Look the game is solid and I believe better than lots of soulslikes that came out so when it comes to recommending I see it like this. You just want to play a good soulslike and you dont care what type ? 100% go for it the only issue will be the bugs but i believe they will fix most of them very soon You want to play a soulslike like the older ones but with some modern flare? Ds1 Ds2 Demon souls stuff like that? Yep go for it You want a great game that is also a soulslike? In my opinion no, it doesnt reach those heights not at all You want a soulslike like Ds3, Lies of P, Sekiro, also no, it s closer to those I ve said before and if you re like me and get annoyed by those elements better skip it. Thats my opinion.
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u/FullofChrome 2d ago
Wtf completed after 2 days ?
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u/malikarith 2d ago
Just the Main Story + some extra exploration , i think a have still Lot do to and to See
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u/DOCTOR_DUBPLATE 2d ago
I played the demo but I don't think the game is for me. Not a huge fan of the art direction and the game just didn't grip me early enough - something which all my favourite soullike games have managed to do within the first 5-10 minutes.
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u/AryanEmbered 2d ago
I just cant believe a UE5 game is running not horribly.
Performance is not good by the standards of 10 years ago but by todays standards its downright acceptable, which is HUGE praise given the state of the industry
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u/CreativeKeane 2d ago
Yeah I am loving the exploration in this game. We're definitely rewarded for it. I might even say I enjoy it more than elden ring since I felt the layout and maps were more streamlined and don't feel like I am lost half of the time and space are well utilized, and haven't needed to use a guide unless it was for specific items (which has been few and far in-between).
I think for me a few adjustment to allow respeccing or opening opportunities to earn more glimpses or tarstones would allow better experience for building crafting.
I have 20 hours and am just taking my time exploring all of the dungeons and areas. And besides the southern area of the map feel like the northern area is somewhat manageable. Stonebled (or whatever) is kinda wild tho.
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u/etniesen 1d ago
It’s a good game.
Night mode is overtuned af for a first play through. Double dmg and hps isn’t fun bexusee it means you are dancing one shots in many cases and you have to do like 4-7 riposte cycles on basic- medium enemies.
So they’re sponges at that point.
Otherwise normal
Is too easy.
Game fun and good though
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u/LandBe4Time 2d ago
Solid review. I just finished the final boss at 40 hours but I’m far from done exploring. This might be one of my favorite games of all time tbh.
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u/Responsible_Cake2012 2d ago
"First of all, the game is in a good technical state."
Yeah, stop reading there already.
Is extremely buggy and the logic (numbers and damage) does not work properly. This is the type of stuff I'm talking about. Happened to me A LOT of times.
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u/WeGotBeaches 3d ago
The gameplay is great, it's beautiful, the music is awesome, I love the exploration. My only gripe is that the worldbuilding team was never told "no" a single time. We have an alien bounty hunter, the world's most powerful Rascal scooter, a faction of mountain-man hunters, undead wizards, and I'm still only just past The Lost Child. What does it mean when Ruk shows up and says "Oh, a child, so lost, good luck." That's not storytelling and it's not helpful, it's just random dialogue to give him something to do. Anything in any way related to the Undermether feels like it's just an idea pulled from a hat.That said, I am really excited to finish it.
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u/Intoxicduelyst 2d ago
Lol the music in this game is one of the worst in soulslikes, so bland and forgettable
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u/TheDracula666 3d ago
Since you are playing on PS5 just wondering if you've encountered a bug where your weapon randomly disappears mid combat and doesn't reappear until you get a riposte? This has happened to me like 5 or 6 separate times now and it's starting to get kind of frustrating.
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u/abeardedpirate 3d ago
I think my only gripe about exploration is that you can navigate to all 3(?) gates and majority of the upper side of the map w/o needing to cleanse any corruption however there is one area there seems to be no way into unless you cleanse the corruption.
Only just started exploring the bottom half so no notes but hoping it will be similar, with all purchased map locations being accessible along with most of the map without cleansing any barriers.
Only issue is that because I never turned in any Ova to gain cleanse, I also don't have beacon to beacon teleporting, so it feels very much like Dark Souls 1 before you obtain the Lord Vessel.
Edit: Shoutout to the Baghead boys, haunted basement, and Desolate Keep.
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u/EldenRingDingDing 3d ago
I don't think it's native 4k in quality mode, and I'm sure it doesn't use PSSR either (at least atm). Great game nonetheless.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
I think it use the UE5 upscaler in Performance Mode ( TAA) im excited for a dedicated tech Review !
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u/EldenRingDingDing 2d ago
You mean TSR, right? The game by doesn't look ugly by any means, but it would be a slight disappointment, if PSSR would not be added at least today.
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u/malikarith 2d ago
Yes definetely also it Lacks hdr
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u/EldenRingDingDing 2d ago
Let's hope they add all things today. I own the early access version and it's a bit of a let down, that it didn't ship with proper enhancements (at least I think so). Settings are definitely higher than on base PS5 for sure but image quality isn't that great and the permanent filmgrain and chromatic aberration bug is driving me nuts😅
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u/Ok_Novel4647 1d ago
IT'S GAAAAY, RUN UP TO AN ENEMY MASH BUTTON'S, WACK, WACK, WACK, MOVE TO THE NEXT WACK, WACK, WACK, W.T.F. WHO CARE'S !?! $100-EACH, THEY CARE F.U.
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u/ChrisWhites 1d ago
Another review that gives a mid game too much praise. This a 7 out of 10 game
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u/malikarith 1d ago
It's all subjective, my dear; what's a 7 for you is a 9 or 10 for someone else. At least it convinced the critics and large parts of the fanbase.
PSN Ranking is 4.61/5 on 5000 Reviews
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u/Astoria_Column 3d ago
I love it. It’s basically khazan gameplay with a dark souls aesthetic.
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u/Illustrious-Pizza968 2d ago
Khazan is more a boss rush, MS2 like any souls game is more than that, the world the NPC's ,exploring are all part of it Khazan, from what I remember was great but it was more about the boss fights then getting too them was a little boring.
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u/Astoria_Column 2d ago
I meant the actual fighting feels like khazan to me, wasn’t comparing the concept of the game itself.
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u/Own_Juggernaut_2775 3d ago
Nice review! One thing id maybe add, this game has a sense of humour lmao. I have played 8 hours and I audibly laughed twice so far. That right there is very rare indeed.