Mortal Shell

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DaHeckIzDat
Posts: 1997
Joined: April 9th, 2015, 1:41 pm

Mortal Shell

Postby DaHeckIzDat » March 5th, 2021, 12:46 pm

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You know how people will call any game with slightly above average difficulty "the Dark Souls of" whatever genre it is? Well, Mortal Shell is the Dark Souls of Dark Souls. It takes all the Dark Souls essentials (punishing combat, vague story, giving little to no direction, etc) and cranks them all up to MAXIMUM. It won't even tell you what items do until you've tried them on yourself.

I like the concept of possessing different bodies for various skills and playstyles. I also like the idea of being knocked out of your body the first time you die, giving you the opportunity to re-possess it for one more chance.

But other than that, I feel like it's trying too hard to mimic Dark Souls rather than really become it's own thing—to a fault, even. Dark Souls didn't give you much direction at the beginning of the game, but the starting area was set up in a way that you could see your destinations in the distance, giving you some idea of what it was you were trying to do. In Mortal Shell, you're dumped into a swamp and given a vision telling you to go to another part of the swamp that looks identical to the one you're already in. Okay, where is it? It doesn't tell you. What landmarks can I use to find it? There are none. Which of these identical branching paths will take me there? Not telling.

There's being vague, and then there's actively being hostile to the player, you get what I'm saying? Mortal Shell hasn't quite reached that level yet, but it's dangerously close. I'm going to keep going at it for now though. Maybe something will click, just like Dark Souls did, and I'll start enjoying it.

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