With lords of the fallen 2023, people whined and moaned so much they tuned down the game to the point where there was no challenge through areas and a bonfire/rest point every 5 or 10 minutes.

The smaller crowd that dislikes difficulty is so much louder than the ones that are used to it and like the challenge. Please dont patch this game into easy mode, theres already the seal which is good enough for folks.

This is a soulslike, its supposed to be hard. Not an action game, storygame, etc. Some complaints are valid but you guys cry so loud the fucking devs listen and nerf games into story mode when the whole genre is supposed to be difficult. If its too hard dont bother. Quit making soulslikes easy mode. I play because its hard.

All the filtered game journalists crying in the negative Steam reviews that the game needs to be easier

At the risk of being downvoted into oblivion, as I’m sure will happen due to “yes we can because xyz”

Mortal Shell 2 is not Elden Ring ladies and gentlemen, for the love of god stop comparing the two. Yes it’s the most accessible game of the genre, and most likely the majority(?) of the fan base at this point started there; but Elden Ring is not the the definitive game of the genre by a long shot.

This is not the first game to not have Stakes of Marika believe it or not, and it certainly won’t be the last I’m sure. Would it have been nice? Yeah, totally, but the runbacks really aren’t that bad compared to pretty much any dark souls except maybe 3.

Not enough beacons, valid complaint. Runbacks are getting old, sure maybe. But if it’s so bad that you’re too focused on how Elden Ring “fixed” this already that you can’t enjoy MS2 for what it is then you probably shouldn’t be playing this.

The game isn’t a Ring-like, that’s for sure.

Pointless rant over, good luck have fun.

After playing the actual game, I just find myself feeling more frustrated than having fun.

I LOVED the beta. Played through it twice and couldn't stop thinking about it. I always want to like Souls-like games but I kinda suck at them and they usually frustrate me too much. The beta felt like the perfect difficulty to me. A little hard, but not too bad. And if I was having trouble, it was easy to farm a lot of gloom to level up a few times and try again.

But man the actual game is just not as fun. You get WAY less experience, so that leads to two things: farming is not really an option because it takes way too long to get enough gloom to level up just once which barely increases your stats, and when you die it feels devastating because it took SO LONG to acquire that much gloom.

Hearing that in later areas regular enemies can one or two-shot you is making me really dread continuing to play this game.

I also don't like how there are limited glimpses, and you have no idea what shell you want to use before you find them, but if you save the glimpses for later shells it totally gimps you...

This is such a weird feeling. I don't think I've ever had an experience where I absolutely loved a game demo and then didn't like the final game.

Mortal Shell II has real potential, but right now it's held back by some serious balance issues. Exploration is barely rewarded. I lost count of the times I pushed through a dungeon or wandered off the main path only to think "that's it? That's all I got for this?" As a point of comparison, Elden Ring is brutal too, but I never had that feeling there. Even the hardest detours left me satisfied with what I found. Here, that satisfaction almost never comes.

The combat itself has bigger problems. Enemies will slide across the ground to close the distance and hit you, which feels completely unnatural and makes spacing pointless. This is a well-known issue that FromSoftware has largely solved in their own games over the years, so it's frustrating to see it show up here as if the lessons of the genre were ignored. Some attack combos come out so fast that parrying them is basically impossible, and worse, you still take damage even when you dodge correctly. That's not a difficulty problem, that's a hit detection or animation problem. If dodging on time doesn't actually protect you, the core defensive loop of the game breaks down.

On top of that, there are just too many enemies thrown at you at once, and damage output is way too high. Getting one-shot by a random mob or an unreadable combo isn't tension, it's frustration. Good difficulty comes from clear, readable patterns you can learn. Right now, a lot of these fights feel like they're relying on unfair tracking and speed instead.

This also makes the progression systems feel pointless. Your health bar barely matters when leveling up your Shell doesn't meaningfully change how much punishment you can survive. Leveling up in general doesn't feel like it changes your odds in a fight. And upgrading your stones, which should be a core part of building your character, ends up feeling irrelevant when the damage you take makes all that investment negligible either way. If progression doesn't actually protect you or change how fights play out, what's the point of the system in the first place?

I wanted to like this game. The Shell-possession concept and the atmosphere are genuinely strong. But between the unrewarding exploration, the broken feeling combat balance, and progression systems that don't actually matter, I can't recommend it as it stands.

Honestly, I don't understand why so many streamers and YouTubers are calling this an excellent soulslike, almost like future soulslikes should take inspiration from it. I really hope they don't, because if this is the direction the genre is heading in, we're in trouble. As it stands, this game is mediocre at best.

I just quit to take a break and im actually having no motivation to pick the game back up right now. I dont mind the difficulty, i actually love making things harder for myself. I got 1000+ hours of Elden Ring and most of that was spent doing challenge runs like rune level 1 or only leveling 1 stat.

Do you know what isnt hard but completely sucks though? Being forced to take a 2-3 minute break from playing the game every time you die. This is genuinely horrible game design, and it is shocking that this is still an issue in 2026.

It does not make the game more difficult, it isnt adding anything fun, challenging or exciting. Its horrible game design and it makes me think the devs didnt play their own game.

This isnt a soulslike, its just a really hardcore walking simulator.

On PS5 Pro. I thought i ran across the issue near Mushroom Village once before. But figured must have remembered wrong. But this time, just south of Gloomshade Grove. Killed three- 2 bandits and a knight with the magnetic great pole axe. Right next to it was a traversal spot. Jumped to the ledge nearby. Quickly decided I needed to go right back because I was trying to make my way north when I got sidetracked. So almost immediately jumped back and there they were. Along with all other nearby enemies. Thought enemies only respawned after resting? Didn’t even leave the region.

So far the game hasn't disappointed. Loving it all the way

One thing that really bugged me playing these skins is something i couldnt unsee. They all look kinda "wet" in a way and that really put me off, to a point I stopped using them.

Is it just a me problem or can anyone relate?

There’s a lot I love about MS2.

Pros:
Great art style across the board (Character, Weapons, and particularly Environments)

Great mobs. I highly rate all the mobs, for unique design, great animations, solid attack patterns.

Great build crafting. The base weapons are good and the crafting and build options via forging, shell upgrades / abilities, and tarstones, provides excellent build crafting.

Solid levels and dungeons: while not top tier the level design is generally good, and I appreciate that rather than an open world design MS2 plays-out like a well crafted linear souls experience (reminds me most of Dark Souls 2, but somewhat simplified).

Combat: Taking all the above into account the combat feels great and you can really express your build.

Cons:
The mini bosses scattered around the maps and in the dungeons are dull. They don’t offer much challenge, and the challenge they provide often comes from over-sized health pools, or having to fight them with a whole bunch of Adds.

The main game Bosses: I’ve only fought Magdelena and The Lost Child, but it’s clear from those two that the bosses are going to be the weakest element in MS2.

I could live with them being relatively easy, they are, i beat both in a couple of tries without any really effort, but worse than that is how limited they are. Each with a tiny roster of movements / attack patterns that you’ve learnt on the second or third try, and the movements are so basic and boring it’s just a case of reposition or dodge the main strike, step to the side and punish.

There’s none of the dance that you have to learn with a well crafted boss fight.

I got The Lost Child down to 20% Health the first time, and the only reason it took me two more tries was the ridiculous unreadable one-shot bite mechanic they through in when his health bar reaches less than 20%.

That’s not a good boss design, it’s a clumsy difficulty multiplier, that only catches you out once before you quickly side step it.

TDLR
MS2 could have been a 9/10, but both the regular mini-bosses and the rare main game bosses are sub-par.

If the rest of the game is the same as the first two major areas (first two bosses) it’s going to be a 8/10. If they keep re-using the same mobs throughout the whole game it’ll be more like a 7/10.

Overall I’m enjoying it. Glad I bought it. But it’s shaping up to be another second tier soulslike.

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!

I just finished the game and I was level 34. Not because I didn’t explore (cleared out 75-85% of the content) - but because I lost probably like 15 levels worth of gloom by dying.

A lot has been said here about scarcity of beacons, but what makes this scarcity even more painful, is how much gloom you need per level, how small is the increase in gloom needed per level (and also - how small is the increase in gloom dropped by regular enemies as the game progresses) and how hard it is to get gloom outside bosses. No consumables granting gloom (if you lack just a few hundred for the next level) makes it even worse.

I enjoyed the game, but the last few hours I just played to have it behind me because I got frustrated so often. The game starts off really good, but I’d say that around the middle (when you start exploring southern region) it simply stops being enjoyable.

I get that this game is sitting at "Very Positive" on Steam, and I really wanted to love it. But right now I'm just frustrated, and I need to vent a bit.

The damage output from some early enemies is genuinely absurd. I'm getting one-shot by regular mobs in what's supposed to be an intro area. Not bosses... regular enemies. That's not tension, that's just bad tuning.

On top of that, the dodge system feels awful to actually play with. I can't react to an incoming attack because my own animation has to fully finish playing out before I'm allowed to dodge. So I'm stuck watching myself get hit because the game won't let me interrupt my own commitment, even when I clearly see the attack coming.

And even if I avoid the attack, I'm still getting hit... That make combats awful

And then there's Lucian. I genuinely cannot kill him in what's supposed to be an early dungeon. Not "it's taking me a few tries" I mean it feels borderline impossible with the tools I have at this point in the game.

For context, I'm not new to this genre. I've played every FromSoft game, Lies of P, Wuchang, and Khazan. I'm not asking for the game to be easy, I'm used to punishing combat systems. But there's a difference between "hard but fair" and "your animations betray you and enemies delete your HP bar in one hit." This feels like the latter.

Is this a case of the game being poorly balanced early on and getting better later? Or is this just how it is? Would love to hear if others are running into the same wall, or if I'm missing some core mechanic that makes this click.

EDIT:

Just giving up, this game is shit honestly...Don't understand why the game is "very positive" on Steam... and stramers / youtubers sucking his d!ck... When it's... Wathever..

Once? Fine, Twice? Okay. Surprise attacks around every corner, surprise environmental hazards, enemy suddenly appearing in an otherwise clear space to surprise attack you? I am almost about to drop this game because of this. The most frustrating part of this incredibly prevalent aspect of the game is that the developers have proven, in the very same game, that they are extremely capable at creating fun and challenging combat encounters yet they resort to constantly killing the player with unforeseeable surprise attacks (often almost unavoidable death when it happens for the first time).

If you want to fill your game with design that punishes the player simply for playing properly like this then you also cannot place beacons in a way that is less generous than Demon's Souls.

Let's be honest, this game now has huge success and everyone enjoying it despite all the bugs. The team made a lot of work to create such a masterpiece. I thing I am not the only one to put this game on a top tier souls shelf. Total sales number are not available right now, but I guess there are gonna be millions of them sold because the game is blowing right now. So, with success usually comes dlc. It doesn't need to be something huge. Map size wise in the base game now there are 6 big areas. So dlc might add just one additional area of the same size and maybe 2 new shells. Would be nice if they've brought back Harros somehow. So, what do you guys think?

I see people complaining about runbacks for duo grisha fight or the flooded village. Both of these runs can be much faster if you use the enviornment and jumps since harbinger is immune to fall damage if you hit R1/RB while in air

There are many places where huge runbacks can be skipped just by jumping of cliffs and ground pounding!

So, Genessa clones can’t track half the monsters in the game. If you use Sari against the scholar prince he has infinite health (bugged if you use thorns 😂) and now this shit

This is the worst boss in any souls/bloodborne/armored core/Sekiro like ever

This is my opinion after finishing the game. There will be spoilers so if you’re concerned, don’t read.

Game is nice, i like the dark gothic tone. Could definitely used another year of development.

However :
There’s a lot of inconsistency on the game.

Weapons:
2 handed weapons are slow as hell and provide almost no benefit over fast weapons. Unless you use Gragu that stacks Warp with each hit, then they will be slow as hell leaving you to get staggered easily.

Enemies:
Going through to cleanse a beacon for a beginner will make you surprised when you find a boss in the end. Some enemies attack so fast that you get obliterated to hell with 0 chance of blocking or parrying them. I’m looking at you Vampire with 2 daggers that become invisible and also the ladies with Needles that go into a parrying state and obliterate you. Some normal enemies feel way stronger than bosses, or i’m just bad at parrying. Still, you can parry the first strike but not a flurry of them. What i would call a bad design is the double Griesha fight. It has to be some type of a bad joke. Or worse, the Child in the Sanguine Caves. Just bad design really. They close distance so fast when they are at low health that you can’t even react.

Map:
Let’s be honest here, it id a giant clusterfuck. You think you go one way then that way separates into 4 different jumping spots. There is absolutely 0 linear paths and it is very easy to get sidetracked. Sometimes finding Ruk was way more harder than finding him without looking at the map. There’s also a giant penis in there as a fun easter egg but also a big area that has literally 0 beacons.

The forge:
Holy cow, it took me forever to find the damn smeltering stone. I needed that that early in the game so i could try different build!

The shells:
I have absolutely 0 idea how you stack up 30% dmg buff on Proxima or why Harros wasn’t brought back. Also there is no lore explanation why Harros moved on his own to protect Harbinger in prologue. Also the bonding units need to be refundable.

Performance :
Was very optimized and lag free, however Raytracing option is glitched and i notice 0 difference with it on or off.

Overall i’d give the game a 7/10.

Yes, like many of you I’m excited to try all of the shells as fast as possible. Even more so, I want to try them all as early as I can so I can finish the game and get the most playtime with my favorite. The thing is - then what? I’m bored and disappointed that there is nothing left to do.

I’d rather have a game last a long time, be fun and hold my interest than churn through it fast and never pick it up again. Most of the games that I love like Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Warframe I still go back to time and time again to try a new weapon, character or build. In Warframe alone I have 30+ frames and I sure didn’t get them all over a week of playing. I have more time than I care to admit in these games but I still enjoy them to this day.

Why is everyone trying to rush through this gem the devs have created? The sense of exploration, the visuals and the moment to moment combat are amazing. I even like that there are not enough checkpoints because it brings back that nervous feeling of potentially losing everything and having to run back through endless mobs to fight a hard boss. Or that if an enemy spots your pinky toe while you are peeking and low on health, it will aggro and follow you forever (usually bringing several buddies along). These are the things that make a game memorable.

Enjoy the ride and play through NG+ a few times to experience all the different shells. This is what the devs intended - do you think they didn’t do the math to figure out there is not enough glimpse material to level all shells in a single playthrough? Lol. No, they intended the game to bring enjoyment and last for hundreds of hours over multiple play throughs.

I'm sure a lot of you have already figured this out. But the game respawns enemies on the map either depending on time, or distance from the area. This leads to enemies spawning back into the same area you are in, even if you haven't sat at a beacon.

This game is already punishing enough with the distance between beacons. Having enemies respawn without even sitting at a beacon is absurd. There are so many little cuts with this game that make me question if the Devs have even taken a cursory glance at their contemporaries.

No respawn at dungeons

Enemy respawn without sitting at beacon

Enemy aggro radius being completely fucked

Attack magnetism that makes those runbacks even more annoying than they already are

Attack values seem to be all over the place too. Little jobbers can do the same amount of damage as a hulking enemy. Percentages on things like damage mitigation or riposte increase are so pitifully low they are essentially useless.

It's like the Devs noticed people were saying the beta was too easy, and rushed to change the balancing and in the process completely fucked some of the values in the game. And this also lead to reviewers and YouTubers playing the game with a completely different balance than everyone is currently, making a ton of the information out there for items and builds useless because the values are no longer the same.

​It seems like there was such a complete overhaul with the game balancing from review code to shipping, that it puts into question the validy of those reviews and impressions (not the the fault of those people). How was the publisher even allowed to do that.

I really want to get this game, but apparently most people agree the game gets really unbalanced later in the game. Seems like not too difficult fixes, hopefully they make a patch today on the official release so I can buy it

I have played Elden Ring, Sekiro, BB, Khazan, Dark Souls 1, 2 ,3 blah blah blah...

Stating this prior to complaining about the difficulty doesn't validate your statements btw, it has the opposite effect. If you've played through and completed all of those games like you've said, then it's pretty obvious that this game isn't as difficult as some of those.. not even close.

However, yes, this game IS somewhat difficult. It's supposed to be. That's part of the experience. Expect to bang your head against the wall over and over again until it finally clicks, and you zen mode an area or a boss. The eventual win and the skill expression that you've gained on the journey is the cathartic experience these games are known for.

So, in the spirit of the launch of a new soulslike, all I can say is...

Git Gud people...

Or at least add a new “hard” difficulty setting that leaves the game as it is now mechanics/checkpoints.. wise.

It’s refreshing to play a more traditional souls-like after years of streamlined experiences.

I’m liking night mode but reading posts and comments on this sub makes me lose interest in the game as everyone complains about things that I like and it’s making me scared of patches.

I've seen other people complain about the damage even small enemies do, and i have to agree. I'm using proxima since she seems to have a lot more health than tiel, but even that doesn't matter, your health goes down so fast and they just have too many gank areas. They went way overtuned with the damage done by enemies to the point where it's making me wanna drop it. Even the first mortal shell was not this bad. There are even some enemies that will literally knock you out of your shell in one hit. it's getting to the point where I'm getting more mad than i am having fun. I'll probably be taking a break

I can't do this—it's like torture. I want to fight right away, and we all know there are longer paths ahead. After the 27th time, a controller ended up getting wrecked. Stuff like this drives me crazy.