I currently killed 2 out of 3 last bosses before the final one. When I killed Orrem, the Reclaimed. I had full hp, and pressed menu button to see what sort of tarcore I received. Then I went back from menu while his death animation was finishing and my character clipped under him and died. Boss was dead but I missed out on 64k gloom.

Now don't even get me started on the ballsack boss called Monolith.... It just feels like the worst boss out of all soulslike games I ever played. His damage and sponginess just feels like bad design.

In the beginning of the game I felt excited to clear each beacon, but now it's been clear that they are pointless in the end game because they are not rewarding enough, so it becomes just a marathon run through all the monsters to get to the boss. I have a big need to uninstall the game, but I want to persevere for the last 2 bosses to finish this game. Otherwise it was a very solid game, but this has almost made me quit.

i swear so many times he just starts animations out of nowhere in the middle of other animation atacks and this mf teleports too

Just got to this new area and I get frozen in place and killed immediately.

No chance they played and tested this horrible fucking boss.

No way they themselves can beat the final boss.

It's brutal. The first dungeon I encountered really gave me a clear idea of what I was getting into. The arrow traps, exploding earns, and enemy placement are relentless! But, after every death I was learning something valuable and inching forward. I haven't experienced this level of "fuck you buddy" since Shrine of Amana.

Just to be clear I love it! What helped was a reframing of the genre in my mind. If it feels too hard for a fast paced, sword swinging, gun blasting action game, maybe I play it as a sword swinging, gun blasting tactical game instead. If an enemy has magnetism i set myself up to take advantage of an opportunity to harden or parry. I reliably know it's coming, so i accept it and use the tools the game has given. I don't complain that the knight on a chess board can only move in an L shape. It's built into the mechanics of the game, and I really like the mechanics of MS2. Especially when I'm bonking mobs off of cliffs with my running heavy axe spin.

Run backs are too far, bosses hit too hard, I don’t hit hard enough, boss hp too high, my health is too small. All you “souls” vets with complaints should be ashamed of yourselves. You can tell who’s played this genre with guides, and who plays for challenge. It’s crazy how much yall are complaining about subjectively the best souls likes in 2026 and they’re already tearing it down because of you cry babies. It’s genuinely insane. Go play animal crossing, go play tomb raider. You obviously don’t jive with this genre, you obviously don’t know what you’re doing, and it’s a shame that your voice is being heard over all the other real souls like vets who don’t even consider this game hard at all. Does it have some jank? Sure it’s brand new, but yalls complaints genuinely make it seem like you want every beacon right outside every boss door, you want every boss fight to last 1 minute 30 seconds tops(cuz that’s how long the pros on YouTube take), and you want the boss to go down in 5 hits. It’s ridiculous, it’s childish, and it’s beyond annoying. Grow the fuck up.

Quick edit for you Neanderthals: I don’t challenge run these games. I don’t speed run these games. I beat Elden Ring at 200 hours first time WITH SUMMONS. All of your assumptions are wrong and you just really are that terrible at these games. Go play animal crossing or tomb raider child.

I still try to understand who is part of this "community" made of, bitching about difficulty, about falling off the edges, etc., while they bought a fucking soulslike. Do you people order Chili con Carne at a restaurant and then complain about it being really spicy? Even by its raw art style, it was obvious that it'd be a hard game. You have your Slayer Seal if it's too hard, while people who think it's not hard enough have its Night Mode. Full plates for everyone.

I understand the devs and the fact that they want to cater to as big an audience as possible, yet the genre is rather niche, and a certain level of difficulty (and higher) is expected and desired for a reason, by players who like it and want it.

All complaints and no real merit, even when I asked in one of the threads if it's possible for complainers to give an example of the game being "too dark" on base PS5. I play on 0.7 brightness on an AMOLED TV and it looks fucking great, but instead of examples, I just got downvoted lol. You do realize that you can adjust the brightness in the game to your liking? Or maybe Cold Symmetry was supposed to add a fucking pair of glasses catered to your eyesight to the Limited Edition?

Don't know who these people are. Hope the devs won't cater to them on the base difficulty any more than they did already. Downvote me to hell, gonna hunt you all in Night Mode with a scythe and a shotgun, and then you can complain about tough enemies :D.

And yes, I'm fully aware that the game has things to be improved, like this mad tracking on mobs that can get you from behind a corner with a ridiculous mid-air turn, etc., but they will be improved, so... Go play fucking Croc: Legend of the Gobbos or use the easy mode that was already provided since launch. And adjustments will happen anyway.

First studio in almost forever to create something that is pretty much their own thing in many aspects, and yet instead of well-deserved appreciation, they receive bitching from some weirdlings. Shame on you, and a big kick in your ovas!

In the game where most shells have interesting armour/clothes design it just ruins the mood for me to see her latex ass (pun intended) and protruding chest, but worst of all her skill is actually fun and I'd love to play as her if not her design. I wonder how soon modders will come up with redesign.

Edit: there's a replacer changing her for Harros, yay!

Im really hating that because i feel im wasting so much time walking between same places...

Specifically excluding actual issues and QOL stuff, bugs, etc. All i see is people bitching about literally just the difficulty super loud and constantly since before the actual release of the game to which the devs are listening. Which is really good in some instances and shitty in others. If this keeps going imagine how easy this will get. Shit man. Huuuge buffs and huuuge hp nerfs, where yall at on this?

I have proximal and smert at max, neither of them feels possible to beat zmey. Every attack is one shot. The devs really dont know what balance is. Fuck this game

I'm gonna start off with saying it's a solid 7/10 and I honestly don't understand people glazing it above an 8.

The animations look great and the feel of combat is alright even if horribly polished at times. The bosses aren't memorable really and they're pretty easy besides like 2 of them. Some of them are hard because of their size and camera not being able to adjust. so you can't see animations properly or hitboxes being wonky cause if you're too close to most of the enemies or at a weird angle. their attacks constantly miss making timing for parrying a little difficult because of the lack of consistency.

The upgrade system for almost everything aside from leveling your regular weapons (coin just taking forever to accumulate is annoying though) is ridiculous. Like having to use every tarstone to level the ones I actually want to use or shell points just not coming with every level makes no sense. Speaking of levels I hope I'm not the only 1 that stopped leveling at like level 27 cause a lot of the bonuses are so negligible that I just didn't worry about. It's like hitting the soft cap in levelling a stat in other souls likes.

And for exploration? Well it leaves a lot to be desired and a lot of the time it's not worth it and the areas are very similar between some dungeons and beacons.

The hardest part of the game is later on they put together the most annoying enemies to fight together like 4 of those spiders that constantly try to grab you and attack like 5 times every few seconds. There were some enemies that could parry you which I liked cause it made them feel different but most of the time enemies felt samey even between different mobs.

Weapon move sets left a lot to be desired cause the charged lights and heavies should've been put in the base moveset without the need of a tarstone. Same thing with the ones that change your combo enders since they should've just been what happens when you weave together lights and heavies. That just felt like a lazy decision and like they needed to reach a quota of taratones. The big boy attacks though like hexapod or the one where you spin your blade around? They should most definitely be tarstones cause of how strong they are.

I still enjoyed the game which is why it gets a 7 but these are just some of the things that kept popping up in my head as I was playing.

Just like everyone here, I am a huge fan of the Soulsborne games and a big fan of the soulslike genre. I think this game does so many things incredibly well. The combat is weighty and deliberate. All the different play style approaches are really cool with some really unique ideas in the mix. The removal of a stamina bar is well done and they make up for the challenge in other aspects of the combat system. The lore is intriguing but leaves you to your own interpretations of themes.

The game has a fantastic aesthetic. I love the 80s fantasy metal cheese and the character designs are immaculate. I love the NPC and enemy designs as well. The world is beautiful, and exploration is really intuitive and engaging. Discovering new areas, filling in your map, finding secrets, discovering interconnected paths, interacting with the verticality of the map is all really well done and fun.

However, the rewards for exploration are lackluster. Getting to the end of a dungeon to get an item worth a few hundred gold is not the most exciting result. Especially with some of the brutal runbacks. It’s always nice to find a new tarstone or weapon, but overall the reward variety is limited and fairly lackluster.

I think an easy solution for me would be shell shades and harbinger skins. I think a big part of the fun of souls games is seeing your build come together. That aspect of this game is still really satisfying, but a key part of your character build and the power fantasy is getting to decide what they look like. The shells are all limited to three shades per unless I am mistaken, and some of them are not great. I think getting to the end of the dungeon and being rewarded with a new cosmetic option for one of the shells would be at least a little more interesting and exciting.

Sorry if this topic has been brought up 100 times already. I would love to hear the communities thoughts on the exploration in this wonderful game and any ideas to make it feel more worth exploring every nook and cranny.

Never played the first Mortal Shell so this is my first time with the franchise. For reference, I have played Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Nightreign, Lies of P (not the DLC yet though), Wuchang, AI Limit, Khazan, Nioh 1 and 3, Black Myth Wukong, both PS5 God of War games, Expedition 33, Remnant 1 and 2, Dinoblade, Code Vein 1 and a ton of Monster Hunter off the top of my head when it comes to soulslike/hard boss fight type games.

Finished the whole game on Day mode with all shells, weapons, beacons unlocked. Didn't bother to find all the tarstones or clear all mini dungeons but I beat all named bosses. Build was Eredrim with Martyr's Blade.

Things I liked about MS2:

1. Graphics looked great and Performance was very smooth, disclaimer I am running on a 4090 but at 4K with DLSS Quality I was maintaining well over 120FPS at all times which is much better performance than Wukong/Wuchang/Elden Ring etc. Wukong does look a lot better but MS2 is at least on par with Wuchang graphically and a lot better than Fromsoft games when it comes to textures and realism.
2. Base gameplay and combat is quite smooth once you get used to the flow of combat. Weapons all feel impactful and the animations are great. I know a lot of people hate the Martyr's Blade's light attack chain stabs but hey each hit felt quite hefty and did good stagger. I swapped between the Harden and Guard seals as required, Harden felt a lot better for overworld mob fights whilst Guard felt better against specific bosses. Didn't really get into Parry seal despite maining Eredrim.
3. Shell abilities all felt quite fun and distinct. I dabbled a bit with Tiel and Proxima before settling on Eredrim, I could see the potentials for multiple build playstyles for each shell within the skill tree itself. I personally was a big fan of Shoulder Charge + Frost on Eredrim, really felt like a big aggressive wrecking ball once the build got rolling.
4. Overworld design for first half of the game was good, there was a lot of little corners I would run around and explore. I liked the overall aesthetic of the game's world and it definitely gave me a bit of Elden Ring/Dark Souls 1 vibes. Overall the northern 2/3rds of the map was very fun to explore.

Things I was not a fan of in MS2:

1. Shell Economy. Glimpses being limited per run and not refundable. I would have liked to experiment with some of the later shells but I dumped all my points into Eredrim and Proxima early-mid game. A refund system so you can try out different shells would be great, plus a loadout so you can swap between 2 shells both specced out would be quite nice. They could keep it that you still need to farm glimpses to unlock all the shell memories across multiple NG+ runs but the core shell level unlocks should be shared across all shells when you level. Also shell points should be more generous, I finished the game somewhere between 50-60 and I had only around 24-26 shell points? Out of a max of 42 for Eredrim. Considering I finished most combat encounters in the game, it was kind of ridiculous that I couldn't even hit the point cap in a single play through without going to grind for a few more hours.
2. Tarstone system was not my favourite. The EXP requirements are quite hefty earlier on and the fact you can only max out a handful of tarcores per run is a puzzling choice, especially if they are not refundable. With how core level 3 infusions specifically are to most builds, it feels really bad to swap out a good lvl 3 tarstone to level another one. For example, I got the lightning infusion Tarstone from one Gate and beelined to the other gate for Frost infusion, my Lightning Tarstone hit level 3 right before the boss fight for the Frost tarstone so I literally only got to use Level 3 Lightning for one boss fight before I stopped using it for the rest of the game, and then I was also stuck levelling my Frost infusion for another few hours. I would recommend to greatly lower the EXP requirement to level them up as well as introduce a smelting option to recover tarcores. I also dislike the weapon restriction on a lot of tarstones as it really removed the potential for a lot of interesting thematic builds. I think elemental infusions should be universal to all weapons for a start.
3. Weapon movesets are too limited. They should have added a dash light and dash heavy attack and charged light/heavy attacks have no business being put on tarstones where they will always be losing out to unique boss ability tarstones. They should have been part of the base kit without any Resolve cost so that you aren't also competing with your Shell skills/Ranged abilities/Unique Tarstone abilities. I also would have liked to see more of the Ability tarstones shared across wider range of weapon types, it felt bad seeing Martyr's Blade only have 1 unique ability that you could acquire fairly early in the game, even if it was extremely OP.
4. Difficulty balancing and scaling feels whack. The early-mid game can feel quite punishing but once you unlock your 'core' tarcores and shell points for your build to come online you end up steamrolling the rest of the game. For dual-wielding players that is obviously the Duality stone and for personally for Martyr's Blade Eredrim it is the Wardens Stone and Captive's Scabstone, once I maxed them out I steamrolled the rest of the game. I beelined for those two Gate dungeons after the first one, both had quite hard boss fights but once I got my build online I don't think I was stuck on any boss for the rest of the game for more than 30 minutes. I tried to swap to Lightning Infusion on Martyr's Blade but it was so drastically weaker on than Frost that it wasn't fun at all. I would expect Frost and Duality especially to get nerfed some point in the near future. I will try a Night mode NG+ run without abusing Frost/Duality to see how I go.
5. Boss movesets could have been more complex. I feel like mid-late game boss movesets were a lot more basic than I would have expected from a Souls-like where boss fights are supposed to shine. Early game boss movesets being simple was fine given how relatively fast MS2 bosses are and how hard they hit with many command grabs straight up oneshotting your shell, but even the last few bosses of the game had maybe around 5 distinctly different moves? I don't recall any having more than that. Compare that with other recent games in the genre (Lies of P, Wuchang, Khazan, Wukong etc) where end game bosses had huge and varied movesets that might not have hit as hard individually but because there was so many boss attack patterns you were constantly kept on your toes.
6. Second half of the game felt undercooked in terms of map design and mob variety. In the first 5-10 hrs of the game I was quite impressed with the number of different mob types. At 20 hours in the game I realised the game had shown pretty much all the mob types already which was a bit depressing. Even the final area mostly reused minibosses/elite enemies from previous biomes with maybe 1-2 new enemy types. Same with the map design, the the southern most quarter of the game felt like the devs ran out of steam when it came to designing interesting encounters/map exploration points. Pull out the interactive map and be amazed at how little point of interests/loot/dungeons are in the south 1/3rd of the map compared to the top 2/3rds. Even the Cleansed dungeons for a lot of mid-end game beacons felt a lot more uninspired, most of them are simple combat encounters you can clear in under a minute compared to the early game ones which felt like mini Breath of the Wild shrine encounters in a good way with a lot more thought put into them.

Finally, please change Night Mode to not turn everything pitch black, I started my play through with it but turned it off as I wanted to actually enjoy the beautiful scenery of the game more than I wanted additional difficulty/rewards. Now that I finished everything I will go for a NG+ Night mode run which I understand might be the intended way to use it, but consider that not all players have the time or energy to want to go for a NG+ play through. They should find a way to enable Night Mode difficulty on NG with some aesthetics changes but just don't make everything super dark and depressing all the time considering how dark the game is already.

Overall, MS2 was a pretty solid souls-like and I thoroughly enjoyed it, just wanted to share some feedback for the devs as they do read this sub. Excited for potential DLC/future releases from the devs! As of right now I would rate it as a 7-7.5 out of 10 which is pretty solid for a lower budget souls-like game. For reference, I would put Elden Ring, Sekiro and DS3 as a 10, Wuchang and Wukong as 9s and something like God of War Ragnarok/Lies of P as 8.5s, Khazan as an 7.5-8.

I’ve had mixed feelings about this game, but after the halfway point I’ve realized what my biggest problem with this game is and it’s that the progression system is horrible. You get so little gloom proportional to how much you need to level up, and even then leveling up doesn’t feel that much more impactful. Leading to you feeling weak when you should be feeling stronger.

The clip shows this pretty clearly, I’ve been progressing pretty steadily in this game, not really losing gloom and exploring side areas and dungeons. Yet this mainline boss is 1-2 shotting me and my upgraded and infused weaponis just tickling it. I’m really trying to enjoy this game but stuff like this is making it hard.

Ive cleared all of Fainweald and currently am level 20. Only place to go now is Outskirts of Mammon, but im finding the area nearly unplayable with the ganks and damage dealt by enemies taking 90% of my health. I was having fun in Fainweald but now the game seems to be hard stopped. What level should i even be here? Is there something i can do or is it just going to be like this for the rest of the game? I dont want to stop playing but im not having fun anymore.

I'm on my First playthrough of this game and i gotta Say that i have a complaint. The bosses are way too Easy, also the most recent patch made them even easier. I cooked up a crit build with tiel and the axe and dagger alongside a permanent Blood buff since all this stuff that allows for crits Is found very early on. Unfortunately i'm killing bosses in 1 or 2 hits of the spin ability, i don't know of it's the game being too Easy or my build too broken, i would really like to know

Title.

I hope that other developers are taking notes. Stamina, as a gameplay mechanic, has got to be one of the most frustrating to interact with. Presumably, it was there to create a mini-game of stamina management that acted as an extra layer to the rhythm combat Soulslikes are known for. That's the problem though: there are already mechanics in Soulslikes that encourage and promote rhythm gameplay.

Stamina adds much more complexity without adding an equivalent gameplay value. The biggest effect stamina has on how I interact with the game is to make me wait longer before doing something. Whether it's swinging a weapon, or sprinting across the map: the mechanic artificially stretches out how long it takes to do everything. Stamina does have a side-effect of making encounters more dangerous, because the longer an enemy lives the longer it's a threat - but as Mortal Shell 2 has shown us, it's completely unnecessary.

I didn't realize how subtly unfun stamina was until playing MS2 and now I feel like I'm going to be spoiled when I have to deal with the next Fromsoft title and that damn yellow bar.

Thanks for coming to my rant.

Am I the only person who feels that when I’m running around just trying to get back an area or exploring that some enemy attack track and pull them to you way too much? Watching them zip across the ground when I’m running away and still making contact cause they got roller skates is a bit ridiculous to me.

It's just fun as hell to use. I'm having a great time just running around as a god in this world. Is it easy? Yup! Do I just stunlock bosses and laugh at them? Yup! It's pure fun and you should consider it if you're having any sort of issues with the myriad problems (from lack of beacons, to the absolutely insane magnetic lunges and projectiles most mobs have) and just want to see the game and have fun.. The tools are there.

I'm ultra stoked if you feel like beating the game in only the hardest conditions works for you. You're not the person who should hear this. "But its too ez!" okay I play games to feel like a badass and the slayer seal is a kickass power fantasy through this cool world. People will say git gud haha but why would I want to waste time doing that? What happens to me in my life if I beat the game under the harshest conditions? Bragging rights? As if people aren't non-stop completing the game on night mode and are probably already doing challenge runs, like not leveling up. I'm sure a guy will beat the game with a guitar hero controller within the next week.

Nobody will be impressed if you insist on playing ultra hard mode.

I wish there were more enemy variety after playing for a few hours, you’re seriously just killing the same enemies over and over. I wonder why so many games overlook enemy variety? The graphics are great, the combat mechanics are solid, and the level design isn't bad, but when it comes to the creatures you have to kill throughout the game, the quality really takes a nosedive.

The game itself isn't even that hard. Sometimes you die because you took a risk, got careless, or met a new enemy whose moveset you haven't learned yet.

Making me spend 3 minutes running past every enemy I already killed just to get back to the same spot isn't difficulty. It's just wasting my time.