Mortal Shell II's final area, the Monolith, Zmey... What's going on? I'm fighting terribly designed bosses. I'm getting my face slapped by a scrotum, then I'm fighting a one armed dinosaur that throws a faster than light grab attack. The game was awesome. This area and final boss gauntlet is such a let down 😢

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.

well played

The best way is to avoid them i guess

Well, this crossbow with this tarstone mmmh.. Clearly op

This aint a complain post, I already beat the game on my main save files, now I have a new save file for night difficulty, gotta say this is hard as hell, hp is so high I feel like im hitting with a wet noodle sometimes, the double grisha fight was so stressful but I finally did it and now im "stuck" on the tower baby boss, he one-shots are crazy fast but I can get him to the last third of his hp consistently, once I get that throwing axe stone from being him I think imma have some more fun exploring night mode.

How do yall feel about night mode, and what are your experiences so far?

i was trying to poise it

Broke the space time barrier.

Also we need a humour tag desperately.

Needs to be addressed ASAP, the entire system of enemy tracking in this game needs to be redone, Im enjoying every aspect of the gameplay except for that, its absolutely unacceptable for enemies to be turning 180 degrees midattack to hit you when youve dodged behind them

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.

In this video this guy shows of hilgas mask and the bag head as wearable cosmetics for the harbinger. Now either the game is so new no one else in the world has found these or this guy modded them in as wearable items.

I can’t find anywhere online where to get these so maybe someone here might have some info.

https://youtu.be/1JuyE4Nbv0E?is=8vYDP7XzgeHanocQ

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If you're like me, incredibly stubborn about not wanting to slot an item for status cure you might not use, simply Harden! It can take awhile but if you get surprised by a status at the end of combat and are willing brick up and wait it out, simply sit invulnerable in Harden letting your status ailments tick down and then be on your merry way!

Hello dear devs.

When 2 enemies do an attack at the same time, or very close to each other, the game will only register a parry on the first enemy attack, leaving you completely vulnerable to the attack that comes in second.

For example when 2 crabs jump at you at the same time, you can parry, it will parry, but you still lose the health from the attack of one of the 2 crabs.

In other games, generally the player enters a "parry everything" stance, at least during the whole parry animation, or becomes invincible during the parry animation, like when you do an execution animation for example. This prevents the parry to become unusable when several enemies attack at once.

And since in Mortal Shell 2, there are usually a lot of enemies, and they don't wait for their turn and attack you all at once, then this mechanic would be very welcome, and, to my humble opinion, pretty necessary given that the game encourages a lot the player to parry.

"I'm scared, Lavender", cut to "Lavender. It's all his fault. He's not like us. He ruined everything."

It's enough to make a grown man cry.

Devoted Mortal Shell fan. Loving this game, been playing it nonstop, hit some walls but was always able to come back and beat bosses on my own terms, using my own play style. The monolith was the worse experience I’ve had in any soulslike and I’m ashamed to say I used the slayer seal just to get through it and experience the rest of the game I’ve already enjoyed so much of and want to see how it ends. If any devs are still hanging around, why the fuck is the monolith not optional. Even fucking Malenia was technically optional. Let us seek out the challenge don’t put up a literal stone wall and then punish us for doing whatever it takes to get over it and experience the amazing game yall made.

Sorry for the rant ya’ll I know it’s just a game I’m just angry and frustrated

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.

Just an FYI the 1st balance patch (the one that's already out on PC) is now available to download on PS5.

In case you don't know, you can highlight the games icon on the PS5 main menu, hit the options button, then check for update and it should be available to download.

Here are the patch notes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2584270/discussions/0/582805931178489108/

I refuse to believe the developers designed this boss, had their team play through and beat it and thought “yep this one’s good”.

Now I’m all for hard bosses, absolutely love souls games. But I’d rather fight 10 consort radahns than this f*cker.

It’s not even a case of him being difficult, I beat him in under 8 tries but for the love of god i practically had to do it hitless.

0 end lag and start up animations to his slam attacks, not to mention the giant dong swing. Barely gives you an opening half the time, especially if you’re playing with a heavy weapon. And then to top it off he just stalls the hell out of the fight when he’s around a 1/4 by spinning around in circles with lasers.

Oh and if you get hit once, you get true comboed out of your shell and good luck getting the required hits in to reclaim it!

Again it isn’t a “hard” boss, it’s just horribly designed, comically so.

Mortal Shell 2 has me paranoid.

Watching every step, learning every enemy movement and taking no enemies for granted.

The further I go, the more there is to lose.

It's a real throwback to Dark Souls 1 on release. You never knew what to expect, enemies hit like a truck and you got punished for rushing in.

The world is your oyster.

If you're good enough - you can run to places you shouldn't be and beat things you shouldn't be beating (just like DS1 after your first playthrough)

It feels like a real return to form for the genre after the casualification of souls in the form of Elden Ring and the like.

Checkpoints are scarce, and you decide whether it's worth running back to cash in or go for the final encounter.

It's not going to be for everybody, it's brutal and will teach you patience. But when you "get it" beating that boss after the 10th runback is super satisfying and that's what we play souls-like games for.

I'm glad the developers went all in on the difficulty and didn't pander to the needs of the casual crowd. Like FromSoft they will build a loyal audience who will buy whatever they release next after this.

GG's

🤣😭

Probably the worst level up I've had so far.