Mortal Shell - the shell is empty
Mortal Shell is the first project of a small studio Cold Symmetry, among whose employees there are many industry veterans who at various times worked on projects like Blizzard, 4A Games, Sucker Punch and Saber Interactive. The track record, frankly, is impressive, but did the young team manage to emerge from the shadow of the colossus Hidetaka Miyazaki in the end? Let's figure it out.
Mortal Shell
Genre Action / RPG
Platforms Windows / PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
DevelopersCold Symmetry
PublisherPlaystack
Website
In short, Mortal Shell is such a chamber version of Dark Souls, similar to the progenitor, perhaps more than any other Souls-like. There are, of course, a few of their own chips, but in general it seems that Cold Symmetry diligently copied FromSoftware. So diligently that the first two hours of the game, alas, involuntarily evoke boredom - one gets the impression that we have already seen all this repeatedly. The faceless ghoul "foundling" gets out of the stone gut, takes possession of someone's corpse and, around the next turn, runs into extremely unfriendly local residents who can send our undead to respawn with a couple of kicks.
A short run through the neighborhood brings more and more similarities with Miyazaki's creation - a dying world is in place, characters rushing with gloomy and pretentious phrases are present, battles, despite the absence of the usual block, at first glance, work according to the same principle of maintaining a balance between a series of blows and dodges , the need to collect the local analogue of souls and open checkpoints has not disappeared anywhere, rest near which restores health and simultaneously resurrects all killed enemies, there are still runs to the place of death in order to pick up the resources acquired by back-breaking labor and their loss if it was not possible to reach the corpse alive. Everything is familiar, but there are also nuances.
The combat system is only partially similar, since the developers decided to abandon the traditional block, replacing it with a "solidify" mechanic. At any time, even while striking, the player's character can turn his body into a statue, which not only allows you to block incoming damage, but also, when used correctly, stuns the attacker. The ability, of course, has a small cooldown, so you need to combine it with dodge and parry, which now works as a separate skill, requires energy and, if successfully used, allows you to conduct a quick counterattack, healing the character or causing increased damage to the enemy, depending on from equipped weapons. “Works”, however, it is said too loudly, because it is very difficult to get into the timings exactly, and a mistake is fraught with extremely unpleasant incoming damage.
The most upsetting thing is that even if there is not enough energy for parrying, the character still plays the corresponding animation and you cannot say for sure why the blow was missed in the end - because of the failed timing or lack of energy. After the wonderful parrying system in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, here I could only frown in displeasure and eventually began to simply ignore the possibility of parrying.
In most cases, skills can also be ignored because of the same binding to energy, which, unlike stamina, does not automatically recover, but accumulates during the shredding of enemies. And this feature, personally, simply pissed me off, because it completely breaks the rhythm of fights that is usual for souls-like. Rather than relying on surgically precise button presses at the right time, Mortal Shell has to constantly check the subtle stripes in the bottom corner of the screen to see if I can use an ability or parry an incoming blow right now? I will not pretend to say that such a mechanic has no right to life, but I did not like it.
So I decided to stick with the boring but workable combo-harden-double-dodge-combo-harden formula, after which the fights immediately ceased to seem difficult. Simplifies life and a second chance system, similar to what we saw in the same Sekiro. Having lost health, the "foundling" is thrown out of the body, in this state he is extremely vulnerable, but can still fight. You can, of course, try to defeat the enemies and so, but it is better to try to return to the abandoned shell and "resurrect" with a full scale of health. The second death in a row will send you straight to the checkpoint to Sister Genessa.
In general, Mortal Shell can be called an introduction to Dark Souls for beginners - it is small, only four locations, with rather sparing bosses, relatively straightforward with a little backtracking, the role-playing system is simple, since all characteristics are reduced to the amount of life, stamina and energy in four available shell classes, and pumping skills is not mandatory, the main thing is not to forget to improve the weapons, of which there are only five pieces. You also don't need to bother with building and collecting sets of equipment, since there is simply no equipment in the game, and by and large only consumables get into the inventory. By the way, an interesting story is connected with the latter - the character, like the player, has no idea what is doing all this stuff that falls out of enemies and is lying around, so he uses everything literally blindly, gaining knowledge in the process. The idea is great, but not always intuitive enough. After eating the first poisonous mushroom and dying, I refused to reuse it for a very long time, until at some point I decided to clean the inventory. As it turned out, it is worth eating these mushrooms longer and you will learn to develop immunity to poisons.
I will not argue that there is some zest in the study of the world of the game by the method of scientific poking, although Mortal Shell does not particularly stimulate the study of the environment, because there is nothing special to look for except for corpses-shells and improvements for weapons. No outfit kits, remember? The swampy Falgrim hub location is terrible due to the lack of noticeable landmarks, here you can get lost even after a few hours of the game, while the temples are quite straightforward and there is not much to study in them. You can look for scraps of information that give a better idea of what is happening in general (in the best traditions of the genre, information about the plot has to be collected bit by bit, in the worst traditions of the genre, the plot is not worth the time spent collecting this information) or go over the fog-changed locations with stronger enemies to open previously inaccessible chests, but the motivation to do this will only be if you really like the game.
Mortal Shell came out far from perfect, and this is not surprising, we still have the first project of a small team, while playing a couple of evenings while waiting for the remaster of Demon's Souls is quite possible, but you shouldn't count on more.
Mortal Shell
Genre Action / RPG
Platforms Windows / PlayStation 4 / Xbox One
DevelopersCold Symmetry
PublisherPlaystack
Website
In short, Mortal Shell is such a chamber version of Dark Souls, similar to the progenitor, perhaps more than any other Souls-like. There are, of course, a few of their own chips, but in general it seems that Cold Symmetry diligently copied FromSoftware. So diligently that the first two hours of the game, alas, involuntarily evoke boredom - one gets the impression that we have already seen all this repeatedly. The faceless ghoul "foundling" gets out of the stone gut, takes possession of someone's corpse and, around the next turn, runs into extremely unfriendly local residents who can send our undead to respawn with a couple of kicks.
A short run through the neighborhood brings more and more similarities with Miyazaki's creation - a dying world is in place, characters rushing with gloomy and pretentious phrases are present, battles, despite the absence of the usual block, at first glance, work according to the same principle of maintaining a balance between a series of blows and dodges , the need to collect the local analogue of souls and open checkpoints has not disappeared anywhere, rest near which restores health and simultaneously resurrects all killed enemies, there are still runs to the place of death in order to pick up the resources acquired by back-breaking labor and their loss if it was not possible to reach the corpse alive. Everything is familiar, but there are also nuances.
The combat system is only partially similar, since the developers decided to abandon the traditional block, replacing it with a "solidify" mechanic. At any time, even while striking, the player's character can turn his body into a statue, which not only allows you to block incoming damage, but also, when used correctly, stuns the attacker. The ability, of course, has a small cooldown, so you need to combine it with dodge and parry, which now works as a separate skill, requires energy and, if successfully used, allows you to conduct a quick counterattack, healing the character or causing increased damage to the enemy, depending on from equipped weapons. “Works”, however, it is said too loudly, because it is very difficult to get into the timings exactly, and a mistake is fraught with extremely unpleasant incoming damage.
The most upsetting thing is that even if there is not enough energy for parrying, the character still plays the corresponding animation and you cannot say for sure why the blow was missed in the end - because of the failed timing or lack of energy. After the wonderful parrying system in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, here I could only frown in displeasure and eventually began to simply ignore the possibility of parrying.
In most cases, skills can also be ignored because of the same binding to energy, which, unlike stamina, does not automatically recover, but accumulates during the shredding of enemies. And this feature, personally, simply pissed me off, because it completely breaks the rhythm of fights that is usual for souls-like. Rather than relying on surgically precise button presses at the right time, Mortal Shell has to constantly check the subtle stripes in the bottom corner of the screen to see if I can use an ability or parry an incoming blow right now? I will not pretend to say that such a mechanic has no right to life, but I did not like it.
So I decided to stick with the boring but workable combo-harden-double-dodge-combo-harden formula, after which the fights immediately ceased to seem difficult. Simplifies life and a second chance system, similar to what we saw in the same Sekiro. Having lost health, the "foundling" is thrown out of the body, in this state he is extremely vulnerable, but can still fight. You can, of course, try to defeat the enemies and so, but it is better to try to return to the abandoned shell and "resurrect" with a full scale of health. The second death in a row will send you straight to the checkpoint to Sister Genessa.
In general, Mortal Shell can be called an introduction to Dark Souls for beginners - it is small, only four locations, with rather sparing bosses, relatively straightforward with a little backtracking, the role-playing system is simple, since all characteristics are reduced to the amount of life, stamina and energy in four available shell classes, and pumping skills is not mandatory, the main thing is not to forget to improve the weapons, of which there are only five pieces. You also don't need to bother with building and collecting sets of equipment, since there is simply no equipment in the game, and by and large only consumables get into the inventory. By the way, an interesting story is connected with the latter - the character, like the player, has no idea what is doing all this stuff that falls out of enemies and is lying around, so he uses everything literally blindly, gaining knowledge in the process. The idea is great, but not always intuitive enough. After eating the first poisonous mushroom and dying, I refused to reuse it for a very long time, until at some point I decided to clean the inventory. As it turned out, it is worth eating these mushrooms longer and you will learn to develop immunity to poisons.
I will not argue that there is some zest in the study of the world of the game by the method of scientific poking, although Mortal Shell does not particularly stimulate the study of the environment, because there is nothing special to look for except for corpses-shells and improvements for weapons. No outfit kits, remember? The swampy Falgrim hub location is terrible due to the lack of noticeable landmarks, here you can get lost even after a few hours of the game, while the temples are quite straightforward and there is not much to study in them. You can look for scraps of information that give a better idea of what is happening in general (in the best traditions of the genre, information about the plot has to be collected bit by bit, in the worst traditions of the genre, the plot is not worth the time spent collecting this information) or go over the fog-changed locations with stronger enemies to open previously inaccessible chests, but the motivation to do this will only be if you really like the game.
Mortal Shell came out far from perfect, and this is not surprising, we still have the first project of a small team, while playing a couple of evenings while waiting for the remaster of Demon's Souls is quite possible, but you shouldn't count on more.
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