The follow-up to one of the best and most accessible Soulslike games looks to Elden Ring for inspiration, with its new open world environment.
Although there’s no sign that the general appetite for Soulslikes games has lessened in the last few years, it is true that there have been less new entries in the genre recently. This seems to be nothing more than a coincidence though, with the situation made to look worse by the fact that the concept’s progenitor, FromSoftware, has been unusually quiet about its future plans.
They’re clearly working on something other than just The Duskbloods but while that game is supposed to be out this year almost nothing has been shown of it yet. All of which gives the impression that the genre, and its most prolific contributor, are in a lull.
There are many good Soulslike games that are not made by FromSoftware, including the first Mortal Shell from 2020, but few of them provide much in the way of innovation. The concept only seems to move forward at the same pace as From themselves, and so it is that while Mortal Shell was heavily influenced by their earlier work, its sequel has a lot in common with the more recent Elden Ring.
As we’ve often said, we have no problem with developers taking From’s games as inspiration, but what disappoints us is that not only do they copy the gameplay but also the tone and visual style. The original Mortal Shell did have a unique selling point though, in that while it was more punishing than most normal games, for a Soulslike it was easier and less esoteric. The same is also true of Mortal Shell 2.
Since it seems physically impossible for developers to make a Soulslike without a dark gothic tone and near monochrome visuals (Another Crab’s Treasure remains one of the only Soulslikes to ever do anything tonally different) you’ll be unsurprised to learn that, like the original, Mortal Shell 2 is a very dark game, in every sense of the word.
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They may be unoriginal, but the visuals are undeniably evocative, although the series’ storytelling is even more abstruse, to the point where it’s not really clear what’s going on from a plot perspective, except… you’re collecting magic eggs for a giant goddess, or something. What’s more immediately important is how the game’s shell system works, where you play as an extremely fragile protagonist inhabiting different dead bodies. Hence the game’s name.
There are eight shells this time round – twice as many as the first game – with each one acting much like a character class, except with no restrictions on stats and weapons. It’s a neat system that also allows for more explicit story elements to leak in the game, as you relieve the memories of the various bodies you inhabit, and start to learn about not just their background but the world at large.
None of that is much of a step forward from the original, even with the new open world approach, but the game does have some genuine new ideas, peraps the most surprising being the complete lack of a stamina bar. That means you can dodge, block, and attack as much as you like, with no penalty, much as you’d expect to do in a pure action game like Devil May Cry.
Once you’re committed to an attack you can’t cancel out of it though, so if you go around button-mashing you’ll soon be punished for it. This is somewhat akin to Monster Hunter, where you have to know when to commit to an attack, especially with the bigger weapons, since their animations take some time to complete.
Although it doesn’t approach things in the same way, there’s a sense that the game is also trying to emulate the more action-orientated approach of Bloodborne. This is reinforced by the fact that you have a range of guns and other side weapons right from the start, which run on a resource called Resolve, which is gained from successful melee attacks.
In terms of defence, you still have the harden ability from the original game, but it’s accessed via an item called a seal. You can only have one seal active at a time, with others altering whether you can block or parry and exactly how easy it is to stagger an enemy. There’s also one that makes the whole game easier, but in doing so makes it impossible to complete trophies.
This is just one of innumerable ways to customise your character, starting with the shells themselves, with options ranging from a thief that can turn invisible to a guy with an electric grappling hook, and a literal masochist who is more powerful the more pain is inflicted on him.
It’s an impressively nuanced set of systems that allow you to adjust the difficulty in a number of specific areas, maintaining the series’ position as the most accessible Soulslike around. We’ll emphasise again, that it only feels that way in comparison to other games in the genre, but if you’re usually intimidated by From games this is an easier starting point.
