Mortal Shell is so close to being a Souls game, that I don’t know how it isn’t

There’s a fine line between imitation as flattery and outright copying the work of a person or group that you admire. In the case of Mortal Shell, the line is so blurred that I could hardly see it, and if you put screenshots from Mortal Shell and Dark Souls II beside each other, most people would be hard-pressed to see the difference. 

The visual similarities are obvious, with theming, sound effects and settings that could easily exist in either game world, and characters or enemies so similar that you feel they could appear in each other’s game as DLC and you wouldn’t even question it. Mortal Shell even uses load screens that could be straight from Dark Souls. 

The similarities are far from just visual and auditory, as well. Mortal Shell is a hugely unforgiving action RPG that offers little to nothing in terms of handholding, and as I’ll reveal more on later, I find it even harder than the hardest of Soulsborne games. Mortal Shell actually offers more and more nods to Dark Souls the more you explore it, to the point where it’s almost silly. 

When levelling up, the player must visit a doll-like and whimsical female figure, in death, the player is first knocked from the mortal body they occupy (more on this later) and is given one chance to return to it, prior to which a single hit will send them back to the start of the last area. If they do die at this point (or are knocked off the mortal coil again before resting) then they will again return to the start of the last area. This strips the player of all currency (tar) until they return to their body and retrieve it.

Similarities between Mortal Shell and Dark Souls mount up in an almost embarrassing multitude, until you start to notice the differences that Mortal Shell introduces on its own. If you can imagine that the starting point was simply that the developers here adored Dark Souls — I mean, literally, worshipped it, but then they began to challenge their belief. They questioned things. They decided to change them.

That seems like the design brief here. Someone simply said “let’s make Dark Souls again, but we’ll change this, and that, and that, and then it will be perfect. Don’t change anything else.” So, you’re probably asking, what did they change? Well, aside from the very minimum in terms of visual and text artifacts that would be just enough to help them avoid legal action, the real changes come in the form of the combat mechanics.

At the outset of the game, the player takes control of a seemingly larger than human (but nonetheless humanoid) creature who is oddly muscled and has little to call a face. This creature most resembles one of the Prometheans from the Alien spin off; Prometheus. We soon find a sword and learn that our main ability is to “harden” at the push of a button, and that we can also dodge, or dodge roll in addition to launching light and heavy attacks.

A brief tutorial battle ensues, and following one of my favourite sequences in recent gaming history in which we climb through something that resembles (and might actually be) the gullet of a large fish, we emerge into a stagnant and uninviting bayou. We soon find a seemingly noble, human corpse — and the game begins to thump the intensity of this discovery as our Promethean creature then steps into the shell of the man, effectively raising him from the dead.

I don’t yet know how many of these shells there are in the game, because I’ll tell you now in the few days I’ve had to play it before the embargo, I’m nowhere near the end — and nor do I think I will ever reach it. What I can say is that these shells are not only the namesake for Mortal Shell, but also the beating heart of its gameplay. 

Each one, like a well developed class in Dark Souls, is unique and completely different to the next. Some (like our starting shell) are fairly well balanced with a slight focus on one area (in this case durability), whilst others demand finesse in the role of the glass cannon or the evasive trickster. In all cases, collecting tar and glimpses (into the life of the person whose body you now occupy) allow you to expand their skills on a simple but powerful wheel accessed via that doll-like lady we all know and — kind of — recognise.

Recognition and familiarity are another theme in Mortal Shell that I absolutely love. Not only is this a way to build each shell in terms of combat capability and story, but it’s also how we learn about items in the game world. One early example is that when our player eats a poisonous mushroom for the first time — it poisons them. The next time, however, we know a little more about it, and now, it gives us resistance to poison. 

Every item in Mortal Shell works in a similar way, with repeated use either improving the effects an item will provide to you, or lessening any negative effects or trade-offs it might have. There are a few more powerful effects to be had by learning some of the items I found later in the game, but I don’t want to spoil them for you here. 

As the combat system becomes less opaque and these items become more familiar and manageable, you can build up some confidence about your chances of survival in Mortal Shell, but in general, the lack of a reliable, repeatable health restoration system like the Estus Flasks in Dark Souls is a problem. Mushrooms can be gathered initially in small numbers, and later other healing items become more readily available, but I found my first three or four hours with Mortal Shell to be a slog.

This was partly down to the fact that there is no parry attack until you find a certain item (an item that I am told used to be found much earlier during the beta) and the harden tactic (which is useful and unique) has a fairly long cooldown. These factors combine to make low-level combat feel like hard yards and when the parry move is introduced, it is tough to pull off but incredibly powerful.

Whilst the mechanics are different from Soulsborne games (in line with what I’ve described) you could say that the combat itself is very similar. Common enemies range from annoying, sneaky and dangerous in numbers, to large, blundering and capable of killing you in a couple of hits. Combine these enemies in the same place and you can die very quickly, and often make it very hard to recover your lost tar.

Bosses usually exist in large arenas and require comprehensive study before you can expect to beat them. In Dark Souls III, I defeated about half the bosses within one or two tries. In Mortal Shell, that hasn’t happened to me once yet, including when fighting the avatars of my own characters – another interesting feature that reveals an insight into the bodies you occupy.

Mortal Shell is what I would probably categorise as ridiculously hard, so if that’s what you are looking for — you might just have found it. It’s certainly harder than Dark Souls III, although arguably that is the easiest in the series to date (whilst still being much harder than most games released these days). 

It’s also not realistic to compare some of the spit and polish that Dark Souls III had to that of Mortal Shell, and my comparison with the look of Dark Souls II earlier was deliberate. Mortal Shell is not a bad looking game (and the sound is excellent) but the visuals are slightly lower resolution than some newer games, and there’s a distinctly “upscaled last generation” look about most of the visual assets. That won’t be a problem if you immerse yourself fully, but it is nonetheless something to be aware of.

Despite what might sound like a bit of a negative review, I actually love Mortal Shell. I mentioned that I might never complete it earlier — and that’s more because it constantly challenges me, rather than because I don’t like it. It has frustrated me endlessly at times, and I’ve had more controlled chucking moments in just a few days than Dark Souls III gave me throughout its entire duration, but that’s what you get with this kind of game. 

The locations (regardless of their familiarity with other games) remain some of my favourites — I love the earthy, downtrodden, disgusting appeal of the places in this kind of game, and the otherworldly, odd creatures that inhabit them never cease to fascinate – especially once you’ve managed to vanquish them.

Mortal Shell’s unique shell system, and the way it allows the player to level the shells up and swap between them in a limited way outside rest stops is very cool, and it does offer genuinely different ways to tackle the larger, more fearsome enemies. Mortal Shell is by no means a perfect game, but it has a huge heart, and a lot of respect for the Soulsborne genre. Mortal Shell is, without doubt, the best Soulsborne game I’ve played, that wasn’t either Bloodbourne or Dark Souls, and that’s quite an achievement in my opinion. 

Mortal Shell is available on the Epic Game Store, PS4 and Xbox One, it’ll launch for Steam later this year.

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