Mortal Shell

Of the games of its genre I have played so far, Mortal Shell is the first one trying to have the exact same atmosphere as the genre defining FromSoftware titles (at least for someone who has only watched the latter being played). It has a similar cryptic setting and lore -- often manifesting as detached quotes -- and the visuals have the same washed-out colors. However, it's probably safe to say that mechanically and scope-wise Mortal Shell is far simpler. I don't think Cold Symmetry is a big studio and thus they didn't have the resources to exactly recreate their favorite game.

A budget Dark Souls

Your character, whatever undead creature it is, can inhabit a selection of different bodies or 'shells' which are essentially the character classes of the game. Each one gets its own upgrades, purchasable with the game's currencies: tar and glimpses. The quality of the upgrades seemed to vary: Some of them are good and impactful but then there are things like Accretion of Foresight that gives you a minuscule 5% damage reduction for 10 seconds on a killing blow (!). That might as well not exist at all; the buff is so negligible.

I ended up using Eredrím, which is, at least health-wise, the most durable of the shells. Eredrím also gets a stacking buff (up to 100) on a killing blow (though not from riposte kills, which seemed unintended) that increases damage dealt. That very much fit to my playstyle in these games: spending a lot time farming for resources. The buff is lost upon getting knocked out of your shell (the first time is not lethal) and losing it was somewhat annoying the few times it happened.

Thanks to the damage buff and the shell's durability, I was able to defeat every boss (after the tutorial one) on first attempt. The final boss was somewhat close call though: I managed to brute force through only because I had farmed so many healing items.

Healing is not quick and effortless in Mortal Shell however. It lacks the typical flask the genre's games usually have, and non-premium healing items are weak and non-instantaneous. One method of healing is riposting from parry but I found parrying to be way too risky. More often than not I ended up instead getting hit when going for the narrow parry window.

Harden to standout

Mortal Shell's biggest gameplay gimmick is the ability to petrify your form to negate the next incoming attack. Mastering harden truly is they key to getting good at the game. For me that took awhile, not least because you have to keep holding down the harden button -- my brain wasn't initially agreeable with such activity. With some practice and some key rebinding, hardening eventually became a natural thing to do.

The ability can be used at any time -- unlike dodging and parrying which require you to not be in the middle of a swing etc. The most effective time to harden is often in the middle of your own attack: the enemy's attack is wasted on breaking your harden and then they get immediately hit by your unpaused attack. Harden does have a moderate cooldown but most enemies aren't aggressive enough to make it too challenging to avoid them until the ability is ready to go again.

I started the game on controller but as soon as I discovered that sprinting in this one too requires pressing analog stick, I switched to keyboard and mouse. Tilting a stick while also having to keep it pressed down feels so awkward, and unfortunately such a control scheme seems to be becoming more common in games -- from what I can tell anyway.

Even with mouse, I had to resort to using target lock -- and it took effort to learn to constantly juggle it on and off. Without the lock it is easy to miss with attacks but getting away from bosses' and other enemies' reach is far easier when you're not locked to it. (While locked you just orbit the target while strafing without gaining any distance.)

Get lost in the fog

Mortal Shell is structured into a hub map and three areas connected to it. The latter three can be completed in any order but they definitely have different levels of difficulty. Thus there is a generally recommended order which I also followed. Unfortunately my choice of weapon for its lowest stamina cost, the hammer and chisel, get its two ability upgrades in the final area in that particular completion order and as a result I did not get to use them much. (The weapon itself is also found there but it's right at the start of the area.)

The final area, Seat of Infinity, I found too large to my liking. It just keeps going and has many challenging encounters: It gets exhausting. However, it was still straightforward enough and I wasn't confused about where I was unlike in the hub area, Fallgrim. I've seen a third party map being recommended but I skipped on checking one out as I knew I would be running around so much that I would eventually became familiar with the lay of the land.

Early on samey environments and thick fog definitely do cause you making feel lost. The fog even gets worse if you lower shadow quality from graphics options which doesn't seem like intended behavior -- should be called view distance (or something similar) affecting that. Lowering texture quality (I think that was it) also removes color from the HUD -- another odd behavior. Thus I had to keep settings fairly high.

Mortal Shell didn't run poorly despite that; I was being too cautious. Still, there is without a doubt some odd graphical issues for an Unreal Engine 4 game. Like how often times enemies also pop into view at an alarmingly short distance. Sometimes I could even literally run into someone before they had been drawn on the screen.

PC Game Pass was the perfect platform to beat the game: I liked Mortal Shell enough to get through it but don't feel like playing it again. It didn't really grant me the satisfaction this type of games usually do.

(I just now noticed the screenshots for whatever reason have the title bar on them. I guess I should've used the Windows game bar's screenshot function instead of Nvidia's.)