Mortal Shell 2 - A Stylish Soulslike Experience
REVIEWSAUTHOR - SPAWN2026
Spawn
9/14/20264 min read
Before You Read
Hey everyone. Before you read this review, you should know a little bit about my gaming background. I primarily play action RPGs, action-adventures, and Soulslikes. I have spent significant time with titles like Lies of P, The First Berserker: Khazan, and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Sekiro, Elden Ring etc.. I hope this added context gives you a clear sense of my perspective.
Gameplay
The core gameplay delivers a proper Soulslike feel. Only a handful of non-FromSoftware titles like Lies of P capture that distinct Elden Ring rhythm, and Mortal Shell 2 hits that mark convincingly.
Progression centers around exploration and character scaling to conquer challenging bosses. The sequel introduces several standout mechanics, starting with an optional night mode that significantly increases enemy aggression and damage output. The signature Shell mechanic also returns in expanded form. Each discovered shell fundamentally alters your playstyle through distinct attributes: some favor ranged builds, others prioritize melee, stealth, or wider parry windows. Build variety is deep, and the game excels at capturing authentic Soulslike combat tension.
Build crafting is further expanded through Tarstones, which function similarly to talismans or charms. Equipping different Tarstones modifies base abilities or reshapes combat focus, such as imbuing ranged shots with fire to melt low-tier enemies. Finding and combining these stones allows for versatile mid-game optimization.
Upgrades follow traditional genre conventions via a central hub area with key NPCs: one smith to upgrade weapons, a merchant selling vital crafting consumables, and a shell mentor who improves shell bonds and provides clues for discovering remaining shells in the world.
Overall you go from one beacon(grace site) to the other, defeating enemies in between with the hope of ultimately rising to the challenge of endgame.
Story & Exploration
The narrative remains direct and atmospheric. You play as an Harbinger tasked with harvesting ova to bring back to the cosmic entity. The real narrative weight, however, comes from hunting down each shell and uncovering its distinct lore and backstory. Seeking out every shell across the map significantly enriches the world-building.
When you ship the Ovum back at the end, a success rate of that transfer is shown based on number of ovum you collected, I don't know how it affects the overall narrative but maybe something they can bind with the next game!?
As for exploration, level design is intricate and feels reminiscent of classic FromSoftware maps. Exploration is rewarding, regularly yielding weapons, Tarstones and essential upgrade materials. Early checkpoint pacing was sparse, but post-launch adjustments balanced the frequency of beacons to prevent frustrating corpse runs.
Performance
Performance on PC was solid. Running the game on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU (24 GB) delivered high, stable frame rates across performance and visual fidelity presets. I mostly played the game in performance mode.
Early build crashes were fully patched out during testing, leaving smooth performance with virtually no frame drops.
Bosses
Boss encounters are a highlight. The fight design avoids tedious multi-phase battles; most bosses feature a single, high-stakes phase that tests your build immediately. The only letdown was the final encounter, which pivots to an underwhelming beast fight that lacks the mechanical punch of earlier duels, a sentiment echoed across early community feedback.
You can find some of my boss fights in my Youtube channel.
Introduction
This is Spawn, and here is my review of Mortal Shell 2. A creator copy was provided by the game's PR team, but please note that this has no bearing on my critique.
Let's start with the basics. Mortal Shell 2 is the sequel to the original Mortal Shell, which released several years ago as a shorter, focused entry. I bypassed the first game because it never quite piqued my interest, but after trying the demo for the sequel, it was clear the developers built something substantial that core action fans would appreciate.
I put about 35 hours into the campaign on my gaming laptop, testing performance across different configurations, and I am ready to break down how the full experience holds up.
Verdict
Mortal Shell 2 is a stylish, a good step forward for the series. It delivers deep build variety, rewarding combat weight, and strong visual execution. Some of the bosses were worth every penny and I enjoyed exploring in the game. Early crashes were a let down and I had an issue where my save file was deleted due to a crash but that issue is patched now.
For anyone looking for an authentic Soulslike experience with thrilling background score keeping you pumped during the boss fights, it is well worth playing.
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