![]() It’s not too long until you are introduced to your first shell because in Mortal Shell instead of having a character whose stats you can upgrade, you have shells that have differing amounts of health and stamina. It works adequately and it’s quite satisfying to pull off, it also creates an enjoyable risk/reward scenario but I feel most players will prefer a conventional healing system instead. You can then use this resolve to parry and riposte enemies to regain health or use it for equipped weapon skills. The resolve bar sits above your health meter and fills from killing enemies and performing parries. You can use edibles scattered through the world but they don’t do a great deal, the main way to heal yourself is to parry and riposte enemies when you have enough resolve. Healing is a pain in the arse, no potions, not an Estus Flask in sight or anything remotely beneficial to hand. Nonsensical, rambling NPC’s, where have I seen this before? Healing Should Not Be Painful Unlike the Souls games though, where it feels like the game has a deeper, wider, unknown lore that you would like to explore and understand, I never felt this with Mortal Shell and I did not find myself wanting to know more, I just got on with it. The story, very much like the games that inspired it, is very convoluted and uncanny. Yeah, normal, weird stuff for games like this and no real surprise in any way. The combat just feels off somehow, I think it’s down to the slow plodding nature of it and sometimes it feels a bit too tanky and unresponsive to be really enjoyable.Īt the end of the tutorial you are pitted against a boss of sorts and he kicked my ass, I was then swallowed by a big space whale and woke up in the game proper. ![]() It does not feel as responsive and the robotic, bland enemies make it feel less satisfying. One thing I will say is that the combat feels deliberately slow and more methodical than the Souls games and I don’t think I liked it as much. The rest of the tutorial is nothing new to Dark Souls players, roll, light attack, heavy attack and stamina management are all here and are all key to your success. He could do with a few more Sunday dinners down him. It takes time to get used to and it will take some adjustment to get it right but when you have got over the steep learning curve, it’s quite an enjoyable system to use you just need to acclimatize to the cooldown time. You can use it to block, to stagger enemies, to regain stamina while being invulnerable and the many ways you can work it into various combos is quite staggering. The hardening mechanic is probably my favourite part of Mortal Shell as it can be used in an array of different ways and can even be activated mid-combo. Instead of being able to block you can solidify your form and negate the next attack. You are shown hardening, which may sound like something you get at a back street seedy massage parlour but it is one of Mortal Shell’s main game systems. It is here, in this very bright, very white area that you are shown, for the first time, a part of Mortal Shell that tries to differentiate itself from the tried and tested SoulsBourne formula. The more detailed the level, the worse the framerate gets.You start in a decrepit dreamscape of a ruined castle where you take part in a brief tutorial. But it’s still ugly to look at, even nauseating at times. You just have to partake in long animations, just as before. Oddly enough, the game is still responsive, despite these issues. Everybody in the damn game feels constipated when walking, so the poor framerate can be somewhat alleviated with this. Luckily, Mortal Shell is a slow-paced game, where pretty much everyone takes ages to attack and move. Forget about trying to run this in docked mode, as the issues are more frequent. Granted, we all spent the past ten years or so playing soulslikes at 30fps, so we can’t exactly complain about a game like this, running on the Switch of all things, to not achieve 60fps (although the port’s trailer oddly showed footage at said framerate), but the problem is that this game very frequently drops to the 20’s, occasionally the mid-10’s. What really brings the game down is its performance. Animations are still somewhat crisp, and characters do retain some moderate level of detail, despite the reduced textural quality. If playing in docked mode, you will constantly ask yourself “why am I doing this?”, but in portable mode, Mortal Shell doesn’t look awful. Graphically speaking, there are some noticeable drawbacks, namely in the quality of the textures and the resolution, but I expected worse. “I shall call you Bubbles, and I’m gonna wuv fowever!”
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