Mortal Shell

So this is the start and here you "learn" the game. Just NOT where to go or how to procede. At best this is a "Souls like" rip off

The base game is something that I appreciated playing. Playing through the game once and beating it once was something that I appreciate as I go through my backlog. Mechanics are good and responsive are you get to fight mobs of enemies and unique bosses for a short and sweet game. As long as you don't encounter the jank of your parry or you basic attackes not working to the point where you might have to boot the game to the main menu as intended as these souls like tend to be. Story, whether you wish to decipher it entirely or not, is for what it is or not is good for what it is and gives justification what new game plus mode for those interested in doing multiple runs. Overall an enjoyable experience that make me sad that we may never get a sequel for the game anytime soon and flesh up the world more by the same developers that fathomed the idea of this Souls-like, dark fantasy setting. Would get the game if you don't have anything to better to do. Even better if you see a sale for it in the store.

This game depends way too much on random enemies. You can either kill them all without accomplishing anything, or run past them. No thought or finesse was put into the gameplay at all. The boss fights seem fun at first, but become monotonous far too quickly. Two stars are given for the style and soundtracks. They are really good. Still, I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone. Not even people who like Souls-like games.

I enjoyed all of the content. The game looks great, combat was fun and satisfying. I especially liked the design of the Eternal Narthax chapter, which to me felt like a mix between a monument and a nightmare landscape -- at any rate, a place not meant for humans. The game is quite short (about 1/5th of the DS3 base game would be my guess). It is light on story (which, in most such games, is mainly there to take you from one cool place to another), but Mortal Shell's story feels even more shallow to me than that of other similar games. There are mentions of religions that focus on pain, but at the end of the game, I knew no more about the nature of the gme world and the Foundling than I did at the beginning. My main criticism is that the boss fights are too easy. One of the main bosses, the Twice-born, I was able to beat on the first encounter -- this should not happen in a soulslike! Imrod took 4-5 tries, the final boss about an hour. The "hardest" battle was against the First Martyr, where I kept dying because I didn't realize that the fog at the edge of the arena was chilling me (I thought it was a special attack that I didn't know how to prevent). After I read up on the fog, I beat the boss on my next attempt. And no, I'm not that "gud". Soulslikes are, to a large extent, about practicing your way to victory. So it makes no sense to have bosses that require little to none of it. Even compared with games like Hellpoint and The Surge (i.e. Dark Souls 3), the game is a bit short and a bit on the easy side, but what it offers is really fun. One final negative point is that the developers don't seem to pay any attention to GOG. On both Steam and GOG, the game was more expensive as a pre-order than at launch, essentially screwing over precisely those who want to support the developers most, but an official apology for the mistake was only posted on Steam. Still, I'd rather give the developers money here than elsewhere...

If you don't have friends, don't have chores, don't have a life outside the basement and don't have money for movies or other games that actually bring a pleasant experience. Lock yourself in the house like it's covid season and play the same game over and over again until you actually finish it. Then try as hard as you can to find anyone who did the same thing as you did and try really hard to have a conversation about this game that actually sounds like you had fun playing it. It's not about being good, it's about wasting a lot of time on something you're TRYING to enjoy. I come home from work feeling like crap just so I can waste my time with this game making me feel the same?