Jerp plays Mortal Shell (beta) pt.1 (2020-07-05)

Channel:

Jerp

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Published on July 9, 2020 5:00:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A0j7lgsFw4

Game:

Mortal Shell (2020)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 2:22:07

48 views

1

After a long time away from Souls games, the struggle is real. I spent a ton of time slowly warming back up to Souls-style play, on top of learning the unique feel and tuning of Mortal Shell. Not the best idea to have started it so late and after getting no sleep, but I was intending to muscle through it and finally check out the game since the beta opened up.

Overall, I really like it - looks & runs great, has really good weapon animation timings, and has some unique stuff to set it apart from the Souls games while still being very recognizable.

The Mortal Shell beta can be found on the Epic store: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/mortal-shell/beta

Some notes:
* Healing is neither quick nor convenient at all. While you can consume a few items like Weltcaps and Roasted Rat [on a stick] for a very slow heal-over-time effect, they're not going to rescue you from a losing encounter. There's nothing like Estus that you can chug (and replenish at spawn/bonfires).
* No shields nor blocking thus far - can't chill and wait for an opening or hang out in a defensive stance and get your bearings.
* A few consumable items have spawn points throughout the world, and those will replenish on a very, very slow timer. Feels like a really good way to have those items in a way that forces you to explore and makes them extremely slow to farm without feeling like it'd require repetitive grinding.
* The harden mechanic does a great job of rewarding creative and deliberate play (1 free hit + a small period of invulnerability), while not being so available as to replace good spacing, parries, and rolls. Being able to use it at nearly any moment (including during parries, dodges, and attacks) opens up a lot of possibilities.
* So far every enemy has some unique behavior or property that sets them apart from others - not seeing as much repetition among a few different flavors of an otherwise-same enemy (as you would see in other Souls-like games).
* Poison is BRUTAL in a game where you don't have a ton of freely available healing.
* Healing via parries feels like a great way to reward good play - especially as it uses resolve. In fact, parrying without enough resolve for an empowered riposte builds resolve.
* Resolve feels like Hollow Knight's soul system in the best of ways - build it up with successful offensive actions and use it for quick heals on riposte and surprisingly-powerful special attacks (which I completely missed until part 2 of my beta playthrough). Also funny how you sacrifice resolve to eat something as gross as Roasted Rat.
* Leaving your old shell around after death makes for a really convenient single-use heal. However, it does bear the risk of dying before you reach it, causing you to lose your tar/glimpses (interesting gamble).
* From's Souls games got everyone into the habit of plinking their inputs for rolls, and that's a liability in Mortal Shell since you can immediately buffer two rolls in a row without any delay.
* Much of the UI text is in too small a font (especially for the low-weight fonts they're using). Hopefully they crank it way up later on. I say this as someone with around 10 years of experience working on game UIs.
* Smaller enemies feel less predictable (and thus more dangerous) than larger ones - especially since they deal a surprising amount of damage, especially relative to your limited ability to heal.
* Partially-filled resolve bars are a great way to force the player to commit, at least until they have the desired amount of bars filled.
* Much more able to chain between light/strong attacks in a combo than other Souls-like games.

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