The first impressions of Mortal Shell. Very dark souls

In April, studio Cold Symmetry I presented it Mortal Shell : surprisingly stylish (at least trailers) Soulslike Exchen. Everything looked entertaining, but the composition of the studio also added oil into the fire: the staff of the team put their hand to Starcraft 2 And Ghost of Tsushima. At the same time, the team consists of only 15 people – is it possible to do something worthy with such modest forces?

Perhaps you can, but judging by the beta version of Mortal Shell, before the games Fromsoftware She like Drandglika to Paradise Earth.

Deadly emptiness

As in the case of the series Dark Souls, The plot and the ENT are served extremely meager, through hints, but it is easy to fold the approximate picture. We play for a certain creature capable of instilling in dead bodies – the same shells (though not in any, but only strictly defined); And the setting itself is similar to something like an otherworldly kingdom, where the souls of fallen warriors and other, less humane creatures live.

The main value in these parts is a “juice”, a substance that not only performs the function of money, but also allows you to restore the memory of the earthly essence of our shells. Also in the plot, a certain sister of Genessa is directly involved, who claims that she is the keeper of the mortal bodies. That's it so far.

It is at Genessa that we pump the character – however, every trip to her revives all enemies in the district

The gameplay did not go far from the Soulsborne formula with one exception: there is no open world in Mortal Shell, the game is clearly divided into levels. Otherwise – all the same. We explore the locations, fight enemies, collect some artifacts and desperately try not to die. And for the murders we get the same “juice” to spend it on buying items or pumping.

In the case of a local merchant, the expression “toad is strangled” acquires a new meaning

Already according to the preview version shows that Mortal Shell has two big problems. First – the world of the game is dead so far. Not only literally, but also figuratively: musty landscapes and narrow linear corridors without a hint of variability Dark Souls. For all the passage, we met only one atmospheric scene – this is a couple of vacationers by the fire of warriors playing the lute.

By the way, you can play the tool yourself. It is not entirely clear what the point is, but the more the character plays, the more beautiful the melodies become

The second problem is visual design. The monsters are pleasantly animated, but outwardly they, to put it mildly, are not very original: we have already seen all this in hundreds of fantasy games. Perhaps in the future the enemies, like the world https://sister-site.org/virgin-games/ of the game as a whole, will be more interesting. At least, the boss at the end of the first location (which, by the way, is called, enslaved by Grisha) slightly resembles a guardian from ** The Evil Within ** and looks at least impressive.

I get the joice

But the role system is not at all causing interest at all. There are no builds or characteristics as such: you just spend juice on certain abilities. For example, the ability to be treated with poisons (useful in dungeons with inedible mushrooms).

A guy with blades instead of hands may well go for a mini-boss-it is quite difficult to fight with him, but there is also a reward

The fighting, which, in theory, should pull the whole game on itself, leaves a double impression. On the one hand, she clearly pays tribute to Dark Souls. The weight of the weapon and the power of the blows are felt, you need to carefully monitor endurance, and the opponents even in contractions can be delivered by one trouble.

On the other hand, the battles are many times slower. The first couple of hours is difficult to get used to how clumsy the initial shell is – it, in fact, acts as armor that can be changed in strictly defined places. At first, it even seems that in front of you is not the body of a noble warrior, but a decrepit grandfather, for whom to raise a sword is an event of a level of the level of the grand opening of a bench in Krasnodar. Moreover, the timings in Mortal Shell, as in other Souls-Like, are extremely important. If you do not guess the right moment for the attack, then the miss can become fatal: while you are just swinging, the enemies will easily embroider your spirit from you.

There is no space for the maneuver in the catacombs: either hit or shamefully run back

With death, too, everything is not so simple. When you lose all health, the game “throws” you from the shell; Without a soul, it turns into a stone statue. There are two options: either fight with offenders right, risking to die from one blow, or try to return to the body to fight again. Lose all health again – goodbye, roll back to the beginning of the level. The old body and all accumulated juice will remain at the place of death.

The art not to hide (sword) in battle

All this is played … ambiguously. Chips that should distinguish Mortal Shell from analogues while hardly working. Say, you have a block (rate): the hero puts his hand with a conditional shield for a second, reflects the blow and at the same time disorients the enemy. However, the reception does not apply to everyone: especially powerful creatures easily break through such protection. And, more importantly, the animation of the rollback is so long that the mistake leaves you defenseless: while the hero removes the artifact, his face will be bought several times.

Here we will also write down “one hundred percent block”: you can petrify for a moment, and even the strongest opponent will shake from such protection. But the effect lasts only a few frames, and getting exactly at the moment of impact is almost impossible. So both mechanics seem quite useless – why take risks and substitute, if it is much more efficiently bounced to the side.

One by one, some enemies, in principle, do not challenge: he came up, swept with a sword, and he walked away. But they can spoil life – for example, finally throw their own poisonous head

In Mortal Shell, everything is tied to the timings of actions. It seems to be a plus in this: you remember the duration of each type of attack and learn to control the character from and to. And after the N-bn number of deaths, you also remember the habits of all enemies: how much time does it take to the attack, where it is directed, what is the radius of the defeat, and after what blows it is worth retreating so as not to get back … but at some point you understand, you understand, that plus or minus all fights can be passed using the same tactics: "hit + hit + rebound". Repeat a hundred, two hundred, a thousand times.

Well, about the shells. According to my observations, the first of them, a clumsy vassal knight, unequivocally loses to the Shustrom and a want psalmist. The health of both is approximately equally, both equally have two available weapons (a sword and a set from an ax with a dagger), but the second has more endurance, and it moves faster, which is extremely important in the conditions of a slow battery. What is the advantage of the first over the second – it is unclear. Again, perhaps in the final version, everything will be different, but why demonstrate two “classes” if one of them is completely useless in comparison with the other?

In general, impressions are controversial. Everything is very strange, monotonous and painful. Hardcore hardcore, but in the current form, Mortal Shell is more pushing away than attracts. Let's see what will happen in the end, when the developers present a release version. We hope that numerous problems will not bury those unambiguous advantages that already have.

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