A review of Mortal Shell, the most ambitious Dark Souls/Metapod crossover ever developed. TWITCH: / probablyjacoblive TWITTER: / probablyjacobio DISCORD: / discord
It really speaks volumes about your review that I wasn't remotely interested in this game before, but after watching your take on it it has now really piqued my interest.
Man I agree. Im sick of games that just go on and on and on and on. I'd rather have a quality short experience than ok experience that goes on forever.
The devs collected all of From Software in one project: Check points in the beginning and the end of level - from Demon Souls. You can return to your shell just after defeat and parriability sign on the back - from Sekiro. Regaining hitpoints from parrying - from Bloodborne.
@@CarrotConsumer even the dark souls series fell into that vagueness trap. Souls 1 has pretty clear world building with some missing information you need to delve deeper to see. Souls 2 and 3 is when vagueness and reference trump all.
Heads up, there is an item you can buy in the first main area, before fighting any of the bosses that greatly increases resolve gain permanently. Generally gain about 1 bar of resolve per enemy once you have it. Love your videos man!
@@sdsdfdu4437 oh shit, it's been a couple years so I forgot. I looked at the wiki and I think it's the forbidden offering from the corrupted sester merchant?
I love that listening to your reviews feels like what I would say if my estranged twin started doing game reviews. I feel like you're understandable, like I've played a bit of the game by listening in.
just discovered your channel a few hours ago, and as a game dev, i must tell you your content is spot on and very well done! specially the Blasphemous Review, thanks for the good content my man, keep it up! ya just gained a new sub.
Hey Jacob, I discovered you about three weeks ago and have been binging your videos since. I’ve found that you’re my favorite game analyst/reviewer/whatever you want to call it, on RU-vid. You are intelligent and funny and worthwhile. What separates you from the rest, though, is your writing. You’re just a better writer than everyone else. And in a vacuum, just to be clear, you are a damn good writer. I appreciate the hard work you put into these videos and the very unique perspective you bring to it. Greetings from Utah.
You really deserve more subscribers and more views. I really hope your channel blows up soon because I am always excited to see you upload a video. You do such great work!!!!
I don't really like saying "Souls like" but it's the easiest/quickest way for people that understand the type of game. I'm not quite sure I played a game that had this kind of design that wasn't like an RPG where you find gear and level up and such. I personally like limitations in games, I don't think they need to be complicated to be fun. More enjoyable when we don't have to grind to put points in a build for a character. I'm not expecting to get this, but it looks pretty damn good. Thank you for sharing
I bought this game (and Hades) cause of your reviews, I definitely enjoyed it (Eredrim was my fav shell). Now I'm gonna do NG+ with Solomon. Keep up the great work.
I like that maxing out your familiarity with a purely harmful poison mushroom gives you immunity to poison damage instead. Rewarding foolhardy stupid counter-intuitive things that only people looking for secrets/lore would do is my jam.
Let me tell you guys first: Mortal Shell is awesome, very well done and polished. It's a bit short, but it's also not AAA priced, so this is a fair deal. But this game isn't perfect. Because ProbablJacob kinda missed to add a few negative points, I will: - There is no "Estus Flask" in this game. You basically find or buy healing items. Which means at the start you'll have very limited healing which can turn into a huge struggle. But later on you just go everywhere with a stack of 999 healing and you're basically unable to loose (except huge F up, in which case you deserved it). - The first point kinda goes into the second one. This game is really really hard at the very start. You have no idea what you're doing and where to go. You have limited healing, only one shell, one weapon, likely only few or no skills / weapon DMG upgrades, ect. Your first big boss encounter is going to be the hardest of them all. After you done this, you come back with a big bag full of tar, a new weapon + a bunch of upgrades for it /them and you'll buy all the healing you'll ever need. And boom the struggle is gone. - If you're kinda good at finding "game breaking" strats, then you'll find them in this game, too. Hardening allows for infinite "attack while hardened" and then run away until cooldown is back. (if you are really THIS poor). There's also those "not so useful, but cool looking" weapon skills, which may or may not be broken OP in some ways. Just to name a few oopsies in terms of game balance. - If you're a completionist, then this game got a lot more content for you, than if you just want to play through it once. You can technically get all stuffs in one run and then have 0 replay value afterwards or you miss one item, which won't be accessible anymore in said run and now you're kinda forced to do the NG+ to get it. - This game has basically no replay value. There's no coop and no PvP and no more new content hidden in NG+ runs. So enjoy your run through this gorgeous, atmospheric game to the fullest, because it's likely the only one you'll ever do.
Weapon ability give i frames and do good dmg I use hallowed sword one a lot. So for example you can use the ability to completely ignore a bosses big attacks because the whole animation is an i frame while also doing a good hit.
Very excited to see this game getting some love! I picked this up a couple days after release and couldn't put it down; easily my top pick of the year so far. Keep up the great content!
I gotta admit, when I played this I was just really glad when it was over. Lots of little annoyances that just kept piling up, at least for me. Also at least on PS4, I had lots and lots of screen-tearing, in case anyone's bothered by that.
People comparing this to Dark Souls when they really should be comparing it to Demon Souls since that was the first attempt by From Software. I have a feeling that if the devs get a 2nd go, Mortal Shell 2 will be truely incredible.
That's not how comparisons work dude, I don't care that it's their first attempt or not, as a consume I couldn't care less about their merit or excuses, I only care for the quality of the product overall. Welcome to the industry.
I would be very curious what your thoughts are about Kenshi. It’s a very niche “squad based SRPG” developed by Lo-Fi Games, which was just one guy for like 6 years until he was able to afford a team.
Looks like a souls like with a similar visual aesthetic to days gone, prolly cause it’s on ue4, and boy do I hope they port this the ue5 if that’s possible. So it’s on sale until the 25th, would you recommend I buy it now or wait?
Another fantastic review. I had never heard of this game but I know for sure that I'll be buying it after this review. I found your channel from your Astroneer review and am so glad I did. You and Mandaloregaming and Joseph Anderson are now exclusively the people I watch every video of.
Finished the game recently, for it's gameplay it's pretty good... But don't go in expecting it to be a new Dark Souls. Also it's a tad clunky feeling considering there's barely any animation canceling, you have to commit.
I cannot agree on level design being good. Game is a fucking labyrinth, with very rare checkpoints. There are usually near minibosses and bosses, but inbetween them is 40-50 minutes walks, full of groups of enemies. Combat is also not very fair, because you can get easily swarmed, and parry timings arent always consistent. Doesnt feel fair at all, most of the time. U LIE, JACOB.
Just finished it. I just want to play NG+ to try to maximize the other shells, that's how tight and fun the combat system is. A really unexpected surprise and everyone should try this one.
I pretty much only used the hallowed sword, so I can't speak for the other weapons but the weapon ability on that one is very strong, as it does massive damage, has full i-frames and stun the opponent. In fact due to the stun you can usually regain at least one resolve bar back wailing on the enemy afterwards before they can stand back up. The resolve system is another system that rewards being aggressive (seeing as it degrades over time if you aren't hitting enemies), when I started the game I would agree that i struggled with getting enough of it but I found by the end that I had become good enough, and thus aggressive enough, that I was able to regenerate it quite fast. I did mainly play soloman too though.
I wanted to love this game, but it's the most punishing souls-like I've played and the only one that made rage delete it. The crystal level definitely seemed unfinished, way bigger than it needed to be, with awkwardly positioned enemies in wide open spaces. The combat is annoyingly slow even with the faster weapons, especially against stronger enemies who take forever to kill. Most shells have ridiculously small stamina bar. In Bloodborne, getting health from attacking was a bonus, but here it's the main source, so trying to heal is just as likely to get you killed and throw you to the beginning. Parrying is weird, I don't know if it's the enemy animations or the timing, but even after hours I couldn't get it repeatedly right. After playing Nioh, The Surge and SW Fallen Order, this is definitely my least favorite combat system, probably the worst since DS2's floaty monstrosity. I hope the devs will improve upon the concept in a sequel, but this wasn't it.
I remember when the beta came out and everyone seemed to harp on about the animations and how janky they were. But when I played I really didn't get what they were talking about. And I still don not get it since the animations look great, and compared to something like Dark Souls 2 I didn't see any spinning enemies who SHOULDNT be spinning (looking at you metal turtle things in iron castle and giant stone things in dragon's keep). Will say as someone who LOVES customization, not being able to do so with my character in appearance or really ability is a big let down and usually is all it takes for me to pass on a game. BUT I think I will keep an eye on this. Also, good analysis and review.
Dark souls 2 legit had worse animations in some places than Demon's souls. The falconers' run animation for example, by gods that were just sad to see.
Most of my criticism on the animation come from the final boss. There's nothing wrong on a technical level, it just looks kind of goofy and takes away from the gravitas. Plus you can cheese the final boss harder than any other boss in the game, but most souls like games have a few janky boss fights and goofy looking animations. Overall a really solid game that shows that the studio has lots of talent behind it.
havent watched yet, but what about the World and exploration? Is it good and in par with Dark Souls 1?I need this in my life and maybe this is the game for me
Ive been playing this for a few days now and I love it. Took a bit to get used the the harden mechanic, but once it clicks its great. If give it an 8.5 out of 10 right now. Only real complaint is once you go into s tunnel you're kinda locked it and can't back out. And once you go thru there's like a very short cut scene of you standing up where you can take damage in. But other than that Im loving the lore and mechanics
its incredible the way he manages to makes all of his reviews so entertaining i want to play everything he reccomends even if its not usually what im into
So the reason why you don’t see half sword and other techs used in dark souls because your character is just kinda doing what they think the weapon is supposed to do they are just swing around a giant sword hoping it works. That’s just my two sense.
I haven't seen anyone mention you can swap weapons mid combo in this game, even during harden. It adds some depth to the combat that a lot of "it lacks variety" compaints aren't considering.
i really enjoyed the game and the mechanics but holy heck it was soo gosh dang easy. i play most games on easy and even i was able to kill all but the first grisha and the last boss on my first go, imo harden lasts too long, if you just play a little slow you can learn every attack animation the first time you see encounter an enemy. I'm definitely looking forward to what the studio comes up with next
This is the second video I watched on this game. And stragely, in your video thje games looks ten times better than in the other one. In the first one everything just looked dark and murky and not good. But in your video all the areas look so much better. Are you playing the pc version or one of the console versions?
hello comment section i have never played a souls game is this a good entry game to play it looks quite good and it would be nice to play a game not everyone is talking about what you think worth the purchase?
I loved this game, but it felt incomplete. But tbf that's only because I automatically compare the length/content to dark souls. Would absolutely love to see a sequel to this bad boy tho.
The fact it's only $30 makes me really appreciate these developers. I was expecting this to be a full priced game. But its super humble of them. Because after playing the game, id pay $60 for this game. More so Cold Symmetry can make more beautiful games like this
