Mortal Shell II

Launches officially this week, early access began today, and the reviews are quite good.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/mortal-shell-ii/

A large demo was made available about a month ago I think.

Fundamentally a dark, gritty Souslike, with it's own unique spin on a few things.

I had never even heard of Mortal Shell 1 until the demo for 2 dropped. It apparently came out during the summer of 2020, heart of the pandemic so was overlooked, was also only 8-10 hours long, which is more of a proof of concept than an actual game, especially in the Soulslike genre, so I'm not surprised it was so forgotten.

People who played it say it captured a certain spirit of old school Souls games in certain ways but lacked a ton of polish.

The studio behind it (Cold Symmetry) is unconventional in nature. They don't have a conventional office or location or structure. The small dev team is basically from all over the world and they co-ordiante all their work remotely. Seems as much a passion project for them as a business venture.

This 2nd game is apparently a massive improvement on all fronts, first off it's now a full fledged game 30-40 hours, and the whole experience is much more polished in terms of everything, bosses, world design, camera, animations, bugs, etc.

The main gimmick is apparently Shells which are basically almost like equipable character classes. Shells have their own unique properties and abilities and attacks, and allow for different playstyles. You can level them up and stuff and the idea is you can sorta experiment with them depending on the area or boss. Firearms are also a big part of the combat loop.

They also forwent a stamina mechanic in 2 , so the combat is still very soulslike but much faster paced, you're expected to be able to dodge and attack constantly so if anything it's probably more demanding.

Based on all the feedback I'm sold, it has a physical release, so I will be picking that up and starting it later this week.

I think we are in an era where a whole generation of up and coming devs cut their teeth playing Souls games and are now wanting to make their own versions, so we are seeing a lot of these new Souls-type franchises starting up from smaller studios.

Some of them have been quite good and others quite rough, but thankfully a few of the rough ones have managed to survive and are now producing much higher qualities sequels (this, and likely Lords of the Fallen 2 next year which is also looking like a massive improvement of a so-so game and another I'll likely be getting)