Yes, it's very Dark Souls. Strikingly, unabashedly so, and I like that.

Anyone familiar with the From games or Soulslikes will feel right at home in this game. But it's Dark Souls made by someone else, and frankly, it shows. There's nothing like a copycat to show how good the original is, and within the few hours I've played of Mortal Shell I can tell you already that From is still the undisputed king of what they do, especially in the realm of level design.

However, Mortal Shell is great so far regardless; it takes many of the lessons from the FromSoft games and applies them all at once right off the bat. It has that good weighty Souls combat feel to it but with a few new wrinkles; crowd control and timing is more important than ever, though the need for timing is not as oppressive as say, Sekiro, and it's a lot closer in pacing to original Souls than the likes of Nioh. You start off with an ability called "Harden" that seems simple at first glance but quickly proves to be more like a unique iteration on parrying. Stuff like that appears to be what Mortal Shell is all about: new ideas on top of Soulslike tropes. It has little surprises for you pretty frequently, I'm not even out of the starter area and already I've discovered a few things that had me thinking, "Hmm, interesting." I'm resisting the temptation to look anything up unless I absolutely have to, the sense of discovery is palpable and I suspect there's a lot of nuances I may miss over the course of my playthrough. After defeating the first boss (which took me a few tries), I realized there was going to be a lot of those "Hmm" moments.

There's not much else to say until I play it more! If you were waiting for the Steam version, I say go for it, it's exactly what it looks like. Runs great for me on Ultra, no qualms in the performance area.

Yes, it's very Dark Souls. Strikingly, unabashedly so, and I like that. Anyone familiar with the From games or Soulslikes will feel right at home in this game. But it's Dark Souls made by someone else, and frankly, it shows. There's nothing like a copycat to show how good the original is, and within the few hours I've played of Mortal Shell I can tell you already that From is still the undisputed king of what they do, especially in the realm of level design. However, Mortal Shell is great so far regardless; it takes many of the lessons from the FromSoft games and applies them all at once right off the bat. It has that good weighty Souls combat feel to it but with a few new wrinkles; crowd control and timing is more important than ever, though the need for timing is not as oppressive as say, Sekiro, and it's a lot closer in pacing to original Souls than the likes of Nioh. You start off with an ability called "Harden" that seems simple at first glance but quickly proves to be more like a unique iteration on parrying. Stuff like that appears to be what Mortal Shell is all about: new ideas on top of Soulslike tropes. It has little surprises for you pretty frequently, I'm not even out of the starter area and already I've discovered a few things that had me thinking, "Hmm, interesting." I'm resisting the temptation to look anything up unless I absolutely have to, the sense of discovery is palpable and I suspect there's a lot of nuances I may miss over the course of my playthrough. After defeating the first boss (which took me a few tries), I realized there was going to be a lot of those "Hmm" moments. There's not much else to say until I play it more! If you were waiting for the Steam version, I say go for it, it's exactly what it looks like. Runs great for me on Ultra, no qualms in the performance area.