Mortal Shell 2 review: "The best Soulslike I've played since Elden Ring thanks to brilliant death-dealing toys and speedy combat"

Mortal Shell 2 is a game about a ripped monster-man who looks like they just wandered off the set of Prometheus. This fellow likes to leap into and possess special corpses – the 'mortal shells' of the title – to spy on their memories and play with their superpowers. Amazingly, it only gets weirder from there. More importantly, it's also great fun, and a superior sequel to Mortal Shell in almost every way.

True, it's yet another Soulslike that's copied a lot of Fromsoftware's homework. So, melee combat is brutal but supremely satisfying, dying means you only get one chance to collect all your levelling up currency, it's a dark fantasy world that's seen better days, yada yada yada.

Shell to pay

But, this sequel makes inspired changes immediately. In the original Mortal Shell you moved at a pace that would embarrass snails. Now, you might as well be playing as a Ferrari. Stamina management has also been nixed entirely. You can dodge, attack, and – praise the gaming gods – sprint as much as you like. Soulslike purists may be spitting blood right now, but it gives Mortal Shell 2 its own speedy flavor that's heavenly after the wading-through-molasses slowpokery of the original.

That shot of speed pairs nicely with a game that constantly throws ideas and surprises at you, some pleasingly silly. Oh, it still takes its bizzaro main narrative seriously, don't you worry. But it also contains a library full of killer books throwing themselves off the shelves at you, and a fight with a wizard who messes with the game's controls. It opens with a riff on Ari Aster's Midsommar (seriously) and has beaten Playground's Fable to the punch of calling me a "twat" by a year.

Instead of fretting about stamina, you have a bar of 'resolve', which you replenish with successful melee strikes. Resolve powers the game's many combat treats. Once you've found enough equipable tarstones by exploring its world – nowhere near as vast as Elden Ring's, but still plenty big – you can use resolve to power devastating special attacks and add debuffs like poison to your melee strikes and to the shots from the firearm now living on your hip. There's some brilliant death-dealing toys to be found, and since certain shells can't be equipped with certain stones, it encourages you to keep switching them out.

The mortal shells are hidden throughout the world and make for an excellent motivation to explore every crevice of it. One is a master of stealth, perfect for when you just want to run through a nightmare area to hopefully get your dropped level-up currency back. Another shell is covered in enough armor to let you tank swarms of rank-and-file enemies. Incredibly useful, especially as Mortal Shell 2 increasingly enjoys swarming you with multiple foes, the cad. Another shell likes to restore his health by chowing down on a human heart. OK then.

Best of all, each new shell comes with a new skill tree to play with. Proxima has a hookshot that yanks enemies towards her – or, if they're too chunky, her towards them – and gives them a nasty electric shock in the process. This can also be upgraded so that every time she uses it, she becomes 1% more effective against that enemy permanently, which quickly racks up. A fantastic solution for when you've hit a brick wall with the game and just want a Hades-like bit of perma-progress each time to get you over the edge.

You also unlock playable flashbacks for the shells as you upgrade them. They're fun little micro-dramas with some pleasingly surreal twists. I've played tons of Soulslikes but I'm pretty sure this is the first one to make me fight a giant bottle symbolising alcoholism (subtle!).

Not to sound shallow but it's also a real looker. The frequent sections in black and white make for such glorious eye-candy that I sorta wish the whole game had committed to that aesthetic. A new camera angle frames all these visual treats as epically as possible. Clearly inspired by the last couple of God of War games, the camera leans in far closer now, making the action more intense and visually dramatic.

This doesn't come without cost, unfortunately. Just like God of War, the game has to rely on big red marks on the screen to tell you that enemies are just outside your field of vision (you can turn these off, but probably shouldn't).

And occasionally, when cornered or a little too close to a wall, the camera panics and gives you the most unhelpful view of the action possible. Doesn't happen constantly, but happens enough to make you consider changing to a less cinematic but more clear angle, something you can thankfully do in the options.

Camera freakouts aside, my only major issue is that Mortal Shell 2's power set can be generous to a fault. The most difficult boss I faced was about ten hours into the game, where I spent two hours furiously reattempting this speedy git who loved crushing me with a big wheel.

That's not a complaint. Being smacked around by a boss in one of these games until I finally get the upper hand is basically my happy place. But eventually I found a tarstone that gave me an attack where I leapt into the air, then came crashing down on the enemy for huge damage. Upgrade it and it does stagger damage, which fills a bar that can let you do an almighty finishing move. Upgrade it again and that stagger damage hits anything nearby, too. Did I mention I'm also untouchable when airborne when I use this?

Frankly, bosses should not be tolerating this nonsense. They should be yanking me out of the sky, slamming me to the floor, and demanding I fight them properly. I'm in a New Game Plus run now (and it does warrant a replay, mainly to see every shell's story) and have forced myself to bury that stone in my inventory. I'm having fun and enjoying a meatier challenge, but it's annoying to pour so many resources into an upgrade only to realize you've snapped the difficulty curve in two.

If you do want more challenge, there's an NPC who can turn the world to nightfall which makes all the enemies stronger and drop better rewards. Now, I don't know if you've ever been out at night but it makes things a lot harder to see. This is a world of sheer cliffs with sudden drops and easily-missed secrets, and I found navigating it in the dark more an exercise in frustration than a compelling test of skill. You're probably better off frequently swapping out shells and weapons you find to keep the challenge up. Fingers crossed for a patch that balances things better.

That's a fair bit of moaning for a four star review, but rest assured the game earns a recommendation. It's one of the finest Elden Ring-a-likes yet, and a lovely apology from GamesRadar+ after they made me suffer through a Code Vein 2 review earlier this year. Mortal Shell 2 is a bizarre, surprisingly funny, beautifully-made Soulslike with such terrific sights to show you. If you also have the ability to leap into and possess people's corpses, you could do a lot worse than jumping into one who owned a copy of this.

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