Mortal Shell II Review: Great Combat, Rough Second Half

This Mortal Shell II review starts with a confession: I finished the original in one sitting years ago and remember almost nothing about it except the stillness. Mortal Shell II is not still. It opens with some of the most confident souls-like combat I've played this year, and by hour twenty it's arguing with itself about what kind of game it wants to be. Both of those things are true, and neither cancels the other out.

Key Takeaways

• Released August 20, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S at $49.99, developed by Cold Symmetry and published by Playstack
• Sits at 74% positive ("Mostly Positive") across more than 12,000 Steam reviews as of this write-up
• Eight possessable Shells and four combat Seals (Untarnished, Infinite, Vatras, Slayer) replace the original's single Harden-focused kit
• A day-one Balance Patch 1 shipped alongside launch; Cold Symmetry has since confirmed on Reddit that a further patch is in progress
• Community completion estimates for a single playthrough cluster between roughly 20 and 40 hours

Overview

Cold Symmetry built its name on the original Mortal Shell, a small, tightly scoped souls-like where you possessed hollow warrior husks and lived or died by a single well-timed Harden. Mortal Shell II is the studio's answer to the obvious question that follows a cult hit: what happens when you stop being cautious. The sequel is bigger in every direction. More Shells, more weapons, more open exploration between its handful of hub points, and combat that trades the original's held-breath pacing for something closer to full-contact.

The premise is the same skeleton dressed differently: the forgotten Shells of eight lost warriors are scattered across a ruined world, and finding them is both the story and the moment-to-moment reward loop. What's changed is the confidence. This is a studio that clearly watched what worked in the first game and decided the answer was more of it, faster, with fewer restraints. For my full breakdown of how the sequel actually handles defense, the short version matters here too: there's no single parry anymore, there are four Seals with four different risk profiles, and which one you're wearing changes what this review of "the combat" even means in a given fight.

A boss confrontation early in the campaign. Encounter staging like this is where Mortal Shell II is at its most confident.

Gameplay

The first stretch of Mortal Shell II is genuinely excellent. Hits land with a weight that a lot of the genre chases and rarely finds, executions are brutal in a way that feels earned rather than gratuitous, and new enemy types and environments show up often enough that the pacing never stalls the way some 30-hour souls-likes do in their opening third. Switching Shells mid-run changes not just your stat spread but which fights feel fair, and layering a Seal choice on top of that (a heavy hitter paired with the Vatras Seal's forgiving stagger, a lighter build built around the Infinite Seal's true parry) gives the build variety real teeth instead of cosmetic difference.

Where it comes apart is enemy tracking. A detailed community breakdown posted to r/MortalShell after a full playthrough put it plainly: enemies "slide and skate around, do 180 degree turns, teleport to the player, fly around corners." That's not an exaggeration for effect. I felt it repeatedly against anything with a spear or a glaive, where a dodge that should have cleared an attack got corrected into anyway. Multiple separate threads on the subreddit single out "magnetism" on specific enemy types by name, which tells you this isn't one player's bad luck, it's a pattern enough people hit that they started comparing notes. The same detailed post also flags parry and guard inconsistency against enemy groups and fast multi-hit combos, which lines up with what I found testing the Untarnished and Infinite Seals directly for the parry mechanics I covered separately: neither Seal behaves quite as advertised once more than one enemy is swinging at you.

The campaign's structure amplifies the problem instead of hiding it. Boss and enemy variety front-loads hard. Regular enemies get reused as boss encounters in the back third, several with move sets thin enough that the fights read as padding rather than tests, and checkpoint spacing (called beacons here) gets sparse enough in the same stretch that a bad death costs real progress, not just currency. It's the kind of design gap that's easy to miss in a demo and impossible to miss at hour twenty-five.

One of the campaign's stranger early encounters. Enemy design like this is a big part of why the opening hours land so well, before the variety thins out later on.

Mortal Shell II review: bugs, balance, and the back-half problem

The tracking and pacing issues above would be a normal souls-like criticism on their own. What makes Mortal Shell II's launch state harder to wave off is that they're stacked on top of real bugs. Community reports describe currency that doesn't respawn at its drop point after certain deaths, meaning a lost run of progress can't be recovered even by returning to the spot. A crash-on-death bug has been reported enough times that players have called it out specifically as unaddressed. Knockback effects have been reported launching characters in the wrong direction entirely, and clipping through geometry shows up often enough in bug threads to not be a one-off.

None of this is invisible to Cold Symmetry. A week after launch, a thread titled "Mortal Shell 2 is slowly dropping down to mixed reviews" drew a direct reply from the studio's own community manager: "The team is working hard on a patch for the game that should address a lot of pain points for y'all. I don't have anything specific to share on the contents or timing of the patch, but I hope to be able to share those things in the not too distant future." That's a real acknowledgment, not a deflection, and it matches the day-one Balance Patch 1 the studio already shipped on launch, which adjusted movement during Guard without touching the deeper tracking or stagger issues players kept raising afterward.

I don't think that absolves the launch state. A patch that's acknowledged but unscheduled is still a patch you're waiting on with your $49.99 already spent. But it does change how I'd frame the recommendation: this reads like a genuinely good game that shipped before its back half and its bug list were ready, not a game with a broken foundation. Cursemark's own Early Access review covers a similar pattern from the other direction, a smaller souls-like that's honest about being unfinished from day one rather than shipping at full price and full-launch expectations.

A courtyard encounter from the campaign's stronger early stretch, where enemy variety and staging are at their best.

Verdict: the Mortal Shell II review score

Mortal Shell II is for players who can absorb a rough patch of hours in exchange for a genuinely excellent combat system and are willing to wait on a fix for the rest. If you're the kind of player who bounced off the original Mortal Shell because it felt too restrained, this sequel's faster, heavier combat is worth the price of entry on its own, and the eight-Shell, four-Seal system gives you enough to chew on that a second playthrough isn't wasted time. Kristala's review covers a similarly ambitious souls-like with its own rough edges if you want a sense of how this genre's growing pains tend to look across different studios right now.

It's not for players who want a clean, consistently paced 25-to-30-hour campaign without asterisks, or who are sensitive to progress-costing bugs on a first playthrough. The gap between Mortal Shell II's first act and its last is wide enough that I'd genuinely wait for the patch Cold Symmetry has already promised if a rough back half is going to sour the memory of a strong front one for you.

Rating: 6.5/10

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Mortal Shell II worth buying at launch? If you can tolerate a rough second half and some launch bugs, yes. The first 8 to 10 hours are some of the best souls-like combat released this year. If you want a consistently polished 30-hour campaign, wait for a patch or a sale.

Is Mortal Shell II harder than the original Mortal Shell? It's differently hard. The original leaned on stillness and Harden timing. The sequel adds faster enemies and aggressive tracking that several community bug reports flag as inconsistent, which can feel unfair rather than demanding in later areas.

How long does it take to beat Mortal Shell II? Community playtime reports for a single completion cluster between roughly 20 and 40 hours depending on exploration and how many of the eight Shells you seek out. A first run without extensive backtracking lands closer to 25 to 30.

Is Mortal Shell II buggy at launch? Yes. Reported issues include lost currency that doesn't return after certain deaths, a crash-on-death bug, and knockback effects launching characters the wrong direction. Cold Symmetry has publicly acknowledged the pain points and says a patch is in progress.

Does Mortal Shell II have controller support? Yes, full controller support is listed on the Steam store page, and it's the recommended input for the game's parry and Harden-based combat.

Is Mortal Shell II worth $49.99 at launch? The first 8 to 10 hours alone go a long way toward justifying the price. A weaker final third and unresolved launch bugs make it a harder sell at full price than a similarly scoped souls-like without those problems, so waiting for a sale or the promised patch is a reasonable call.

Is Mortal Shell II getting a balance patch? Cold Symmetry shipped a day-one Balance Patch 1 on August 20, 2026, and a community manager confirmed on Reddit that the team is preparing a further patch to address bugs and balance complaints, though no date has been announced.

References

• Mortal Shell II on Steam: official store page, price, and the live review score cited in this review
• mortalshell.com: official site
• Mortal Shell II Official Gameplay Reveal: Cold Symmetry's own gameplay showcase
• "Mortal Shell 2 is slowly dropping down to mixed reviews," r/MortalShell: the thread with Cold Symmetry community manager Mikkel's on-record reply, source for the patch acknowledgment quoted above
• "Mortal Shell 2 is like a thousand small cuts of annoyance and questionable design," r/MortalShell: source for the beacon and enemy respawn complaints referenced above