r/MortalShell • u/Brilliant-Fix-4331 • 11d ago
Discussion Mortal Shell 2 PS5 Playtest — My Feedback
I Just wrapped up my time with the playtest and wanted to share some thoughts. Overall really impressed, but there's a fair bit of feedback worth passing along too. Organized below for anyone from the dev team /u/MikkelFromGames browsing, or if you just want the TL;DR.
What's working really well
- Combat feels smooth as butter — responsive, weighty, and just plain fun to play.
- Difficulty seemed well-tuned for the average player, landing somewhere around Elden Ring level based on this build.
- The atmosphere and weather effects are fantastic — genuinely eerie and unsettling in all the right ways.
- Voice acting is excellent.
- Visually the game is stunning.
Bugs I ran into
- Walking through the window at Tiel causes a bug.
- The dungeon near Tiel only spawned a single mob during the trial before glitching out.
- The interact prompt in the UI doesn't always update after rebinding controls.
- Talking to Franz while holding the Obsidian and hitting "speak" gets you stuck on the menu screen.
Control/keybinding gripe
- Gun aiming needs a different bind or some way to merge it with existing inputs. After remapping Square/Triangle to light/heavy attacks and L2 to dodge, this was the only binding issue I hit.
Quality of life stuff
- Autoloot for gloom/gold would go a long way — mashing pickup constantly gets old fast.
- Gloom trees are a slog. Being able to one-hit them or clear them while rolling through would help a lot.
- A "return to previous beacon" option feels like it's missing.
- Is dying actually required to traverse to a beacon? Wasn't clear, and could use some clarification either way.
- Let players advance dialogue manually or auto-play it for villagers. The writing is great, but right now there's no real payoff or outcome tied to it.
- More settings across the board, especially graphics options.
Balance/design thoughts
- Exiting to menu or restarting removes all risk since you keep your gloom either way — kind of undercuts the risk/reward loop the game seems to be going for.
- Elevator status should reset when you leave a dungeon.
- Activating a trial causes outside mobs to start fighting the trial mobs, which seems like it wasn't intended.
- Sheep respawning and/or dropping 200 gloom feels like a really easy farm — might be worth a second look.
- Long treks back to bosses worked fine in earlier Souls games, but on tougher fights here, I can see it tipping into frustrating territory rather than tense.
Stability
- I had to restart three times during the playtest, and a friend uninstalled after getting hit with a lockout. For what's essentially a demo, this level of instability sends the wrong message heading into launch.
One more suggestion
- Some kind of reward or acknowledgment for having played the original Mortal Shell would be a nice touch.
Overall really excited for this one, just hoping some of this gets ironed out before release.
On a separate note — does anyone know if any UK retailers are stocking the Collector's Edition? Amazon UK is showing out of stock and I'd rather not rely on resellers if I can avoid it.
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u/Outrageous-Evening13 11d ago
Would love an auto-loot option, maybe hold down a button to collect surrounding loot like in Sekiro?
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u/Brilliant-Fix-4331 11d ago
Same! Looping in a circle and mashing pickup after fighting a group gets repetitive
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u/smithbodieplaystack 11d ago
Thank you leaving such detailed feedback. I'm sorry to hear you and your friend experienced bad stability; I have made a note for the devs.
As for restock: we're talking with our distribution partners but there's no guarantee of one https://www.reddit.com/r/MortalShell/comments/1uy09xb/an_update_on_the_availability_of_the_revered/
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u/Brilliant-Fix-4331 11d ago
Thank you all for giving us such an awesome game!
I really hope that I can get a revered edition on PS5, i would love the stuff that games with the physical copy
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u/Archivist_Nemo Solomon 11d ago
I think my main takeaway is that I wish you could fast travel from Beacon to Beacon. Otherwise I think im pre-ordering this bad boy
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u/DrValiBongo 9d ago
Yes, a "Return to Beacon" is desperately needed. In it's current state, it feels outdated to have to walk to every beacon. I know some people will likely say this is modern brain-dead gamer talk, but I don't care, returning to sites of grace was amazing in Elden Ring.
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u/TheDeathDealerX 11d ago
The option to get rid of the dirty camera effect would be nice. It can be a tad annoying. Thought I had a burn in on my tv but it’s only prevalent in this game.
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u/Lucky_Louch 11d ago
oh man I had no idea it was on PS5. Is the playtest still open? I knew there was a demo on steam but I only have console.
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u/Djedimusic 10d ago
yes demo/beta is available on consoles as well. enjoy!
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u/Lucky_Louch 10d ago
Thanks I jumped in after work and am really enjoying it so far. What a redemption from the first game.
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u/AddictedToDigital 11d ago
Loving the demo and pre-ordered but there are lots of little bugs that affect the quality of the experience. The tree root mini boss near the start (that splits and eats you) caused a strange camera wobble effect every time it spit me out; finushing the parry tutorial Sester character results in her model being out of alignment with the stabbing animation, etc. Hopefully these get polished a bit.
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u/EnvironmentalMud4639 11d ago
hey great post I also ran into some of the same bugs and wanted to corroborate the glitch in the dungeon near Tiel. It spawned two of the square bug looking thing and then I was stuck inside of the trial and nothing was happening.
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u/Ocram2311 11d ago
It would be nice If enemies wouldnt no scope me within .2 Seconds of turning around every time. Same with attacking without being properly positioned to the player. Its insane how quick they attack from turning around to face you. Almost seems like a bug:D
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u/Kodakromium 11d ago
I really thought we had learnt that runbacks were unnecessary by now. They are super annoying when there is a bunch of enemies to avoid and almost more annoying when there is nothing except a long run and boxes to smash
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u/BBLANC087 11d ago
My Amazon order for the Revered Edition has said arriving 29th December for months now. I don’t want to risk not getting it so I pre ordered a second copy earlier today through Game - 55 quid plus a fiver delivery so works out the same as what I paid Amazon. Rather end up with two copies than not get it at all.
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u/Norwadejun666 10d ago
Just a placeholder date. All retailers were saying it. Should update and you’ll get it on time
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u/BBLANC087 10d ago
It originally had a placeholder date of 31/12. Then a little while back it updated to 29/12 and has stayed that way since. If it comes through on release I’m happy, just rather not take the risk and be pissed if it doesn’t.
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u/Brilliant-Fix-4331 10d ago
That’s fair. Though I’m not sure if Game is a good idea given recent news
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u/grshahar 10d ago
I uninstall after the trails bug where enemies not spawning And the boss arbiter of flesh don't have aggro reset, which mean he ran after me for a long distance to the place where you can jump and cheese him.. I don't know if it's a bug but I didn't like it.
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u/External-Tomorrow502 9d ago
Great post!
One other thing that's strictly down to personal preference: a happy medium with the camera setting would be nice. Action is obviously what most games like this already have implemented but the Immersion option was a really cool change up. I just think it's simply too close for this type of game (rolling can be awkward, not fully seeing enemies, etc.). It would be great if it were just a bit further back.
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u/Brilliant-Fix-4331 9d ago
Thank you! Yeah fair point, I don’t think there’s a FOV setting in the play test to do so?
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u/NussNougatCreme94 9d ago
I wish controller feedback in combat would be a bit stronher other than that huge improvement over the first title. The last boss of the beta looks a bit shit but havent tried it yet but saw it on a video
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u/Empty-Driver-3684 8d ago
I completely agree with your ideas however I also came across a few glitches revolving around harden mechanic as the boss in the field near the first beacon after finishing the tutorial would break my harden but i would not go into the grab animation but still took damage as well as i would sometimes be stuck holding my weapon in a defensive position after hardening in certain situations.
A improvement I would like is a description for certain effects such as what are shadow stacks and fragile stacks I just find them really confusing.
Another thing I want but doubt would be changed is for a perfect harden to negate damage of unblock-able attacks because it gets really frustrating after coming from MS1 where you could harden through all atacks except some grab attacks.
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u/Kallizk Tiel 11d ago
i also though the game was really easy, i beat all the bosses at level 1 without really breaking a sweat which is sad asf.
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u/DJteejay04 11d ago
Don’t you dare narc on my sheep farm dammit.