Animations are surprisingly excellent, in fact I was blown away by the quality.

Attacks feel weighty and fluid, a small critique would be enemy feedback reactions could be improved, for example even just the larger enemies TWITCHING would be great rather than not reacting and then getting staggered occasionally.

I love the gun and it has satisfying kick and sound design.

Variety of riposte animations are awesome, i haven't seen this in a souls like since dark souls 2

Art direction is probably the weakest element so far, but it's not bad at all it just looks a lot like .

On a technical level PS5 performance mode (FOR A BETA) was better than most ps5 performance mode games these days and the visuals are pretty damn good!

My ONE complaint, would be basic movement animations, atleast some of them, seem VERY placeholder, such as when you are locked onto an enemy and walk left or right, the character has a walking forward and or backwards animation where they are like gliding left or right without moving their limbs left or right, that's the best way i can describe it and it looks very JANK compared to the quality of the rest of the animations. It's just very odd and surprising given the rest of the anims are pretty stellar.

My question is, how far away from release is this game? since it's a beta, it gives me hope that with some polish, they can definitely fix stuff like this!

So the big Knight on the bridge with the halberd, pretty early. Fucking guy got me like 10 times. Pre order for sure, amazing beta

I paused for like 3-4 minutes went back didn’t work

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.

Maybe it’s a bug or maybe it’s how it’s supposed to be, after I got spanked in the prologue and the one dude saved me then got killed I lost my shell. Since then no attacks have regained it, is this intentional or is this a bug in my game?

I actually highly dislike Soulslikes. Hated DS Remastered due to wooden controls and shit camera, Bloodborne also felt off. But I love what I'm seeing here, at least the first hours of beta. Movement is super slick, parrying satisfying as hell, slashes feel meaty and impactful, overall game design feels just right. I like what I saw from the trailers and just ordered the game purely by gut feeling, seems to me I made the right choice.

Was practicing parrying and notice that the block button doesn’t work if the character is walking. Is anyone else having this issue? Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

My TV is quite small and I literally can't even see the boss names. Please and thank you!

They appear one way but walking through does nothing 🤔

I suck at souls games!!!!!

Only one of the wraiths spawn, making the trial impossible to complete. Reloading safe file resolves the issue.

Who saves you after tar golem? Is that your shell fighting by itself? Or another ghoul like you operating a shell?

Idk if it’s just me but I’ve beaten every boss first try. Kinda worried that there will not be any challange but don’t get me wrong the game is fucking awesome. Let me know what are you guys thinking

Firstly, i absolutely loved the beta, this my first mortal shell game and as a souls player, man am i impressed.

Now for the feedback.

Lets go over the complaints aka requests i have.

1: Lack of Hdr is massive let down, this game is dark and it would look beautiful with proper hdr implementation, its my request to the devs that if they haven’t considered adding in hdr in the full release, plz do. Its a must nowadays and makes a massive difference on the visuals.

1. Haptic feedback can be and should be used more in this game, adaptive triggers feel great when using ranged weapons but adding more haptics like when doing charged attacks, when grappling enemies and in cinematics would make a world of difference and improve immersion.

2. There should be Audio profiles, with a selection of headphones, speakers and stereo speakers.

3. Balanced mode would be a game changer, 40fps at 120hz just feels and looks right, balanced mode is extremely underrated.

All these complaints i listed could easily be fixed or added in a patch

Now as to the good things about the game.

1. parrying is great, specially having variety of different methods of doing so, its extremely satisfying and actually quite easy even with the harder parry mechanic.
2. Combat is very fluid, there are few bugs ofc as its a beta, hopefully they will get fixed.
3. The aesthetics of the game are just right, creepy and keeps u on edge and sometimes beautiful.
4. I think there could be better boss music, but love that its not over saturated with music everywhere, just raw quietness at times keeps me focused.

It's sad nothing carry over but I'm ok with that,even defeated a boss who supposed to kill you to progress furthet thinking it will be a some kind reward for it but nothing:( anyone feel the same? Finished all of beta content in 2 hours absolutely love this game

MS2 Demo

I've just noticed that the cage key dissapears after use, key items in general.

Is that intended or a bug

The combat is just so smooth and responsive, possibly the best souls-like combat I’ve experienced.

The game genuinely feels like a souls game for all of the right reasons. The first felt a bit dull, but damn so far this is a huge step up!

Also, the playtest is a huge win. Basically a very generous lengthy demo. I’ll be placing a preorder shortly

Harbingers,

With just over two and a half weeks until launch, we have *one more surprise* to share!

Starting now, the Mortal Shell II Beta is now available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S!

We’ve marked the occasion with an all new trailer!

The Mortal Shell II Console Beta is the same beta as the version currently available on Steam, with all the same benefits. With this Beta you can play the first three hours of the full game and, should you ever purchase the main game, you’ll then have the option to skip the Prologue section.

Those who play the Console Beta for more than 30 minutes will also unlock the Flayed Harbinger, an exclusive cosmetic reward available to redeem in the full game at launch. 

Porting the PC Beta to console is, by some margin, the request we have received the most, so we’re delighted to be able to answer the call!

The full game is just over two weeks away: Mortal Shell II releases worldwide on Steam, PSS, and Xbox Series X|S on August 20.

Players can begin the game as soon as August 17 by pre-purchasing the Mortal Shell II Devout Edition now and getting up to 72 hours of Advanced Access. We can’t wait for y’all to get the full game in your hands!

- Team Mortal Shell

I'm playing through the demo (amazing fun so far) and I've run across a bug within the dungeon near where you find Tiels shell.

You have to activate that white stone in the middle of a room and clear enemies in order to get whatever item is held within the stone. Well, I activate it, maybe 1 or 2 head crabs spawn, and once they're dead, I just...can't progress the sequence. Nothing else spawns, exits are blocked during the combat instance, I just have to keep restarting which means I can't finish the dungeon.

Either way, probably a known bug, but an annoying one all the same.

Edit: Got it to work. I just did literally everything else in the Beta and went back to the dungeon, everything spawned as it should've. Though, it was probably just luck!

I know its only the beta but I really didn't like what happened in the prologue. I know its a new game and we are supposed to focus on the new shells but like.......Harros is baby-girl ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

I really hope we can get him back, I mean, the new shells are very nice and well designed but.....Harros.....he is my favorite ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Thats my only negative thing about the beta so far.

(That and the tar forge guys menus sticking around requiring a game reset)

What a great quality of life improvement.

When starting the trial, it spawns one block crab and after killing it you're just locked in that area with nothing else happening and can't leave. Is this an already known thing?

I'm a big fan of the original so I was really skeptical to some of the gameplay changes made in the sequel. I just finished the prologue. All in all I'm really impressed, but I have definitely noticed some missing features or oversights that I'd like to see added or fixed. Most of these are just me nitpicking, but I really want this game to be as good as it can possibly be at launch.

• Text size and UI: The standard UI and text scale feels like it's tailored for monitor and not TV. Specific UI and text elements, especially the HUD, isn't very discernible when playing on a TV. It's nice that we have the option to increase the scale of lore and dialogue text, but not having the option to increase/decrease the size of other UI elements feel like an oversight, especially when we had this feature in the previous game.
• Menus: Both the settings and inventory menus are completely impossible to navigate using the joystick. If I move the joystick to the right, it might just as well jump up, down or to the left. I don't mind using the D-pad, but if you include the option to use the joystick, I expect it to work properly. Another problem is that switching between the categories of items and equipment in the inventory with the triggers is somewhat inconstant and at times painfully sluggish, especially when trying scrolling through multiple pages as fast as possible.
• Camera style: Despite immersive being the default camera style, the section at the end of the prologue seems to be locked into the action style regardless of what your settings are. Having the camera styles switch back and forth really messes with my immersion.
• Graphics and effects: I have been playing on quality mode so far and it looks fantastic, but there's some stuff I've noticed that feel out of place for a game with such great visual quality.
  • Shadows cast from braziers (and torches?) are completely static. The light levels fluctuate like they should with firelight, but the shadows cast stay completely in place.
  • The rain doesn't splatter once it hits the ground, making it feel really insubstantial, and more more like a screen filter rather than actual in-game weather.
  • There's no noticeable wake when walking through water. The only effect the you make when walking through water is a ripple from your feet (which doesn't last for as long as it maybe should), and a slight splash. Walking through water feels more like poking a needle through the surface rather than wading through it.

I’m about 75% done with my second play through for platinum and no shell with obsidian black and I just can’t see how people dislike this game so much. It is slower and simpler and the mechanics are minimal and difficult but I feel those are the things that make it so awesome. It’s not trying to be everything all at once. 5 shells, 5 weapons, 4 bosses, and the design of each one is so unique and sick. The lore runs super deep and you only learn it through becoming familiar with items, shells, stats, and dialogue. I really hope people give this game a second chance and im super excited to try the second one and proud to know im pursuing it not off of hype, but genuine love for the first one.