Mortal Shell II — Dark. Beautiful.

We’ve grown so used to games where darkness becomes part of the artistic language.

Bloodborne is a perfect example. It showed us just how beautiful a Gothic city could be when plunged into one vast, feverish nightmare. The narrow streets of Yharnam, cathedrals, monsters, blood — and that slowly growing feeling that behind all the familiar horror lies something far older and far more incomprehensible.

Then there’s Lords of the Fallen, which went in a slightly different direction. Its world feels like a beautiful, almost religious apocalypse: towering cathedrals, martyrs, demons, bones, altars, and a parallel realm of the dead that always seems to exist somewhere just beside our own.

So what about Mortal Shell II?

It takes familiar elements of dark fantasy and turns them into something of its own.

Here, darkness doesn’t feel like decoration. The world seems as if it died a long time ago — and, for some reason, simply kept moving.

Ruined temples, forests, ancient graves, fortresses made of bone, fanatics, and creatures that are difficult to even put a name to. Somehow, it all looks beautiful in its own way.

But Mortal Shell’s biggest distinction isn’t even its world. It’s the core mechanic behind the game.

Scattered throughout this world are the remains of fallen warriors — Shells. We can inhabit them, use their strength and abilities, and gradually discover who these people once were. In the sequel, the developers are taking this idea even further.

Even the combat is being pushed away from the usual soulslike formula by Cold Symmetry. In Mortal Shell II, attacks are no longer tied to the traditional stamina restriction. The focus is instead on maintaining pressure, breaking enemy posture, landing critical strikes, experimenting with different weapons — and even using firearms.

It makes for an interesting mixture.

From Bloodborne, you can feel that same fascination with horror and the beauty of the grotesque.

From Lords of the Fallen comes the grand, religious dark-fantasy imagery of dead gods, temples, and monstrous creations.

And yet Mortal Shell II doesn’t seem interested in becoming either of those games.

Cold Symmetry has its own vision: flesh becomes equipment, the dead become a source of power, and this ruined world doesn’t ask you to save it.

Instead, it seems to invite you to dig a little deeper and find out exactly what went wrong here.

And perhaps that’s exactly why Mortal Shell II looks so interesting right now.

Making darkness beautiful is an art of its own.

#games #mortalshell #soulslike #fantasy