Mortal Shell II, Sequel To 2020's Soulslike Hit, Is Out Now

Cold Symmetry, the studio behind the 2020 hit Mortal Shell, which put a creative spin on the soulslike formula, is back with a newly released sequel.

Mortal Shell II keeps the original's Shell system, basically letting players switch between character classes at rest points, but expands the first game's compact design into a much larger action RPG. You play as Harbinger, a formless being whose power comes from the heroes who came before, so you need to find their corpses and take on their Shells to gain their abilities.

The game also removes the stamina bar completely, a controversial choice since it's been a key part of the genre, controlling how often you can attack, dodge, and backstep. Instead of stamina, Mortal Shell II introduces Resolve, the yellow bar above the red health bar, as its main combat resource, which you build by landing melee attacks.

The combat has also expanded beyond melee. Mortal Shell II has ranged weapons, including shotguns:

While the original game was made with Unreal Engine 4, already showing its age at the time, Mortal Shell II is built on Unreal Engine 5, bringing all the modern features like ray-traced reflections and Lumen. On PC, the game supports NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi-Frame Generation, and PS5 and Xbox Series X/S players get dedicated Performance modes.

Mortal Shell II is out today, August 20. You can pick it up on Steam, the PlayStation Store, and the Xbox Store.

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