r/soulslikes

I’ve finished MS2 and wanted to share a few thoughts with players who are still undecided about the game.
Since release, we’ve seen a lot of different opinions. Some people say this game is the savior of the genre, while others call it just another trash Soulslike. Obviously, neither is true. The reality is that MS2 is a seriously good Soulslike, although it may need a few QoL adjustments to appeal to a broader audience. Personally, I had fewer issues with these things, but everyone is different.
First of all, the game is in a good technical state. There are a few bugs here and there, but nothing the developers shouldn’t be able to fix relatively easily. Performance is good as well.
I’m playing on PS5 Pro, and there are two modes: Graphics and Performance.
Graphics Mode looks incredible on the Pro. Seriously, it’s absolutely stunning. I’m not a tech expert, but I assume it’s probably native 4K, running at a consistent 30 FPS with good frame pacing and basically no stuttering. I think this is one of the better UE5 implementations I’ve seen. I played several sections and fights at 30 FPS, and with motion blur set to Low, it really isn’t that bad. If you’re someone who prioritizes graphics, the game is absolutely playable at 30 FPS.
(Side note: Motion Blur on High is basically unplayable for me and makes everything extremely blurry. Even Low looks quite strong at first, but it’s much better than the High setting.)
Performance Mode is also strong. It appears to use 4K upscaling while targeting 60 FPS. There are still occasional micro-stutters and small hitches, although I’ve also played for hours without experiencing a single noticeable stutter. I’m confident the developers can improve this further. Either way, credit where it’s due: Performance Mode still looks very sharp.
In the future, I’d love to see additional features such as HDR, PSSR and 120Hz support. Those would be the cherry on top of an already beautiful game. But for the technical details, I’ll wait until experts like Digital Foundry release their analysis.

Gameplay
Gameplay-wise, MS2 is very good. The combat feels more traditional and is closer to the older Souls games. It doesn’t have as much mechanical depth as some other Soulslikes, but it compensates for that with different playstyles and Shells that continuously expand the gameplay through perks.
There are also Tarnstones that provide different bonuses and attributes, with some even expanding our moveset. Over time, this allows us to create our own individual build, but we can switch things around whenever we want and experiment with something new.
There is one small criticism, though: Shells have to be upgraded individually. This means that when you discover a new Shell, it can be significantly underleveled compared to the one you’ve already been using, especially if you don’t have enough materials to level it up.
A respec system for Shell upgrades would have made a lot of sense here. We can already respec our perks whenever we want, so I hope the developers improve this aspect in the future. That would make the system pretty much perfect for me.

Exploration
This is where MS2 really shines.
The world is huge, and there is something to discover around almost every corner: dungeons, ruins, castles, forests — the full package. There's an incredible verticality that leads us into deep dungeons or high walls. The exploration is truly immersive.
Exploration is also properly rewarded. You’re constantly discovering new Tarnstones, materials, weapons, Shells and other items. It feels genuinely satisfying.
At the same time, the open world is packed with enemies, and Beacon rest points are relatively rare. However, they’re usually placed very intelligently, often around major crossroads. The different locations are also interconnected extremely well.
Even when you feel completely lost, sooner or later you’ll usually end up somewhere familiar and realize how everything connects.
And that feeling when you’ve been exploring forever and finally discover another Beacon? Priceless, haha.

Art Direction & Atmosphere
The art direction and atmosphere are also excellent.
I really like how consistently the game sticks to its visual identity. The world feels believable while simultaneously being bleak, dark, grotesque and threatening. The sound design supports the atmosphere extremely well.
My only real criticism here is the lighting inside some of the smaller dungeons. It can look very sepia-toned, muddy and dull. But that’s ultimately only a minor negative.

Difficulty
The difficulty fluctuates quite a bit.
Some areas are relatively easy, while others suddenly introduce massive difficulty spikes. Of course, this also depends heavily on your playstyle and build. Difficulty is always very subjective, so it’s impossible to universally judge it for everyone.
But this is Souls. It’s supposed to be hard — and MS2 definitely is hard.
There is also a Night Mode that essentially functions as a Hard Mode, offering additional rewards and exclusive dungeons. On the other hand, there’s an Easy Mode Sigil that gives you extremely powerful attacks, although using it disables trophies.

Overall
MS2 is an easy recommendation for Souls players who love challenging exploration and occasionally brutal sections.
However, if you’re primarily looking for extremely deep combat mechanics or heavily rely on modern QoL features, it might not be the game for you.

Conclusion
Definitely one of the best Soulslike games of the year.
MS2 has a strong vision, great ideas and ultimately comes together as a very successful overall package. It has already become one of my favorite Soulslikes.

9/10

The same thing that’s happening to Mortal Shell 2 now also happened to Lies of P and Wuchang. New Soulslike releases to great reviews, players start to embrace it, but then a staunch “old guard” of players accuses fans of the game as being bots/astroturfers. You can see this in recent threads where posters who were negative of Mortal Shell 2 a week ago, having been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive reviews, are now taking up a new position by calling it a “B tier” game.

Does a good Soulslike threaten these people in some way? Or are they too stubborn to admit that they were wrong?

I bought sekiro like a year ago, I finished the tutorial, then tried getting past that first general. That guy made me rage quit and uninstall the game completely, I tried again a few months later, same guy made me uninstall again. This happened like 2 more times. Then yesterday I thought I’ll defeat that old fool anyway i can, after like 15 tries I defeated him. Then finally got to make progress. I had seen lots of videos complaining about the chained ogre, I thought it would take like 50 tries, surprisingly it took only 3. Made some more progress. I’m currently fighting and dying repeatedly to that samurai boss in the attic of the castle or something. I finally see why this game is sooo good. The joy of beating a boss after countless tries is sooooooooooooooooo good. Best Game ever.

I have played and finished all Fromsoft soulsborne catalog and Lies of P, and Khazan. Safe to say, I like soulslikes.

However, I haven’t been in the loop with souls like for the past like 9-10 months.
Recently I keep hearing about this Mortal Shell and people are already saying its top 5 soulslikes

Can someone loop me in on whats it like? Do I need to play Mortal Shell 1 before 2?

Thank you in advance!

So first off, the gameplay is great, combat is great and so on.

I finished the first area at lvl 25 and weapon lvl 12, had an absolute blast, one or two more beacons would've been great, but what can you do.

2nd area however has to be the hardest (most overtuned i dare to say even) shit i have ever seen. You run around for legit 20min, killing stuff for the first 10-15min and then you just run past an infinite amount of mobs still in hope to find a beacon at some point. Then you deathrun to your gloom (takes 5min) and then go from there. After doing this a few times you MIGHT be lucky enough to find a beacon.

Another off topic complaint is you pretty much have to set for a shell to play very early on since there is afaik no way to reassign glimpse. else you will have a few shells at bonding lvl 2 but no shell maxed out

tldr: 2nd area ridiculously hard, too few beacons imo

Wow, Stonemachia, what a gem of a game that succeeds in everything it attempts to do, from its mechanics, to its level design, to its dark, dream-like locations and atmosphere. Developers Crossfall Games just simply understand what souls fans are looking for, and have crafted not only one of the best indie sous-likes out there, but one of my favourite games of 2026.

You play as a chess piece, a pawn called Zefiro, who reawakens after an event known as the plague of Angels, a sort of divine disease that has transformed most of the populace into stone statues and other objects. Your goal is to guide Zefiro through the ruined city of Medhelan to reach a spiral tower that presumably leads to heaven itself.

As in many souls games, this rather thin premise is expanded upon with documents found in the environments, item descriptions, and beautifully illustrated cards that you gain upon defeating enemies and that serve as the game’s main collectible.

Things start off fairly simple: as a pawn you have your traditional dodge and parry, with the added bonus that perfect parries refill your healing flask, giving you the added incentive to stand your ground and repel enemy attacks rather than dodging away. I’ll admit I didn’t find the early hours especially interesting. There are no different weapons or armour to equip, and levelling is a simple button-press without any stat allocation, so you’re more or less just going through the motions without any control over the evolution of your character.

This all changes once you start to unlock other chess pieces. The bishop is a glass canon: fast and fragile. The horsey … I mean knight, has a supporting role; able to create health globes on successful parries or with its special abilities. And lastly, the rook is the heavy-hitter: slow and ponderous but with the capacity to absorb and reflect damage.

Once you unlock all the classes (well, nearly all the classes, there’s a fifth class I won’t spoil here), everything changes and the combat becomes much more satisfying as you’ll be constantly switching between forms to reap the benefits of each chess piece. For example, I would often start off with the knight and lay down a healing circle, then get some heavy hits in with the rook before switching to the pawn to use his parry to refill my flask. Everything is fluid and responsive, with the only caveat being you really need to turn off the camera shake in the options to get those parries down correctly.

There’s also a class upgrade system that allows you to unlock synergies between different chess pieces, so parrying the pawn’s special ability with another chess piece will summon an ally, for example, or releasing the knight’s drill attack while switching pieces will create an AoE wave of drills. To be honest, these are pretty tricky to pull off, and often happened more by accident than through a well-thought-out strategy, but it was always cool to see them activate.

It’s lucky you have all these options because I found Stonemachia to be a rather difficult game, especially for someone who’s not great at parrying like me. I’d say its comparable to Sekiro in terms of parrying skill, so if you got through that game without any issues you’ll be fine here. There are over 40 bosses in Stonemachia, and they range from massive pushovers to deadly opponents that take more than a few tries. Most of them I found to be challenging but fair, except for Mikhaim which for some reason took be a good dozen tries, and a late game fight where the game falls into the unfortunate trope of taking all your powers and abilities from you, forcing me to play only as the pawn.

The environments are another spectacular stand out, large, beautiful, and a real joy to explore. Unfortunately Stonemachia doesn’t start off well by having you explore a small, corridor-ridden castle followed by an equally corridor-ridden village, but once you actually get outside you’ll be presented with a sprawling windmill-strewn plain complete with ruined towers, rivers, and a castle under siege. It was a moment that reminded me of Elden Ring and elicited that same sense of wonder at everywhere I could go.

It’s not just the size, though. Every area is brimming with side quests, secrets, hidden collectibles, optional bosses, and often paths to entirely new locations. In fact, the amount of optional and missable content in this game is staggering. I like to take my time exploring, but after finishing up the game I scoured the message boards and found out I had completely missed two massive optional areas; one that had me travelling by boat away from the mainland and diving into an underground city, and another that sent me through a labyrinthine maze to a painting that transported me back into the past. Stonemachia is not an incredibly long game if you barrel down the main path, but if you seek out all the optional content you’ll be looking at twenty-five to thirty hours.

There’s really not much I can find wrong with Stonemachia. It has the occasional camera issues, and I think I got stuck on the environment once, but it’s still incredibly well polished for an indie title. Its combat is fun and strategic, its environments beautiful and otherworldly, and its exploration incredibly rewarding with tons of hidden bosses and areas to discover.

Stonemachia  is a true work of art and unless you’re averse to faster, more parry-focussed soulslikes you should absolutely give this game a try. As for me, I’ll be placing it just below Lies of P on the S-Tier.

The game is freaking awesome, however the runbacks are absolutely nuts, the fact that they decided to not put beacons inside dungeons is insane lol, some of the dungeons are absolutely gigantic btw, hopefully this is something that the devs can change in a update.

I’m semi new to souls games I’ve beaten Elden ring and Dark Souls 1 now but I’ve heard a lot of bad things about dark souls 2 so is it worth playing?

I've been debating whether to wait, since I currently have about 15 hours in this game, but I'm making up my mind: this game is fantastic, and it just keeps getting better the further I progress. The shells are all unique in their own way and always bring a fresh perspective to the gameplay. The exploration is brutal, yes, brutal. It's exhausting and draining, but also rewarding, and that dopamine rush when a bonfire appears—yes, that's Souls.

Wuchang gave me this feeling recently, and although I still think Wuchang is the best non-FS soulslike, MS2 is on this level. It has that Souls essence from DeS, Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, BB and Wuchang. Kudos to the developers! I'm looking forward to future patches that will perfect the game.

It’s a 100% Must buy for Souls Fans