In some other roguelites, any individual enemy might not be the most intimidating or have a chance to kill you on its own, but here there’s never a safety net. This means that what also hasn’t changed is the game’s punishing difficulty. If nothing else, playing through The Virtuous Cycle is a great way to get back into the gameplay and feel how tightly choreographed the fights can feel and how satisfying it is to take down any range of enemies. Enemies appear in slightly different locations and sometimes larger groups, but the core of stabbing, rolling, and hardening is as pure and satisfying as ever. On the gameplay front, very little has changed from the base game. Most of these benefits are your standard increase in dodge roll speed, drop rates, or damage, though some less common ones give you bigger benefits, refresh the ability to recover your shell, or even provide boosts that last permanently instead of just for that run. These are scattered around the world and provide benefits in ways similar to any other roguelite on the market. Instead, progression here comes in the form of pillars and touch stones. Most notably, you succeed if you can defeat the entirety of the game in a single run, but any time you die, you’re transported back to Fallgrim Tower and have to start from scratch, all but erasing the type of step-by-step progression that’s so basic in Soulslikes.
Of course, the roguelite run that you’ve just embarked on is different than any of the traditional runs in the game’s primary campaign. To begin, you choose which shell, weapon, and instinct you want to use for your run through the game, and you’re spawned into one of a handful of locations around the game’s opening area. In this alternate universe, named the reverie, the walls of Fallgrim Tower are locked except for a single pillar through which you can escape, starting your next run of the game. In The Virtuous Cycle, there’s a new character in the Fallgrim Tower who takes you to what is effectively an alternate universe, where the environments are mostly the same but the game turns into a Soulslike roguelite, which doesn’t affect your progress in the main campaign at all. Its slight differentiation comes in its semi-linearity within each of the three paths you can take, each of which ends with a boss. It has an interconnected world with tough enemies whose attack patterns you need to learn and who respawn when you die. In its original version, Mortal Shell is a Soulslike through and through. " The Virtuous Cycle’s addition of a roguelite, along with its new shell and weapon, make it worthwhile for the fans of the game who want a new way to play, but I hesitate to say it adds any value to the game itself for newcomers." The Virtuous Cycle’s addition of a roguelite, along with its new shell and weapon, make it worthwhile for the fans of the game who want a new way to play, but I hesitate to say it adds any value to the game itself for newcomers.
#MORTAL SHELL AXATANA UPDATE#
Cold Symmetry has continually given fans free updates, and with the release of The Virtuous Cycle, not only did the game receive another free update if you were quick enough to snag it during its first 5 days on the market, but it adds in an entirely new mode that changes the fundamental way the game is played. From the level design to the lore and the structure, Mortal Shell was and still is clearly influenced heavily by the Souls series, though its hardening and shell systems make it just unique enough to be noteworthy and a recent cult classic.
Last year Mortal Shell made a name for itself for being a Soulslike that did a lot of things right with a couple new twists, though it didn’t quite get out of the shadow of the beast that is the Souls series.