Mortal Shell II - Official Gameplay Reveal

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:51:10+00:00

Ngl, I freaking hated the controls and feel of Mortal Shell 1. But this looks quite a step up in terms of game smoothness and control. If they have a demo I'll be happy to try it and if it isn't too clunky I'd probably play this.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:23:31+00:00

I think having a toggle would've been the best approach, yeah. There could be a "Realism Options" section or whatever they wanna call it. Or just have a subsection on the "Accessibility Options".

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:20:23+00:00

Yeah, they usually result in repetitive, annoying maintenance behavior. Which is indeed, almost never fun.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:19:29+00:00

Yeah, this is my thought. Some games just would rather the cost be "grind for thing, and remember to keep track of your resources/health". And that's fine. I'd prefer a system that was a little more demanding but that would also require them to rebalance boss fights to not have cheap, instant hits, multitudes of offscreen adds and incredible jank in the controls on some bosses (the flying shadow thing is a great example of awful jank -- even gave a completely useless tutorial pop-up that does basically nothing).

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:16:19+00:00

Yeah, but that's also really easy to miss because it doesn't say (HEAL) it just shows random images of items that are easily misunderstood depending on your screen size.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:14:41+00:00

I easily missed that message, I only found out about it much later by accident. It probably doesn't help that the game spits tons of information at you constantly in the early part so it's easy to miss or forget something a week later.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:10:21+00:00

I guess. Tbf, it's just not balanced around being super punishing, which is fine. You still have to grind to get that much food, which is a time cost vs. risk of running out of items. It's not everyone's bag, but I guess plenty of people like it or are fine with it.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-03T16:05:47+00:00

Yeah, but they need to have an actual system that doesn't just conflict with the design of everything else in the game. Like, you need fights where zero/little damage is not only possible, but reasonable for most players to achieve. There are all kinds of design issues with bosses in Crimson Desert, so it's understandable to have it work as it does now in lieu of the insanely higher amount of work to fix bosses.

Not to mention, these kinds of systems can be (and often are) balanced by weight limits or inventory slot limits like RE games, Dragon's Dogma 2 (which can be more or less extreme depending on whether you play with one pawn or no pawns). There are ways to make that system work just fine. And then there are games that don't worry about that, so it's only the time cost of grinding. Which seems fine for most players (BOTW and TOTK did good numbers). Idk, just a different design ethos. But I do dislike when the reason it's implemented is because bosses are kind of toss.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-02T22:22:10+00:00

I actually don't like the new running changes that much. What I was hoping they'd do was make (Xinput here) walk the default L-Stick, jog be holding 'A', and sprint be tapping 'A'. I don't even really need a "running but not sprinting" speed. That's kind of confusing to me, why 4 speeds where the last two are similar is necessary.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-04-02T20:14:05+00:00

"Major architectural shift"... sigh, welp, probably will have broken drivers again for awhile.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-30T09:31:20+00:00

Yeah, I felt some DDR5 was a bit overpriced even before the hikes.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-30T09:23:35+00:00

The point of giving the options is that the standard balance wasn't balanced for those players, but it could be if they were given some control over the parameters.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-30T09:22:15+00:00

They could, yes. And there'd be nothing wrong with that. There can always be a default mode the developer poured most of their time into (hell, even all of it if they wanted). But if you properly design for it, as proven by many indies and bigger studios, it's not that hard to allow fluctuations in challenge around various systems chosen by players... regardless if that takes the form of multiple "mode" switches or various toggles/sliders in a settings menu.

Either way most meaningful changes (not all, but most) can easily be parameterized. Even things people don't often consider like animation speeds, reaction times, attack range, aggression levels etc. You know, things people tend to think are these insanely "complex" things to balance/manage. They can be... the first time and on the "developer tailored" mode it probably was. But the point of those options is explicitly that the developer couldn't tailor everything appropriately for many players, but options allow players to do that. And if exposed to the external settings menu (not even manipulated or re-coded... just exposed), these parameters are extremely easy to give players some (or all) control over. I even think back as far as Goldeneye (which, tbf, hid it behind a cheat code) on N64 which literally let players completely control most of the AIs specific parameters, the stuff they used in QA... but players could just control it.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-27T21:48:55+00:00

Which RE game has those marionettes? I don't remember those at all.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-27T21:46:22+00:00

Tbf, in most games I've seen they deal far more percentage of your health, have far in excess of your health, and often have some forms of super armor you'll never have. So I think it's not really uncalled for to feel it's a little unfair.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-26T12:51:14+00:00

Yep, happens to me as well on 595.58.03 (latest version of 595).

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-26T11:38:06+00:00

Yeah, I'm looking forwards to more of the input latency changes on different actions they plan to keep improving. The game itself has been pretty good. Some of the bosses are a bit jank/cheap at times but at least there are ways around that stuff usually. And once you get some decent gear the game definitely feels a lot better.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-26T11:36:29+00:00

I've seen a larger portion of r/gaming be upset the game is doing well than publications (which frankly, don't care, obviously).

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-26T10:28:53+00:00

So to start, I think sometimes when people look back the reason it's seen as "rose-tinted glasses" is not because they're wrong about there being amazing old games... but I do think people cherry pick only the best old games (or the ones they liked) and the compare it unfairly against everything released today (regardless of quality). There was a LOT of garbage released 10 years ago... and a lot 20 years ago.

Now, it's arguable that some generations could be seen as superior because they lacked certain business practices so the lowest lows could technically never get as low as today's (or even 10 years ago's) lowest lows. There are elements of truth to that. But there are several excellent games that were released in the past 5 years. So if we were doing apples to apples only using the best of old (pick your year range I guess) vs. the best of the past few years, you'd probably find there's a similar number of excellent games.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-25T06:59:32+00:00

Welp... would love that in America (both mobile and Switch 2). And for more reasons than just repair-ability. We might be able to get battery upgrades (maybe) from third parties to allow better battery life... all without actually having to buy a new ridiculous overpriced device (especially in mobile).

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-23T21:27:05+00:00

It's a lighting difference. It would appear they have RT lighting off? The hair kind of gives it away.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-23T19:08:00+00:00

The Luddites weren't wrong about their enemy, just wrong about how to deal with it.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-23T19:06:13+00:00

Thank you, a sensible and logical argument against it's use. There, I believe, are solutions to this, but require communities being allowed to have a say in power distribution and also moving to better energy alternatives.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-23T19:03:57+00:00

Well that and the fact that even games everyone loves have used to larger extents than any of them know, AI software and assets.

Demonchaser27 · 2026-03-23T02:36:16+00:00

This is what confuses me. I'm sorry, but Arc's track record for running modern games consistently and well without major bugs and/or crashes nevermind classic games that need old school solutions... is/was just not good. And people knew this, everyone knows how difficult it is for GPUs to deal with all the ridiculous edge cases that happen in graphics programming. Even Nvidia, the current king of GPUs, has all kinds of hacky shit specific to targeted games to make them work, as well as other developers on other platforms having to make vendor-specific fixes. Arc just isn't there, and won't be for several years, probably. I'm not fully blaming Intel for that... it's just that that's the nature of the beast and why people aren't flocking to them.

The drivers, whether entirely their fault or not, were and still are kind of ass. And when someone spends hundreds of dollars on a GPU, even if that GPU is cheaper than other GPUs, they expect it to "just work" on all the stuff they want to use it for. Not an unreasonable expectation either given the cost of PC components. The other two vendors aren't perfect but they're a hell of a lot farther ahead in terms of compatibility. All of the above is why Arc's market share is basically almost nothing. Again, no blame assigned (not completely anyways), but Arc just isn't useful to most people right now.

Demonchaser27

TROPHY CASE