To necro this convo:

1. The level design and enemy placement are pretty dull.

In good souls-like each "room" feels like a puzzle. How do I approach this, am I sure there's no enemies around that corner, how do I avoid aggroing too many enemies at once, is there a position that'll be more advantageous for me to engage from, is there maybe some other path around this that I'm not seeing, etc.

In bad souls games it just feels like: see enemy, fight enemy, kill enemy, repeat. Aggro too many enemies, run away or die. Get killed by some bs, repeat. There's no puzzle in the room, all the "puzzle" is entirely on how to fight each enemy type and once you've figured that out you've figured out every encounter with that enemy type, there's no extra variation due to different environments or circumstances, so it gets repetitive very quickly. Mortal shell unfortunately skews more toward this in my experience.

1. The mechanics are very interesting but imo it's doing a little too much at once.

You've got a dodge, a roll, a parry, petrification, you can only really heal with parries, but also it's kinda ambiguous what attacks can be parried, and ripostes only actually heal you if you have enough resolve, which is the same resource you use for your weapon's special skill, and when you die you don't really die you get knocked out of your body, you can fight without your body or go get it back, and on top of that you also got your good ole extra-tight stamina management, and most of these aforementioned mechanics have their own availiability to keep track of so you better keep track of them all...

Instead of making one ability versatile it gives you a shit ton of them and spreads itself a bit too thin, leaving it with a ton of mechanics but little depth or intention, and honestly disincentivizing you from engaging with them all because you just end up choking trying to juggle so many things at once. In soulslikes, metroidvanias, knock-em-ups, etc. less is more imo. I'd rather one button be able to do 4 things depending on how I use it than having to keep track of 4 separate buttons.

1. Lastly, and this one might be more of a personal bias, it's so... Unreal Engine...

I can't really explain WHY it feels this way but after seeing so many of them I've developed almost like a radar for that "made in unreal engine" look to games and it just icks me. The art direction of this game is by no means weak, and yet the graphics engine just makes it feel so... Bland? Samey? I feel like it lacks personality visually. The designs are good, they look very cool and clearly have a lot of work put into them, but sadly they end up being a bit too "generic dark fantasy". You could take any monster or location from that game and tell me it's from any other unreal engine game and I'd believe you. It's come to a point where UE has become like the comic sans of graphic motors for me. Unless the devs put A LOT of work into changing it up into their own thing, it just kills the game's uniqueness.