Is Mortal Shell II Bad? What the Reviews Really Show
Is Mortal Shell II bad? Critics disagree — an 84 Metacritic score says no, but real bugs, balance complaints, and mixed Steam feedback complicate that answer.
No, Mortal Shell II is not bad by professional-critic consensus — it holds an 84 on Metacritic, with scores like IGN's 8/10 and Giant Bomb's 4.5/5 stars, and the harshest score found from a major outlet was still a passing 7/10. That said, the game isn't flawless: real bugs, difficulty-balance complaints, and a "Mixed" Steam sentiment bucket for at least one review segment mean the picture is more complicated than a single number suggests.
Review Scores: A Strong Critical Consensus
Every professional review found for this game landed in positive territory, even the ones with the sharpest individual complaints buried inside them.
| Outlet | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic (critic aggregate) | 84 |
| IGN | 8/10 |
| GameSpot | 8/10 |
| CGM / DualShockers | 8.5/10 |
| GamesRadar / JeuxVideo / Nexus Hub | 8/10 |
| Giant Bomb | 4.5/5 stars |
| PCGamesN | 7/10 (lowest found) |
Metacritic's user-review section had no ratings logged yet at the time this data was pulled (0 in every positive/mixed/negative bucket), so there's no independent Metacritic user score to weigh against the critic number — that's unconfirmed for now.
What Reviewers and Players Actually Like
- Combat — even PCGamesN, the lowest scorer, calls it one of the game's biggest strengths overall, despite feeling "somewhat clunky at times."
- Tone and atmosphere — Kotaku's review is described as largely enthusiastic about the game's atmosphere and mood.
- Giant Bomb's overall verdict — 4.5/5 stars, from a reviewer who admits they bounced off the original 2020 Mortal Shell after an hour.
- The stamina-bar removal, eventually — Kotaku initially called dropping the traditional Souls stamina meter "backward thinking," but came around to it over a 40-hour playthrough.
The Real Complaints
The negative material that exists is scattered across otherwise positive reviews rather than forming one big takedown — but it's specific and worth knowing before you buy.
Difficulty and balance. PCGamesN found the built-in Slayer Seal accessibility option "does little to truly make a difference," unlike Lies of P's true easy mode. Giant Bomb states outright that "the game could stand to be more difficult" by default, but singles out "magnetic" enemy attacks — letting enemies close unreasonable distances to land hits — as feeling "like a band-aid to create additional difficulty" rather than real challenge. A locked 116-comment Steam Community thread ("stop complaining about difficulty," posted August 19, 2026) shows players actively split on this: some describe getting "two-shot by regular enemies" and call bosses "damage sponges," while at least one counter-commenter beat the open beta "with no problem" and found enemies not spongy at all.
Bugs and performance. PCGamesN flagged a specific bug where a player's dropped Gloom (the leveling currency) could get stuck out of bounds after death with no way to retrieve it, calling it "a pretty big deal" given how central leveling is. Giant Bomb separately noted lighting and reflections that "bug out slightly at times." On the performance side, PCGamesN saw "very pitiful fps" at high graphics settings on their test hardware, and player-reported performance elsewhere is inconsistent — some report smooth play, others describe stuttering that persists across different settings.
Currency and grinding. Kotaku's explicit "Disliked" list calls out that "scarcity of upgrade materials and currency made character builds restricting and grindy," forcing deliberate grinding of regular enemies for cash by the midgame. Giant Bomb echoes this, saying resource distribution ("the way resources are doled out") is "sometimes confusing" and can discourage experimenting with different builds and Shells.
Exploration and the open world. PCGamesN's central complaint is that the game "clearly tries to imitate the success of Elden Ring's open world, yet falls drastically short," with a map that's frustrating to navigate and insufficient direction toward finding map fragments. The world itself "feels a little hollow" by comparison. Kotaku separately dislikes that "occasionally getting stuck in the environment super sucks."
Tone missteps. Giant Bomb points to a specific boss — "a morbidly obese woman in a rocket-propelled wheelchair" — as camp that "never quite landed" against the game's otherwise serious tone, alongside a couple of other bosses leaning into similar shtick.
A day-one patch changed some of this
Giant Bomb's review includes an editor's note: a day-one patch altered stance-breaking and the Eredrim Shell's abilities after the review was written, so some described mechanics may not match the current build.
Steam Player Sentiment: More Mixed Than the Critic Scores
This is the part of the picture critics can't fully capture, and it's also the least confirmed. The Steam store page requires an age-gate click-through, so the overall numeric "Overall Reviews" summary couldn't be directly verified for this page. What is confirmed: a search-indexed snippet shows the Simplified Chinese-language review segment specifically rated "Mixed (607)" out of 607 reviews in that language filter.
A secondhand Reddit paraphrase (not independently verified) claims the game's broader Steam tally sits at "Mixed" with over 4,000 reviews shortly after launch, with one commenter saying "I bounced off it very quickly." Treat this as unconfirmed rather than a hard number — but combined with the language-specific Mixed bucket and the active Steam Community difficulty debate, it does suggest player reception runs cooler than the critic consensus, even if no large-scale "this game is bad" teardown exists in the reviews found.
Who Might Not Like Mortal Shell II
Think about this before buying
If you want a Soulslike with a traditional stamina meter and forgiving difficulty options, this may not be for you — the stamina bar is gone entirely, and the Slayer Seal accessibility item is reported as barely making a difference. If tight currency economies and grindy build experimentation frustrate you, the scarce upgrade materials and gold flagged by Kotaku and Giant Bomb are worth weighing too.