[UPDATE] Mortal Shell II Is Out, and the Reviews Say It Grew Into the Idea

We flagged Mortal Shell II a week back, when it was still "nearly here." It's here now, out worldwide today on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series, and the early verdict is kinder than sequels to cult soulslikes usually get.

Cold Symmetry's follow-up is sitting around 84 on Metacritic and 85 on OpenCritic, off roughly 40 reviews with no outright pans. The line critics keep landing on is that it grew into the idea the 2020 original only sketched: the corridors are gone, the world's open and interconnected, and the Shell system finally has room to breathe.

How it's running

Better than you might fear for a mid-budget open-world game. On Xbox Series X and S there's a 60fps mode that, by early accounts, actually holds 60. On Steam it peaked at 19,242 players within five hours of advance access. Modest next to the giants, healthy for a studio this size.

The honest bit

It's a good soulslike in a year drowning in them. Combat's quicker, exploration's broader, and if you bounced off the first game's stiffness, this is the version to try. Whether "one of the better non-FromSoftware soulslikes" is enough to pull you off your backlog is the only real question, and that's a you problem, not a Cold Symmetry one.