Mortal Shell 2 Open Beta Impressions - Cold Symmetry Finally Has Something Real
I went into the Mortal Shell 2 Open Beta with moderate expectations. The original was a budget soulslike that I finished and thought was fine - competent, atmospheric, but clearly made by a small team working at the edge of their budget. It had good ideas and rough execution, the kind of game you recommend to people who've exhausted the genre's bigger titles and want more of it.
The Open Beta for the sequel, which went live on Steam following its reveal at Summer Game Fest 2026, is a different category of product. I spent about three hours with it and came away genuinely surprised at how much Cold Symmetry appears to have grown.
What the Beta Covers
The Open Beta gives you access to the Prologue and an early stretch of the open world - roughly the first three hours of the full game. You begin the Harbinger's journey by claiming your first Shells, meeting your disciples, and recovering the lost Ova. There's a dungeon section, some mini-bosses, and one particularly formidable enemy that functions as the beta's main challenge. Players who push past Marrow Keep earn the ability to skip the Prologue when the full game releases, which is a nice incentive for beta participants.
As an additional reward, everyone who plays the beta unlocks the Flayed Harbinger cosmetic for the full release. Cold Symmetry clearly wants people to actually play this thing rather than just download and leave it sitting in a library.
The Shell System Returns, Rebuilt
Mortal Shell 1's defining mechanic was Hardening - the ability to freeze in place and absorb damage, which let you survive situations that would kill you instantly in other soulslikes. It was a genuinely interesting defensive tool that rewarded aggressive play at specific moments.
Mortal Shell 2 keeps the Shell switching mechanic but the overall feel of combat has shifted significantly. The stamina bar is gone, which is probably the most jarring change for veterans of the first game. This makes combat considerably more action-oriented and faster than before - closer to Nioh than Dark Souls in pacing. You can attack more freely, which changes the risk calculus of every encounter.
The beta gives access to three Shells (Tiel, Eredrim, and Proxima), each with distinct combat styles. Switching between them mid-run changes how you approach enemies, and the game seems to have a lot of genuine branching paths in the open world section - one of the players in the beta community noted the demo barriers suggested an impressive amount of interconnected routes.
Performance Concerns
Not everything is positive. Performance was a notable complaint from a portion of the beta playerbase. Some Steam reviews mentioned the game running poorly on certain hardware configurations. This is a beta, and optimization issues at this stage aren't unusual - but it's worth noting if you're planning to play the Open Beta now and have a mid-range PC. Cold Symmetry will presumably address this before full release.
Where It Lands
Mortal Shell 2 feels like it was built by people who took the criticisms of the first game seriously. The budget indie roughness is mostly gone. The world design looks genuinely ambitious - the interconnected open world is larger and more varied than anything in Mortal Shell 1, the combat feels faster and more satisfying, and the visual presentation is a real step up.
Three hours isn't enough to assess the full game. But three hours was enough to go from moderate expectations to genuinely looking forward to the full release later this year. For a franchise that I'd have described as "solid but unremarkable" before this beta, that's a meaningful shift.
The Open Beta is free on Steam right now. If you have any interest in soulslikes, it's worth an afternoon.
Beta Impressions Score: Promising - Full Review Coming at Launch
Played approximately 45 minutes of the Open Beta on PC.