Mortal Shell PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide

Conclusion

Mortal Shell is a game that proves that great games can come from small teams. While the game’s inspiration is clear, Mortal Shell does plenty to innovate within its genre and provides an experience that all fans of this style of game should enjoy. Better still, the game is available for just £24.99 on PC, making Mortal Shell very affordable.

While the game’s visuals are not industry-leading, it is hard to complain about what Cold Symmetry has delivered. Each area of the game is oozing with atmosphere, and the game’s map offers plenty of variety across its zones. The designs of each Mortal Shell are also incredibly well detailed, as are their animations. While we have sometimes seen animations fail to sync perfectly with our system’s framerate, such as when the player or enemies interact with bear traps, none of these issues are game-breaking. 

At launch, Cold Symmetry has delivered PC gamers with more polish than many AAA studios. We have experienced no bugs outside of the occasional animation issue, and we are pleased with the performance levels that the game offers on most of our test hardware. 
  
CPU-wise, Mortal Shell is extremely well optimised on PC. Even when restricted to two cores and four threads, our Ryzen 9 3950X was able to run the game at over 100 FPS at almost all times. If your CPU meets this game’s minimum system requirements, you should have no trouble playing Mortal Shell at well over 60 FPS, assuming your GPU is up for the task. 

If your PC meets Mortal Shell’s recommended system requirements, you will be able to play the game at 60 FPS at 1080p Ultra settings in most situation. With GPUs like AMD’s RX 580, PC gamers will need to use Medium settings to have average framerates of over 60 FPS, though this still delivers gamers decent visuals. 

Mortal Shell is a game that seems to favour Geforce hardware, especially when they are being compared to older Radeon (GCN) products. There is a reason why AMD’s R9 290 is the game’s minimum GPU requirements. Things improve significantly with Vega or newer graphics cards, though that doesn’t mean that older GCN card can’t offer PC gamers a great gameplay experience with Mortal Shell. 

Settings-wise, those who want to see significant framerate boosts over Mortal Shell’s Mortal preset should lower the game’s Shadows settings first. Next up, players should lower Post Processing and Effects settings to gain a notable framerate boost. When it comes to AA, we think that most PC gamers should set this feature to Ultra, as the game’s high setting features noticeable ghosting and its medium setting has visible aliasing. With ultra AA having a relatively low performance cost, we think that it is a setting that most PC players should be using. 

For steady, 1080p 60 FPS performance at Ultra or close to Ultra settings, we recommend AMD’s RX Vega 56, Nvidia GTX 1070 and Nvidia’s GTX 1660 Super. At 1440p, Nvidia’s GTX 1080. RTX 2060 and AMD’s RX 5700 all offer 60 FPS performance with settings between Ultra and High. At 4K, most PC players will need to utilise resolution scaling to achieve high framerates, even on graphics cards like Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Ti. 

Mortal Shell is an excellent game, provided you are a fan of the souls-like genre. Players will enter the game’s world with little information, and it is up to them to discover what they need to survive and progress through the game. If you are not a fan of this style of game, Mortal Shell is not for you, but if you want are new Souls-like action-adventure game to sink your teeth into, then Mortal Shell is a game that’s worth considering. 

– At the time of writing, Mortal Shell is an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC. The game is due to release on Steam sometime in 2021. 
 
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