I have no prior experience with the Souls-Like genre unless you want to include the 2hrs or so I played of Elden Ring a few years ago. With that being said I enjoyed almost all of my time on the game with a few things that got annoying after a while. So I will list the pros and cons i had of the game, but cutting it a bit of slack since it was made by a pretty small indie team from what i know.

The story is pretty much non-existent and i didn't get all the tiny little lore drops around the game, but you are pretty much tasked with retrieving glands for this character in return you get more abilities from the dude. There were very few npc's i found with the main one being Genessa who acts as your perk vendor and respawn point and I didnt even see one npc where your first objective is till the end of the game.

The gameplay was pretty solid from what I could tell albeit a bit basic with the amount of moves you have
with each of the weapons being 2 weapon abilities, light attack chain, heavy attack chain and parries. I ended up just using heavy attacks and dodging for most of the game since it was the easiest for me. The hardening mechanic is actually pretty helpful since you don't take any damage while hardened and it takes a while for low level enemies to break it, but bosses one tap it so it's nice to use if you are out of stam

So stats in the game are pretty much fixed with 5 presets being the four shells of dead warriors/scholars you find throughout the game. Also the idea of the shells is pretty freaking cool and can't think of any game off the top of my head with that type of mechanic, but there probably are a few similar. My playthrough I swapped between Solomon who is probably the best all around with stats, but I preferred Eredrim for is max hp. My only complaint is that you can't say remove 1 or 2 pts from health and move them into stam.

Exploration was a bit annoying with no map at all in the game, but I also felt that it was pretty satisfying to remember pathways to certain areas. There are 5 zones, but two of them are identical in look with the other 3 being vastly different and they look great with Eternal Narthax being the coolest out of them all.

Finally bosses which are the main appeal of Souls like games there were a total of 7 which is about right given the short playtime of the game. The first boss you fight to get your weapon you face him each time you find one of the 4 weapons so after the first time it was pretty easy.
Pretty much only 2 bosses gave me any difficulty being Grisha the first world boss you find since i was still trying to learn the mechanics of the game and the final Boss who was pretty annoying in a good way. I still ended up clearing all of the bosses in 3 try's or less with Grisha taking me 5 times. The move patterns were pretty easy to figure out, but if I wasn't focusing I would get hit quite a bit. If you like souls games you would probably enjoy the bosses and blaze through them faster than I did.

My overall rating of Mortal Shell would be around a 7 give or take a few points. Since I lack knowledge about what is good or bad in these games i felt like it was a great starter into the genre. I say that since it didn't feel like anything was impossible without a few attempts for clearing an area or boss. The random enemies gave me the most trouble which i find funny. If you like the genre of games you should definitely check out this game and thank you for reading my review!