Enotria: The Last Song can be closely summed up as any other Dark Souls-like game with one big difference. Jyamma Games takes the setting of the Dark Souls universe out of cryptlike caves and swampy bogs into the glimmering light, sunny mountainsides, and bountiful realistic cities. They also excel in reducing the overwhelming amount of unintuitive things to unlock and equip and the janky performance issues. These things alone keep Enotria’s name from being forgotten among other games in this genre.
Enotria is bound with awe-inspiring graphics from the rolling fields of golden sunflowers, and clean, sandy shores and the creatures that go bump in the night still have bold colors and unbelievable environmental aspects like huge, twisting trees and monstrous forms. Similarly, many enemy and NPC character designs are covered in little details that bring each one into their light.
The story has a lot of classic Italian metaphors to the stage plays and every one playing a role like an actor, especially early on, and I was familiar with most of them before I played. I will admit I was lost on some of the ideas but never was deterred from playing. Individual interactions with some characters can be interesting, but in true soulslike fashion, much of this story is hidden in mystery. Each area is filled with enemies that vary greatly from each other, but within each region, they can get pretty repetitive over time. That doesn’t mean they can’t be dangerous the whole way through, but I saw most of what I could expect from a given region pretty early into it, and it takes about five or so hours to get through one.
There’s a lot of worthwhile exploration to do in each of Enotria’s three zones. I enjoyed the gothic city of Quintia. It provided me with lots of branching paths that led to loot or shortcuts. Occasionally, these shortcuts can help you bypass whole sections of a castle or crypt, but very few turn out to be paths to whole new locations. There were plenty of nooks and crannies despite the relative linearity of each zone. Still, some gimmicks seemed like they would be a bigger deal early on that showed up very scarcely after, like white glyphs that can be activated to make temporary platforms and structures to open up new locations.
When it comes to combat, you can tell that it wanted to put you on your arse. This is more of a Souls-like game than it appears. With that in mind, finding new enemies to beat up is always a great time. Anyone familiar with these games will feel right at home with the basic light and heavy attacks governed by stamina. There is no blocking, and parrying doesn’t stun enemies outright, instead building up a gauge that eventually opens bad guys up for big attacks. Entoria’s parry window is more forgiving than in games like Lies of P, which similarly wraps its defensive strategy around counters, and it felt way more doable in the early game.
The character creation was a change for me. Masks are as close to classes, not only do they change your look, but they also offer specific passive bonuses. These can range from doing more damage with heavy attacks or increasing stamina and defense. To get an effective build going, you need to use their boons as a baseline and layer on additional modifications in the form of roles and perks. I am sure other reviewers will go into further detail if you want to max out your build. I did find out that the aspects of your defeated enemies alter your stats in both positive and negative ways, while also giving you more passive bonuses. I started taking notes on what this did when I killed something. I quit after a while since it became too big of a list. It was a blast.
Now, when it came to fighting I am heartbroken to state, that Entoria’s has only seven weapon types and for me, I didn’t find any distinct difference when trying each out. There are supposedly 120 different weapons per type and they cover four types of elemental damage that they can do. I discovered that different weapons can hide some additional abilities that can only be activated when using the right fighting combination with light and heavy attacks. But when it came to deciding between one weapon or another, there wasn’t a big enough difference to be favorable to one specific.
I fell in love with the Italian folklore-inspired character designs and the bright sunny landscapes of Italy’s Alps. I also found the combat undoubtedly addictive regardless of the difficulty spike. The story was a change of the norm from other games in this genre which puts Enotria: The Last Song in its spotlight. I am more than pleased with this game, and can not wait to see what comes in the future.
This review was written based on a PC review code for Enotria: The Last Song provided by Jyamma Games.
