When it comes to Souls and Soulslike games, it can be hard to differentiate the genuine article from the copycat. Enotria: The Last Song released a demo earlier this week ahead of their upcoming release in September 2024, and I took it through its paces to see if it is all that or just a pretender.
Enotria: The Last Song is a Soulslike game from Italian developer Jyamma Games and was apparently inspired by Italian folklore, and right away you can tell just from the visuals. If the full version of the game looks half as good as the demo does, then players will be in for a treat, visually-speaking.
Where a lot of Soulslike titles like to lean towards the darker environments and darker colours in general, Enotria: The Last Song has gone the other way, with bright and golden sunlit locations and breathtaking Tuscan-inspired architecture. There is something to see everywhere you look and it is a real treat to see how much detail there is to take in.
“As with most Soulslike titles, combat and gameplay are king, and Enotria: The Last Song definitely leans into its own unique combat mechanics.”
The player takes control of a character called the Maskless One, and you travel around the landscape defeating enemies to wear their Mask and take on that role, which provides you with new strengths and weaknesses. The player is able to change between three loadouts at any one time, all with different weapons, and abilities.
As with most Soulslike titles, combat and gameplay are king, and Enotria: The Last Song definitely leans into its own unique combat mechanics. For starters, shields are basically non-existant. If you want counter an attack, parrying is the way forward. The parry mechanics are fairly well-designed and chainable, allowing the player to build up that particular enemy’s “Unravel Meter”, which is essentially their stagger meter. When it is full, there is some potentially excessive damage to be dealt to that enemy.
In practice, however, the parry system still needs some tweaking in my opinion. Too many times did I perform an adequate parry, only to have the enemy take a step forward and sharpen their blade on my ribcage. Not enough stagger is attributed, especially on tougher enemies. The main boss fight at the end of the demo was a particular dagger in the lungs for this, as he would hit me with 3-4 hit combos, even after I parried each and every single attack.
The actual combat itself was also a bit of a pain during my time with the demo. I felt that it was slow and heavy. Each attack animation, whether it was with a longsword, greatsword, mace, or whatever, just felt slow and there appeared to be considerable amounts of input delay. I struggled to time my attacks and parries correctly, even at the best of times when enemy attacks were so heavily foreshadowed that I had time to have a little nap before it hit.
“The Path of Innovators is one of the best parts of Enotria: The Last Song that I found.”
The damage system in Enotria: The Last Song could also use a bit of a buff, because there were times during the last boss fight that it seemed like I was doing little to no damage at all, despite the attacks being in good areas, and not being hit myself.
The Path of Innovators is one of the best parts of Enotria: The Last Song that I found. This is essentially a skill tree that you unlock abilities to slot into your Masks. These can really help building a loadout for a specific area of the game or getting a few ready for your go-to builds.
Enotria: The Last Song allows players the power of Ardore, which has the player alter reality to find new paths around obstacles, solve puzzles, find secrets and more. It’s a really cool system that has both static and dynamic implications on your immediate actions. Some rifts will show a path that stays as long as you’re within its perimeter, and others will have a hidden timer attached and you must traverse it before the timer runs out.
There is definitely a lot to be positive about with Enotria: The Last Song, and a lot to hope for updates. The bones of a good Soulslike are here, it’s just a matter of if Jyamma Games takes the feedback provided by the demo and investigates adjusting some things. I will definitely be looking out for the full release when it is scheduled for release on September 19th 2024, but for now, the demo will sit on my PS5 dashboard.
