Enotria: The Last Song is a game developed in Unreal Engine 5 by Italian developers Jyamma Games, This game seems to be their first venture onto the PC and console release since their previous games were for mobile only. They are targeting the soulslike genre here with unforgiving combat, bonfires and “souls” to level up.
One of the notable features being it’s bright, colorful compared to the mainstream souls games we know and love. The demo shows these beautifully detailed buildings with cobblestone paths, the sun shining through etc. the art style the game has is simply amazing.
Cool, How’s the Gameplay?
The demo features around 22 weapons and 18 different spells to play around with and an 8 hour play on a small but very packed section of the game. The combat is a little rough but very satisfying which as we know with Sekiro and more recently Stellar blade, that itself can already convince a majority of players to buy the game out right.
It doesn’t feel as clunky or rugged when attacking enemies although the parrying could use a little more polishing but it follows the same mechanic of parrying that Mortal Shell did where you raise an object at the correct time to execute a parry/perfect parry, with a posture meter shown to make it easier for players to time and execute their parrying which would lead to getting critical hits .
A unique mechanic this game introduces is that the player character can equip different types of Masks which in turn gives vastly different kinds of buffs to the player along with changing the appearance of the player to compliment the change in combat due to the buffs in question. There is also an expansive skill tree in game granting strictly passive buffs to the player which allows all sorts of different playstyles.
Adding on to the last point, there is a way to save loadouts in the game which would allow the player to change their build in an instant from any previously saved loadout any time the player wants there isn’t any need to sit at a bonfire or resting point, unlike in Elden ring which had a resource for it but here it seems there is no drawback to changing builds here.
Give Me the Budget Cuts
Now the combat is good but it’s not without its problems, at times it is difficult to tell if the player took damage or not due to no animation playing and at times it does become clunky and difficult to tell if any enemies were hit due to poor hit detection. The lack in animation quality for the enemies is also visible, sometimes when some of the enemies roll away the animation played seems too simple or it’s clear that it needs work.
In terms of descriptions, the game sort of leaves us to our own devices when trying to know what stat the weapons scales off of, making it difficult to know for certain if the correct is being upgraded to attune for more damage.
In the sound department, along with the hit detection being poor at times, the sounds played when hitting or parrying in the game felt out of place or at the very least not sounding as satisfying as it should.
At times when first loading into new areas the game would stutter a lot for a short while before becoming smooth again which may break immersion with the game since they have such beautiful visuals and vistas in their general environment.
A hopeful Conclusion
Enotria: The Last Song on the surface has ticked all the marks of being a successful soullike, good in-depth combat, difficulty, detailed visuals and various types of weapons. What it clearly needs is more polish. The combat could be perfected when polished such as fixing the hit detection to work better. The animations could use a lot more work to make it seem more natural, a way to help players understand the stats better and better descriptions in regards to weapons to know how they scale with the stats being upgraded. Focusing on these parts can certainly put Enotria:The last song in high praise for players of this genre.
