The Soulslike genre has become one of the most popular genres over the past five years or so. New games seem to be released in this genre on an almost regular basis. This year, Jyamma Games has thrown their hat into the ring with Enotria: The Last Song. With many games in this genre being released this year, including the return of From Software, let’s see if Enotria: The Last Song can stand out from the crowd.
Colloquially referred to as “Summer Souls,” Enotria: The Last Song is inspired by classic Italian folklore, devoid of the usual dark and spooky world and atmosphere the genre is known for. This is where this game stands out the most, because the game is truly amazing. In a genre typically filled with desolate towns and cities, dark and dank caves, or classic toxic swamps, Enotria: The Last Song has three main areas filled with color. There’s also a cave that’s not dark and gloomy, but great to explore with a giant statue in the center.
Next is the battle. Enotria: The Last Song has typical Soulslike combat, with over 100 weapons to find and use in the game. The game takes inspiration from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by focusing on parrying mechanics. You can completely parry any attack thrown by the enemy. Doing so will “untie” or stagger the enemy, allowing you to perform attacks that deal significant damage. In addition to parry, you can equip four types of “lines”. These are basically the game’s version of spells, but you have to perform regular attacks to build up a meter that can be used in battle. These spells can deal powerful damage and can infuse your weapon with one of the game’s status ailments. These abilities are reset at the start of the boss fight, so if you had saved them up until then, you won’t be able to spam these abilities as soon as you join the boss fight.
There are also six passive abilities that can be equipped from the game’s skill tree. These range from making your line deal more damage and charging faster to being able to kill enemies when they drop below a certain health threshold. All of these can be purchased in the game’s skill tree, and luckily you can always re-evaluate your character if you don’t like a particular skill. You then get equippable masks that offer a variety of effects, such as increasing your stamina and health, or providing powerful lines to use.
All these weapons, lines, abilities, and masks can be equipped in the loadout menu while resting. You can also have three different loadouts that you can switch between at any time in the world. So if your current loadout isn’t the best setup for the situation you’ve encountered so far, you can easily switch to a different loadout to deal with a particular situation. It’s a great concept that you won’t find in other games in this genre, but multiple loadouts didn’t come into play very often because most enemies can be defeated without a problem and you don’t have to switch to something else.
Enotria: The Last Song’s biggest drawback is the game’s performance. There were several times when I encountered issues with the game, ranging from minor frame drops to game crashes. But the biggest culprit is the enemy AI. There are some pretty scary moments in this game where enemies become completely unresponsive. When fighting enemies, they would randomly stop attacking or moving, and you would have to reset the area to engage them again. The worst case was the final boss. After advancing the final boss to its final phase, he goes into an attack animation and completely freezes in place before his health bar disappears, leaving him able to attack but unable to deal damage or do anything. This happened at least five times, and I had to completely quit and restart the game to try the boss again. This completely took away the fun of the game’s finale, and when I finally finished the game, all I felt was the satisfaction that it was over.
Enotria: The Last Song is an overall great Soulslike game. The visuals are the most striking and stand out from the usual world that exists in this genre. The combat is fun and engaging, and there are some really cool boss fights. However, the game’s performance, especially the enemy AI, really holds it back. Jyamma Games is still building a good foundation and has a lot of room for improvement if they decide to make a sequel.
Score: 7 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5
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