Enotria: The Last Song – Hands-On With a Sunny Soulslike

Style can go a long way for an action game, where looking good is just as important as being good. Enotria: The Last Song got that message loud and clear, leading with remarkable landscapes and avant garde costumes to dress up its largely soulsborne-like combat fundamentals. I love some good soulslike clash and bang as much as the next gamer, but I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t ready for something new to the genre. Enotria, at least in theory, agrees with me there, and though my hands-on time was a great introduction to some bold new attempts to bring true combat classes and flashy special abilities into the very familiar system, it’s still a bit too early to know just how showstopping they are.

Enotria checks all of the soulslike boxes. It has stamina-regulated combat, with different weapons sporting various weights and animations, the greatsword being my favorite. It has dangerous enemies of various shapes and sizes, including jerky mini-bosses and a truly mean boss. You’ll collect “souls” that can be used to upgrade your character, so long as you don’t get killed, drop them, and fail to retrieve them before getting killed again. You’ll activate “bonfires” that serve as checkpoints and rest stops between legs of the sometimes stressful adventure. If you’ve played any of these in the past decade or so, you’ll know these are as basic to the sub-genre as boost pads are to kart racers.

So what does it do differently? Quinta, the city of aggressively jovial revelers that I skulked through in the demo, is unlike any city I’ve seen in the Souls games or otherwise. Bright and colorful tapestries and foliage drape down the walls of rustic, Tuscan townhomes and match the vibrant costumes of the city’s denizens. The sun shines, adding a sparkle to the surrounding sea. On the outskirts of the city, fields of yellow sunflowers sway in the breeze, and sandy beaches collide into stark greenery. It’s like Enotria developer Jyamma Games saw Blighttown and said, “Let’s do the exact opposite of that.” Mixed with a story with heavy theater themes – it seems everyone is trapped in a reality-wide stasis where everyone believes they are playing roles in some massive stage production – and there’s a lot to chew on, aesthetically.

The zone I played through was full of roads less taken to wander down, but it was hard to determine how rewarding wandering into these nooks and crannies really is, since most of them featured enemies whose souls I couldn’t spend on anything or items I couldn’t use in the scope of this playtest. Rarely were there surprises waiting for me that were interesting in and of themselves. That said, there are more than a few instances where a glyph, seen hovering over the ground or floating in the air, could be activated by touch or Kirk Franklin-style stomp to temporarily create new paths. Some of these changes were straightforward, like adding a bridge where there clearly used to be one so you can progress through the main path, but some were more encouraging from an exploration sense, as they could add paths to formerly unreachable caves or completely rearrange a building I was in.

Though combat is largely familiar, there are aspects of it that are unique to Enotria. Firstly, Masks give the player different sets of traits that require you to switch up your playstyle in order to get the most out of their strengths. For example, the Mask of Change was heavy attack focused, giving you bonus damage when you connected with them, and other more tricky perks like increasing the stamina cost to dodge, but making your next attack right after a dodge stronger. The other available mask, the Piercing Wit Mask, centered heavily around using your special attacks – called Mask Lines – and gaining bonus effects afterwards. I really liked that these differences felt so stark. It really reinforced a sort of “class” system that most soulslikes barely commit to. But without a dedicated blocking option, or any reliable ranged options to speak of, masks can only do so much to spice up what is ultimately an aggressive, parry-heavy melee action game the likes of Lies of P or Thymesia.

Mask Lines are an interesting touch as well. These appear like customizable special moves, but it’s unclear if they are locked to certain masks, or if you can pick and choose any of the abilities you want no matter the loadout. The most handy was the Dardo Verace, which materializes a crossbow to snipe enemies. You can’t just use these at will, though, you have to charge them up by landing attacks on enemies. Each mask line charges at different rates, so some may end up ready before the others, but they stay ready until you use them. That is, unless you switch masks at any time, which sends the mask lines on all your loadouts back to zero. This is a pretty big bummer, when compounded by the fact that the enemies you’ll most likely want to use these powerful blows on are serious tough guys, you’re likely not going to want to risk your health and items grinding smaller (but still credible) threats simply to charge up your best shots. It feels extra regressive when you’re stuck at a checkpoint right in front of a boss. If they’re giving you trouble, which I assume they will if the rest of the bosses are this guy, then you’ll be climbing uphill before you get the opportunity to even the odds with a big maneuver.

Is Enotria: The Last Song the next great innovation in the soulslike? I don’t know yet. But it’s amazing how some sun and color can make the slower paced dungeon crawling that the genre is known for feel brand new. Activating environmental puzzles to reveal alternate routes or secrets has a lot of potential for fun exploration opportunities. Masks serving as de facto classes thanks to their proprietary groups of traits and bonuses help encourage different kinds of play, but maybe not different enough, and the Mask Line special abilities really spice combat up but require you to already be doing well in order to get access to them. Enotria will have plenty of time to rehearse for showtime between now and when it hits the big stage next year.