Enotria: The Last Song Review

The soulslike genre has been thriving in the gaming world. It feels like we now get a new Souls or soulslike title every month. This year alone, we have gotten massive hits like the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion for Elden Ring and sleeper indie hits like Another Crab's Treasure and Nine Sols—at this point, I have brought up Nine Sols at almost every time the Souls genre is mentioned. I consider that game to be one of the best indie titles of this year for creating a 2D Sekiro.

With how many spins we have gotten on the thriving genre, just when you know everything's been said and done, a title like Enotria: The Last Song pops up, a soulslike set in a rather bright fantasy world based on Italian folklore. Wait, didn't Lies of P do the same thing?

Instead of the grim and dark settings you are used to seeing in these titles, Enotria: The Last Song attempts to wow you with the bright and sunny setting. With the sunflower fields, open grasslands, or the cities—this is what sets this game apart from the rest in the genre.

The lore in Enotria: The Last Song stands out; the game is steeped in a mythos wherein music is not only a tool for entertainment but quite literally a tool that creates reality. The world here is created by music and the people who heard it learned to master it to create Creation, which became gods. Humanity learned the power of shaping reality with this music and eventually overthrew the gods.

Among these humans, some governed the laws of reality with this power by altering the fabric of reality. Everyone is born with a mask that dictates how they will behave. However, while everyone in this new reality is stuck to their roles because of the powers at play, our character, known as the Maskless One, is awakened, seemingly by what they're calling the Tree of Change, to set things right.

This sets you off in the prospect of taking down these people in power one by one to break this world out of this stasis in classic soulslike fashion. We just have to fight anything and everything that comes our way.

When it comes to gameplay, Enotria: The Last Song offers many of the expected mechanics of a Souls-like while introducing some new ideas. The combat feels very familiar at its core—heavy and light attacks, stamina management, dodging, and parrying. These mechanics are all here, and they function as you would expect.

However, the ability to swap between three different loadouts at any time during combat sets this game apart from the rest. Each loadout is tied to a mask your character wears, which alters their role in battle. You have over thirty masks to play around with and over a hundred weapons to try out.

You also have a chainable parry system where partial parries reduce damage, and perfect parries negate it entirely, depending on your equipped parry. These perfect parries also deal posture damage to enemies without costing any stamina—how it works in Sekiro.

The game's spells, called Lines, can be equipped up to four at a time in any loadout. Rather than using mana, you can charge them through attacking enemies, so they're quite readily available to spam in combat.

Enotria: The Last Song also introduces status effects, each one with both positive and negative aspects. For example, there's one that boosts your stamina regeneration and damage but lowers your defense, essentially turning you into a glass cannon. I love the ideas here, as they give you a lot more things to play around with.

Leveling up by increasing your stats is also a thing in Enotria: The Last Song, but what's different here is that they are grouped into bundles called virtues. Each virtue improves multiple attributes at once, so you are not stuck choosing between just health or damage, for example.

You've also got a ridiculously large skill tree to work with. These go into four categories, which boil down to melee, survivability, magic damage, and buffing yourself in various ways.

Enotria: The Last Song's main combat mechanic that you have to learn to utilize if you want to do well is that white (or Kara) is greater than red (Foto), which is greater than fuchsia (Viz), which is greater than green (Milano), which itself is greater than white. It's like the weakness system you're used to seeing in Pokemon.

Each of these colors has an associated debuff it causes, with white being an explosion, green making enemies poisoned, red giving you heal on hit, and fuchsia making the enemies dizzy, which ups some of their damage but also increases the damage they take.

Although plenty of mechanics to experiment with and play around with in this game, the feel is a little janky in practice. The timings can feel a little off at times. Sometimes, it feels as though the sort of input the game expects from you for things like dodging and blocking is a little too precise. Certain weapons, like the heavier ones, are also not that fun to use. Still, though, I think the color system and the implementation of music into each aspect of the combat is interesting, and it is fun to play with at the end of the day.

While exploring the beautiful lands of Enotria: The Last Song, you'll encounter something called Ardore, which allows you to interact with the world and open portals at certain spots. The yellow ones create temporary pathways, and the red ones are optional trials that spawn beefed-up enemies or bosses that net you a reward at the end for clearing them.

The platforming here is a miss. It's a staple to add these sections in Souls titles, and Enotria: The Last Song is no exception. There is some verticality in the exploration here, and, to me, that just means there are plenty of opportunities to fall off cliffs and ledges with impeccable comedic timing. In terms of real criticism, my issue with the implementation of platforming here is that the movement is not precise enough to support it, and this problem carries over into combat as well.

Being a souls-like, Enotria also has the staples: bonfires that act as save points that respawn enemies when you use them and an NPC hub where you can get upgrades, advice, and neat dialogue.

The art direction in Enotria: The Last Song is fantastic. I've touched on it a little before; the game wows you with a stunning sunflower field right after you beat the tutorial section. The world you move through is vivid and full of contrasty colors, and nothing like the dark and gothic vibes we are used to in games like this. The cutscenes have beautifully hand-drawn sections and the enemy designs are aesthetically pleasing and interesting to look at.

While the game is beautiful, it still has that Unreal Engine look. With it comes similar issues tied to the engine as well, usually coming from a lack of proper optimization. There are stutters and frame drops. While these are not nearly as common as in games like this, they are still noticeable when things get rowdy in combat.

Plus, I've had a few times where I was stuck in random objects in the world briefly and just randomly fell into the abyss during some platforming sections. These problems should hopefully be fixed with future patches, but for now, they somewhat take away from the experience.

Given the game's focus on music as a central theme, it's no surprise that the sound design in Enotria: The Last Song is one of its strongest aspects. It has an energetic tone mixed with female vocals, making the combat feel more exciting. There isn't a ton of voice acting here, but the moments that are voiced are done well.

Enotria: The Last Song managed, in large part, to put a breath of fresh air into the Souls-like formula, thanks in no small part to its vibrant world, unique lore, and deep customization options. While not quite hitting the heights reached by titles like Elden Ring or Lies of P, it brings enough new ideas to the table to make it worth playing, especially for fans of Italian folklore or something different.

Now, this is certainly not a case of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, but it's not without its flaws—combat could use a bit of polish, and the occasional performance hiccup does indeed break the flow. But if you're invested in this genre, then Enotria: The Last Song is worth looking into.