The Soulslike genre has become one of the most popular genres over the past five or so years. It seems a new game releases in the genre almost on a near constant basis. This year, Jyamma Games threw their hat in the ring with Enotria: The Last Song. In a year full of games in the genre being released, including FromSoftware’s return, let’s dive into to see if Enotria: The Last Song is able to stand out amongst the crowd.
Colloquially called “Summer Souls,” Enotria: The Last Song is inspired by classical Italian folklore and forgoes the usual dark and eerie world and atmosphere the genre is known for. This is where the game stands out the most as the game is absolutely stunning. In a genre that is usually full of rundown towns or cities, dark and dank caves, or the classic poison swamps, Enotria: The Last Song has three main areas that are filled with color. There’s even a cave that isn’t dark and gloomy, but is stunning to explore to look at the massive statue in the center of it.
Then, there’s the combat. Enotria: The Last Song has the typical Soulslike combat and there are over 100 weapons to be found and used in the game. The game also takes inspiration from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by having a huge focus on the parry mechanic. You are able to parry absolutely every attack that enemies throw your way. Doing so causes enemies to “unravel” or stagger which allows you to perform an attack for massive damage. Outside of the parry, you are able to have four different “Lines” equipped. These are basically the game’s version of spells, but you must perform regular attack to build up their meters and be able to use them in combat. These spells can do some strong damage and allow for your weapons to be infused with one of the game’s status ailments. These abilities also reset at the start of boss fights, so you can’t just go into a boss fight and spam these abilities immediately if you’ve been saving them until then.
There are also six passive abilities that you can have equipped from the game’s skill tree. These range from doing more damage to your Lines charging faster or even being able to kill enemies once they fall below a certain threshold of health. All these can be purchased in the game’s skill tree, and, luckily, you are able to respec your character at anytime if you aren’t liking certain skills. Then you have an equipable mask that provides different effects such as increasing your stamina or health or providing a powerful Line to use.
All these weapons, Lines, abilities, and masks can be equipped in the Loadout menu while resting. You are also able to have three different loadouts ready which can be switched between at any time while in the world. Thus, you can easily switch to a different loadout to take on specific situation if your current one isn’t the best set up for whatever it is you’ve encountered. While a great concept that no other games in the genre really do, the multiple loadouts didn’t come up too often as most enemies can be taken down without issue and a need to swap to something else.
The biggest downside to Enotria: The Last Song is the performance of the game. There were multiple times where the game would have some issue from minor frame drops to the game crashing a few times. The biggest offender though is the enemy AI. This game has some pretty horrible moments where the enemies just quit responding altogether. I’d be fighting an enemy and they would just randomly stop attacking or moving and I would have to reset the area to get them to engage again. The worst case of this was the final boss. After getting the final boss to the last phase, he would go into an attack animation and then completely freeze in place before the health bar would disappear and I couldn’t do damage or anything even though I could still attack. This happened at least five times and I would have to completely close the game and restart it to try the boss again. This completely killed my enjoyment of the finale of the game, and, by the time I finally beat it, I was just happy to be done with the game.
Enotria: The Last Song is an overall good Soulslike game. The visuals are some of the most stand out and separate the game from the usual types of worlds that populate the genre. Combat is fun and engaging, and there are some really cool boss fights. However, the performance of the game, especially the enemy AI, really drags it down. Jyamma Games still built a good base and there is tons of room for improvement if they ever decide to make a sequel.
Score: 7 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5