Living in the UK can be a lot like a Dark Souls game. It’s grey, dreary, there’s loads of cathedrals, archaic buildings, it’s hard work, there’s not enough money (souls) around, and everything can seem stacked against you and can sometimes feel like things in the world are trying to kill you.
So to escape those horrendous things that make up this thing we call life, those who are fortunate enough, get to go to foreign lands, often to warmer climates, on holiday. Holiday, where a lot of the same things mentioned above can apply, but it’s sunny. Enotria: The Last Song feels like Dark Souls (or at least a Soulslike) on holiday.
Enotria: The Last Song is set, appropriately, in the sun-lit world of Enotria, a world inspired by Italian nature, culture, and folklore. It sounds a bit like marketing spiel, but it is really striking what a difference a sunny land to explore can make. This is particularly true if you’re used to the more dreary, rough, and more oppressive feel of more traditional Soulslikes.
Chi c’è dietro la maschera? (Who’s That Behind the Mask?)
The theme of the game centres around performers; actors, the stage, and the creative arts. The world of Enotria has been trapped in an ongoing play that will never end, the Canovaccio. The protagonist has you don the role of the ‘Maskless One’, a wooden mannequin, brought to life by the power of Ardore, the magical essence that runs through Enotria. Your task is to defeat the leading Actors who have created the eternal play, and free Enotria from the Canovaccio.
The lore of the story, and background to these leading actors are explored as collectible encyclopaedia entries scattered throughout the game. Your quest is followed by a bard of sorts, Pulcinella, a lute player who is composing a song to document your deeds. He is helpful for direction and guiding you where to head next. What his motives are, are for you to find out.
The look and feel of the game is great. I loved the art direction, and the look of the characters, the masks all add an eerie hollowness to the characters. The locations are detailed and littered with nice touches to flesh out the world and tell a story. Sound design is particularly great too. I love the voice acting, particularly your guide Pulcinella, he feels like a proper orator that you’d expect to see on stage at The Globe theatre, performing some Shakespeare. The music is great and feels very in keeping with the Italian vibes. One particular sound effect I really liked was the noise enemies made as they disintegrated after you defeated them, it was a comforting sound of hollow wood being collected together, like a wind chime (may well just be me, but I liked it).
Stiamo tutti andando in una vacanza soul (We’re All Going on a Souls-y Holiday)
To succeed, you must explore three sprawling locations of Enotria, defeating the huge range of enemies and the main area boss of each location. The locations themselves are wonderfully varied and take you through a bouyant coastal Mediterranean town, across a range of dry and sun-drenched ancient ruins, and on to a moody Venetian inspired location, gondolas and all. The actual locations are quite involved, paths and routes loop round, connecting with itself in quite satisfying ways, with lots of treasures, consumables and weapons to find along the way.
Un bravo attore con una buona opportunità ha una possibilità (A Good Actor with a Good Opportunity Has a Shot)
Weapons come in the forms you’d expect in a Soulslike, from sabers and longswords, through to greatswords, maces and flails. Which weapons you use will very much depend on your playstyle, and I tended to favour the quicker weapons like the sabers and longswords. Many more advanced or unique weapons are embued with one of the four main elemental types: Gratia, Mallano, Vis, and Fatuo. They have a pokemon-esque ecology where certain elemental damage is stronger against a specific type (for example, Vis is strong against Mallano).
Each elemental damage can build up to a respective status effect, and I really like the implementation of these, as they have both negative and positive effects. For example, dealing too much Mallano damage to an enemy makes them down with the ‘sickness’ which makes them take continuous damage like a standard poison affect, but their sickness is contagious and if you continue to be close to them while you attack, you can become afflicted with it too. Each one of the main status ailments (Dizzy, Radiant, Sickness and Wicked) have similar positive negative trade offs and it adds a great element to how combat works, especially for some of the tougher enemies and bosses.
There are no shields, you have to master your dodges and parries to survive. Thankfully, the parrying seems relatively forgiving, as I hate parrying most of the time, but was able to succeed in not getting murdered endlessly.
Maschera accesa, maschera spenta (Mask On, Mask Off)
One of the key combat mechanics in the game is that of the Masks. By defeating bosses and claiming their masks, or through beating enemies and collecting mask shard to build their respective facial decoration do you get access to a range of different abilities, boosts or boons to help you on your adventure. Some of these might give you more charges of your Armonia Amber (Estus flasks), while others might boost the amount of Memoria (Souls) you receive for killing. I really liked the use of Masks, and there were some puzzles in the game that needed you correctly wear the appropriate mask to get into a new area, or fool an NPC into believing your the Captain of the Guard (who you’d just dispatched earlier). I think I would have liked to see more uses for the Masks in these ways.
You can have three ‘loadouts’ of different mask set up, weapons, consumables, and boosts from the extensive ‘Path of Innovators’, a grid of a range of different combat boosts that can be unlocked by defeating enemies and acquiring a form of currency to unlock increasingly powerful talents (such as dealing reactive damage to an enemy when they damage you). Quite often the masks, especially those claimed from defeating a big bad, will give you access to a Line attack that can only be used with that Mask on.
Camminare sulle linee (Walk the Lines)
Lines are special attacks that channel the power of Ardore to manifest powerful weapons, some with elemental damage, to deal heavy damage. Lines are powered through you successfully landing standard attacks against enemies, with more powerful Line attacks taking longer to charge up (but of course there are Masks to help with that). There’s a range of these attacks, and from the looks of it, almost every special attack enemies tried to use on me are available in Line form, giving you a great selection for how you build your character.
All of these elements come together really well. Gameplay feels responsive and dynamic. All characters have a ‘break limit’ bar, so as you do damage, or other manoeuvres (depending on your boosts / masks etc.) enemies can become ‘unravelled’ (staggered) which allows you to do powerful finishers. Occasionally your character can have the same thing happen but I have to admit I’m not quite sure what the threshold for that was, and occasionally found myself stunned, unable to move, but wasn’t sure what attack / status caused it.
Conosci il tuo nemico? (Do You Know Your Enemy?)
I must point out that the variety in the enemies in Enotria: The Last Song were great. There were enemies tailored to each region, as you might expect, but the I felt like they care and attention was paid to their design and where they appeared. Travelling through the first area, you get attacked by more performer type characters, shouting abuse about your failure to emote effectively (dissing your acting abilities essentially). Moving to the Venice inspired area, there are Gondoliers batting you paddles, and giant glassblowers, who’s special attacks include powerful fiery breath.
There’s a whole load of beefy boss enemies too. You’ve got the main area boss, but a whole raft of lower levelled boses scattered throughout each area too. They often provided a good challenge, and it took me a few goes of having a go, working out the attack patterns, parry timings, or tweaking my loadout to best some of them. Most of the sub-bosses tended to be beefier versions of standard enemies, or elementally infused enemies that deal extra damage, or have special Line attacks. I did find myself occasionally retreating in terror from certain attacks for fear of getting one-shotted (watch out those Automatons).
The final area bosses themselves were pretty good fun, they were relatively unique, but weren’t as ambitious as some bosses you might see in Souls games, particularly the one of the last bosses. Some provided a good challenge too, and there was an immense sense of satisfaction and audible “YES”‘s upon success. Most of the bosses were straight down the line one phase bosses, though a couple did evolve, mainly by getting their health back and getting a new moveset. One in particular, Captain Spaventa, really made me chuckle, no spoilers but I wasn’t expecting THAT second phase!!!
In addition to the standard battles, there are extra ‘combat trials’ signified by a spinning red portal, activating these spawns additional enemies or a special boss for you take out. Success grants you access to a range of rewards or unlocks a new route where goodies hide. Some of those were really tough and needed some grinding or levelling up before returning to ultimately achieve success!!
In terms of levelling your character, there are less upgrades than you might see in other Soulslikes, the main focuses being on health and physical defence, attack damage, elemental attack and defence, stamina and Line power and charge rate. No adaptability skill here! The streamlined focus works for me here, because you also need to spend your Memoria on upgrading your weapons, Masks, and Lines, along with purchasing any of the consumables (such as defence boost, increase stamina regeneration etc.). The levelling up seems fairly balanced, I got to Level 100 at the end of my first playthrough. There is a New Game+ as well as a second ending, and maybe a ‘true ending’ too.
Lasciar cadere la maschera (Letting the Mask Slip)
We reported recently about the roadmap that developers Jyamma Games has laid out for ongoing improvements and development for Enotria: The Last Song, which is great to see. I personally didn’t run into many technical issues other than a couple of game crashes and some slowdown when there seemed to be a lot going on (but that may well be my PC, so I’m not holding that against the game).
I did have a couple of observations where things didn’t work particularly well, and they are a little niggly rather than major issues. I found the menus frustrating. Not that they were bad from a UI perspective, but more that they didn’t sort your items into any sort of order, and when you used the provided filters to try to arrange them, they didn’t always work. Similarly, when you collected lore in the world, you are prompted to visit the lore page to read the new entry. Very inconsistently, sometimes it would take you to the page you collected, other times it would take you to a top menu and you had to search to find the page, and sometimes I couldn’t find anything by the name of the piece I’d collected!
I also wished that the descriptors of the various items you find could be clearer in some cases. Some were so vague I was wary of using the item as I didn’t know what it did, so never bothered!!!
I was bit disappointed to not see any future content plans from the roadmap, but appreciate you want to work on known issues for the game ahead of developing new content. I hope DLC or sequel is in development as the ending I received from my first playthrough teased future things and I certainly want more to play. I was left wanting a bit more to explore and see, but I don’t feel there is that, other than New Game+ of course.
La Mascherata Finale (The Final Masquerade)
Enotria: The Last Song was just the summer holiday away from the more usual Soulslike games. It’s bright setting, great characterisation and great mechanics make a really fun, and challenging Soulslike experience. As someone who is involved in amateur theatre, I particualrly loved the focus on actors, the arts, and the framing of staging and stagecraft. It was a breath of fresh summery air on a playbill often filled withfamiliar but musty and dank acts.
Magnifico!
Enotria: The Last Song was reviewed on PC, many thanks to Jyamma Games for providing us with a code.
Enotria: The Last Song is available on PC, and PS5. An Xbox Series console release is due to be released in the future.
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