We’re back with another Soulslike game, Enotria The Last Song, but this time we are taking heavy inspiration from Italian folklore and becoming the Maskless One in this beautifully stunning world. I saw the trailer for this game a while ago and fell in love with its setting and gripping cinematics. Then I got to play the demo that came out a few months ago and enjoyed my small time playing that. Fast forward to a week ago and the lovely people over at Jyamma games were kind enough to provide a copy on the PlayStation 5 to which I am truly grateful.
I do love a good Soulslike game even if I do find them extremely challenging at times and want to pull my hair out but the satisfaction you get from them when defeating a boss or concurring a certain area which you might have been stuck on for a while is super rewarding. Enotria The Last Song is a worthy Soulslike that comes with incredible locations and interesting mechanics and enemies.
You get to play as the main character who is called the Maskless One. You will try to free a world of unwilling actors, stuck in an eternal script not of their making. This vast sun-lit world has been gripped by the Canovaccio (a twisted eternal play) and keeps the world in an unnatural stasis. You seem to be the only free person who has been given a role and is the master of your destiny. You must go forward and defeat the mighty Authors that have created this play and free the world from the stagnation it seems to be stuck in.
The Maskless One gets the ability to don the Mask of your fallen foes to assume their roles and provide the player with new ways to play. There are 30 different masks to swap between but you can only customise 3 loadouts that you can swap between with ease to be perfectly equipped for the right situations.
By using the Path of Innovators you can expand your playstyle through over 68 unlockable skills which will provide the player with countless combinations that can benefit your combat style as well as encourage you to try new ways to play. At first, I did find the Path of Innovators a bit overwhelming but I eventually got my head around it and was able to build numerous builds for my loadouts. Building upon both the skills you equip and the Mask you don you will have to strategically navigate the world and use the right Masks at the right time to face the dangers that are littered around Enotria.
While exploring the world you will come across various reality rifts that can be activated by channelling the power of Ardore. By doing this you can dynamically alter reality and active hidden paths, puzzles, and secrets that weren’t there before. I found this feature cool as it was nice to have some puzzles to solve when it comes to accessing certain areas or trying to obtain loot. Enotria The Last Song felt like a breath of fresh area compared to other Soulslike I have played over the years.
There are over 120 different weapons in Enotria The Last Song, partner that with 8 different weapon classes as well as the 45 spells and 8 parry modifiers you will find yourself going insane with the sheer amount available for you to customise and use. If anything, it might feel like too much but if you watch a few videos online to help you understand the basics better, as some good content creators go into the system and simplify it you can hit the ground running a lot soon and find your feet.
Graphically Enotria The Last Song is stunning and it’s a nice change from the dark and gritty atmosphere that most Soulslike games go for. Jyamma (An Italian company) has done a fantastic job at using Italian folklore to build a beautiful world full of life and cool-looking character designs. The Maskless One’s different masks are so awesome and I love all the different enemy types you come across the bosses are spot on too.
The audio is cleverly done as a lot of characters are performing plays and provide snips of the story as you progress through Enotria The Last Song, you will come across NPC that will fill in other parts of the story and guide your destiny. The different types of weapons are brilliant as you will find ones that fit your playstyle or encourage you to try something new. I was against using colossal great swords at the beginning but I challenged myself to use them and master them because even though they are slow they hit heavy which pays off.
There were sadly some performance issues, even to the point where I had to uninstall Enotria The Last Song and reinstall it as for some reason the first time I installed it, it seems to have used the demo build rather than the final build. Though that was a simple fix when I climb infante ladders out the map or have bosses hitting me with their dodge hitboxes I can’t help but wonder whether it could have used a bit more polish before coming out. However, I still got stuck and tried to not let it affect my experience too much.
Like all Soulslike games, there are plenty of possibilities to reply to the story as you can try different builds, weapons, and Enotria Masks. Each of the masks provides a different playstyle that you can try another time around rather than on your first time playing. I also feel that Enotria The Last Song is fun enough to have multiple playthroughs and I honestly think this will be the best way to get the most out of the game.
Kind of like Elden Ring and Dark Souls you go back to them to either do speed runs through or try new and exciting builds and with Enotria’s complex system you want to be able to use and experience everything all in one playthrough. So once you have gone through the game once and got the story, you can jump back in again and again to try and beat it again with different builds. You will also come across areas that you might have missed the first time, like I did.
I went around an area once then fast-traveled back to grind and found a whole area that I completely missed. Enotria has its bad moments but above all, it does provide a solid Soulslike loop that can be used as a base to build on if Jyamma thinks to make a second game or another Soulslike.
Closing Statement
Aside from the complex combat that only gets explained to you once right at the beginning of the game, Enotria The Last Song tries something different to dress up the standard Souls-like rut if you will that a lot of them seem to copy and repeat. Granted it does feel a little rough around the edges with the performance issues and janky hitboxes on some of the enemies but it’s luckily still playable and doesn’t affect the game too much.
The customisation of the Maskless one gives you a lot of room to experiment with class, builds, and weapons. You’ll find a playstyle that fits but you will want to try new and different ways to play. The combat is fun, when you get your head around it and manage the difficulty spikes that come in unexpectedly but you will get a solid satisfaction when you overcome those hard moments. The sun-drenched world and heavily inspired Italian folklore character designs are stunning and I love the whole mascaraed feel it gives off.
All in all Enotria The Last Song is a brilliant contender for being up there with the other good Soulslike games, it does have some rough spots but it provides a gripping and unique feel and you can tell that it’s trying to put its own identity on the Soulslike genre rather than another clone and for that reason, I’m happy to give it a 7 out of 10 if it wasn’t for the performance issues it would have been rated higher but these prevent it from taking centre stage and getting them extra applause at the final curtain.
Enotria The Last Song Trailer
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