New action RPG is currently playable on Steam and shines with great ideas

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As part of the Steam game preview, you can currently try out Enotria: The Last Song. The action RPG follows in the footsteps of the Soulslike genre, but comes with a fresh setting and nice ideas. MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz took a look at this potential gem for you as part of Find Your Next Game.

Ever since it clicked for me, I’ve found great joy in the emotional rollercoaster of frustrating defeats and satisfying victories that Soulslike adventures can evoke in me.

In my opinion, the best gaming experiences so far have come exclusively from the studio that shaped the genre with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls and has continued to refine it over the years – I mean From Software, of course. But I also enjoy the imitators, for example Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen last year.

It therefore went without saying that I would take a look at the currently playable demo of Enotria: The Last Song as part of the Steam game preview. The soulslike comes from the Italian indie studio Jyamma Games, which was founded in September 2019 and has since released four mobile games. The team now has more than 50 members and is venturing into an AA project for the first time.

With Find Your Next Game, GameStar, GamePro and MeinMMO present new titles and updates that we would like to recommend to you. Here you can find an overview of all articles.

New cinematic trailer for Enotria The Last Song

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A typical Soulslike

After a few minutes with Enotria: The Last Song, it is clear that the action RPG is a classic Soulslike that sticks to the familiar basic structure:

  • By defeating your enemies, you collect a soul-like currency called Memoria.
  • If you die, your body will remain where you left it with the Memoria you have accumulated up to that point. You will now have one attempt to return to your body and collect the currency. If you die during the attempt, the Memoria will be gone.
  • At glowing fields, you can invest the Memoria you have collected in leveling up, adjusting your fighter’s loadout (more on that in a moment), learning new talents or fast-traveling to another field. As soon as you use the “beacon” service, you regenerate your life points and healing charges and all non-boss enemies reappear.
  • Shortcuts can be unlocked in the world to minimize the distances between “beacons” and, for example, a boss.

    • There are also many familiar elements in the combat system.

  • Your standard repertoire includes a light and a heavy attack, an evasive move and a parry skill. A stamina bar limits how often you can attack, dodge, sprint and parry.
  • In combat, you can also use consumables and up to four skills.
  • Similar to Sekiro, the opponents have a kind of posture bar. If you fill this bar up with attacks and parries, your opponent will be stunned and you can deliver a particularly devastating blow.
    • This is what the beacons in Enotria look like.

    The special features of Enotria: The Last Song

    As familiar as many elements of Enotria: The Last Song feel, after the first few hours I really liked the game’s special features. Firstly, there is the game world, which is noticeably influenced by the developers’ Italian homeland.

    Although there are areas that exude dark fantasy vibes, Enotria also has bright sunflower fields and colorful coastal settlements. Italian folklore and the masks of Arlecchino (also known as Harlequin) also play an important role.

    The masks that you can find during the adventure define the loadout, bring special effects (with the starting mask, heavy attacks cause more damage) and provide the hero with a different number of slots into which you can place learned perks in order to activate them.

    Change the loadout if necessary.
    Only a few NPCs are peaceful.
    The talent tree.
    Enotria has beautiful lighting moods to offer.

    The passive perks can be found in Enotria’s highly branched talent tree. With the improvements unlocked there, you can strengthen your offense or defense as well as the effectiveness of active skills and effects.

    You can also define four active skills, up to six consumables, one off-hand item and two weapons for each loadout. You can switch back and forth between the peacemakers and between up to three loadouts at any time during combat.

    Another special feature reminds me a lot of the new Lords of the Fallen. In Enotria you can’t switch between two worlds, but there is always the possibility to adjust reality in places and thus create paths for a short time through which you can reach new areas of the game world.

    Here I summon a bridge to enter the area at the other end of the gorge.

    Solid Soulslike experience

    But how does Enotria play in the demo? The AA Soulslike leaves a solid impression in the demo. The fighter’s controls feel precise, the punches have a certain amount of power and you have to move carefully through the world to avoid falling into a trap set by well-placed enemies.

    If you take on too many enemies at once or if a strong opponent’s blow lands directly on your head, you’ll be defeated on the ground faster than you can spell Hidetaka Miyazaki. The situation is made worse by the fact that there are hardly any animations to protect the hero from the opponent’s blows.

    The first boss of Enotria can’t do much, but he doesn’t forgive too many mistakes either.

    The first boss, Curtis, already has an enormous amount of health and hardly takes any posture damage from parries or hits. So you have to play fairly error-free for quite a long time to eventually bring him to his knees (or farm a lot of Memoria beforehand to get level-ups and upgrades for the weapons and masks).

    The developers should take a look at the balance of the introductory boss here. The performance of the action RPG also needs to be optimized due to the regular drops in the frame rate. Technically, you can’t expect AAA graphics, of course, but I really like the game world, in which there is a lot to discover right from the start, thanks to the pretty lighting and the Italian flair.

    So if you’re into the Soulslike genre and aren’t just a fan of From Software’s works, you should check out the demo and just give it a try.

    Enotria: The Last Song could be a solid representative of the genre, with a fresh setting and nice ideas. The final launch is planned for September 19, 2024, for PC, PS5 and Xbox. Alternatively, you can just wait until Shadows of the Erdtree comes out: I was already able to fight 4 bosses in the Elden Ring DLC ​​and have seen them more often than I would like

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