Enotria: The Last Song | Review

A Darka Souls, eh?

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris September 13, 2024Last Updated: September 14, 2024

1 6 minutes read

Enotria: The Last Song may be delayed a bit on Xbox but I got to play through this Italian Folklore-inspired Soulslike on PC. Over 20 or so hours I found myself entranced by beautiful visuals and music while feeling the opposite about the gameplay. It’s a funny thing, balancing difficulty, and sadly I feel like Enotria misses on all fronts. Still, it is quite pretty, and the story is wonderfully weird. Let’s go over it in our Enotria: The Last Song review.

That’s a Spicy Premise

In a world of wood, you are the maskless one, able to weave your own threads of fate. The opening cinematic tells a tale of godlike figures who fell into ruin, dragging the rest of this world with them. Masks dictate life, and what you can achieve. Your character is special, in that you were brought to life without one, ready to break the wheels of control those in power have set. That power is called the Canovaccio, a play that has the world stuck in an “unnatural stasis”. Your goal will be to act as the “mask of change” and defeat the authors of this horrific play.

To do so you will be able to wield over 30 masks, which dictate various playstyles such as “I hit things without much ‘magic’” and “I hit things occasionally and focus on ‘magic’”. There are over 100 weapons in what seemed to be 8 different categories, I had nearly 40 spells by the time I finished, and there are parry modifiers to further customize your playstyle as well. This is a game built around parrying, no blocking here. It is rather generous though, if you are put off, as the timing is lenient, and quite often just spamming the left bumper worked fine.

Enotria takes place in a sun-drenched world that felt like Southern Italy. Enotria itself means “Land of Grapevines”, an ancient Roman name given to southern Italy. There are dimly lit areas, though they tend to be bathed in beautiful colors. This is a world where the party was meant to never stop, and it hasn’t. Instead, a deadly craze has taken over, and you’ll have to fight your way through this gorgeous mess. That’s where things never quite clicked for me.

Soulslike Combat is Tough

My first impressions of the movement and combat in Enotria weren’t the best, and that never changed throughout my time with it. Enotria is a fast Soulslike that works on three main tenets. First is your melee, second is your spells (called lines), and 3^rd is your parry. There is a dodge, though I found it to be mostly useless. The game adopts the standard layout of the right bumper being your quick attack while the right trigger is your heavy swing. The left bumper is for parrying and the left trigger is held down to use the face button for your four spell slots. B is both your dodge and run button (via holding it down).

A difference in Enotria is that you can have three different load-outs equipped at any time. In those load-outs, you have your mask type, which gives stat and passive bonuses, a similar role type, and then up to six different passive buffs you will unlock from a ridiculously large skill tree. They go into four categories which break down essentially to melee, survivability, magic damage, and buffing yourself in various ways. In those load-outs, you can have two weapons and a parry gem per, with up on the d-pad letting you swap weapons on the fly. Y is your ‘flask’ button for healing. To cap things off you get a variety of tools you can use the left and right on the d-pad to swap between and X to use them.

Enotria’s main combat mechanic that you must learn and utilize if you want to succeed is this. White (gratia) > Red (fuoto) > Fuschia (viz) > Green (Mallano) > White. It’s a basic system that utterly dominates most of the game’s toughest encounters. If you do not have the right weapon or spells for a boss you will struggle immensely and it cuts heavily into allowing you to play the game the way you want to. Each of these colors has an associated debuff they cause as well. White = explosion, Green = Poison, Red = Heal on Hit (for you!), and Fuschia = Dizzy (do more damage but take more too).

I tried a few early bosses without focusing on this mechanic, leveling up my base physical big sword damage as much as possible, and I could barely hurt the purple health bar enemy. Once I got a good Red powered weapon and one red power magic spell I one-shot him in 25 seconds. There were only a handful of bosses that didn’t have a particular weakness and they were massive gear and leveling checks that stood out from the rest. The game uses the equivalent of souls items in most slots and you’ll use that currency to raise your handful of base stats, power up your weapons, masks, and spells, and you’ll need hundreds of random item drops to do it.

The itemization and where things drop felt random, with flask number and efficiency upgrades seemingly scattered at random. The game has a bonfire equivalent and using it brings all but boss enemies back to life. Platforming isn’t great as you can easily fall off of platforms you shouldn’t, and the runbacks can be atrocious time-wasters. The combat itself, the base movement, and the responsiveness never feels great.

Occasionally it felt cool as hell to do a big spell, at least for a moment, as the boss would ignore it despite taking 10% of their HP as damage and still whack me in the face like nothing happened. A lot of boss moves require precision timing on parrying, dodging, or jumping (the A button), and the game is not tight enough to support it. Once I got a hang on customizing my builds to beat certain health bar types the game was never overly difficult, it just wasn’t that fun. Thankfully, at least on PC, it has some very pretty environments.

I’d Grape those Vines

The initial outdoor environment in Enotria: The Last Song is a stunning field of sunflowers. I just stood there standing at it for five minutes the first time I saw it, and there are dozens of similarly gorgeous areas that carried the title for me. I was playing maxed out on PC at 4k resolution and 120 fps, so I have zero idea how this will run on any console. As it stands though this is, outside of Lies of P, the prettiest Soulslike title I’ve played. It is matched with a fantastic soundtrack that was varied in its tone and stylings as well.

In combat I was often reminded of Hunt or Be Hunted from The Witcher 3’s soundtrack. It had that energetic tone mixed with female vocals that had me ready to kick some wooden butt. There isn’t a ton of voice acting in the title, but what is there is pretty damned good. Eventually you’ll have a base of operations in an old theater and the NPC’s that populate it over time, if you find them, tend to repeat their lines a lot. It does become your base for upgrading and various tasks and as I try to keep things as spoiler-free as I can trust me when I say it’s worth looking for the Gods that you’re told about when you reach it.

Also, if you ever interact with the ‘main’ NPC that accompanies you on your journey make sure to stare at the screen each time. There was one point where he told me how to get to the 2^nd main area and I didn’t realize that the game was showing images of where to go and I was not recording. I spent an hour trying to figure it out before reaching out to PR for the answer (hint, sunflower field but go right). Bug-wise I had no crashes, though I had a lot of issues with the terrain and either getting stuck in it briefly or randomly falling to my death during platforming.

Wrapping Things Up

Enotria: The Last Song is a beautiful, weird tale that almost nailed the gameplay and customization side of a Soulslike. It is by no means a bad game, it’s just not one I can easily recommend for all but the most ardent players of the genre.