Games

Enotria checks all of the soulslike boxes. It has stamina-regulated combat, with different weapons sporting various weights and animations, the greatsword being my favorite. It has dangerous enemies of various shapes and sizes, including jerky mini-bosses and a truly mean boss. You’ll collect “souls” that can be used to upgrade your character, so long as you don’t get killed, drop them, and fail to retrieve them before getting killed again. You’ll activate “bonfires” that serve as checkpoints and rest stops between legs of the sometimes stressful adventure. If you’ve played any of these in the past decade or so, you’ll know these are as basic to the sub-genre as boost pads are to kart racers.

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Is Enotria: The Last Song the next great innovation in the soulslike? I don’t know yet. But it's amazing how some sun and color can make the slower paced dungeon crawling that the genre is known for feel brand new. Activating environmental puzzles to reveal alternate routes or secrets has a lot of potential for fun exploration opportunities. Masks serving as de facto classes thanks to their proprietary groups of traits and bonuses help encourage different kinds of play, but maybe not different enough, and the Mask Line special abilities really spice combat up but require you to already be doing well in order to get access to them. Enotria will have plenty of time to rehearse for showtime between now and when it hits the big stage next year.

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