Enotria: The Last Song Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Confession time: I have never played Dark Souls. Nor have I played any of its immediate kin. So, no Elden Ring, no Bloodborne, not even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. My excuse is that, upon Dark Souls release, I was taking an enforced leave of absence from video games, so I missed all that initial buzz. And then, when I came back to the warm loving embrace of video gamedom, the thought of spending hours trying to beat just one boss kept me far away from the Souls-like phenomenon. How then, I wondered as Enotria: The Last Song booted up, would I get on with the latest entry in the bloated Souls-like genre?

Enotria stands out from its many Souls-like siblings in two ways. The first is its colour pallet. The aesthetic of Enotria is resoundingly light and bright. The action takes place beneath glorious azure skies, amongst scores of golden, gleaming sunflowers, through white-washed villas, and across resplendent sandy beaches. It’s a far cry from the dark, dank, and gloomy look usually associated with the genre.

The second way Enotria emerges from the pack is with its setting of Italian mythology. Like all brilliant mythologies, Italian folklore is totally bonkers and completely inaccessible and incomprehensible to those not already immersed in it. I couldn’t make head nor tail of the story, nor did I understand what was occurring with the characters at any given point. But when the world you’ve created is this wonderfully over-the-top, you can’t help but be carried away by the wilful insanity of it all. What I can tell you is that it involved the stage, acting, singing, lots of masks, and very big hats.

In comparison to its look and world building, when it comes to gameplay, Enotria is more traditional. Your silent protagonist explores, fights bosses, gathers weapons and equipment, discovers save points, and dies. A lot. To a Souls-like newbie like me, it’s all a bit much. There are so many systems, so many intricacies, that developers Jyamma Games clearly didn’t know where