The Soulslike genre is one of the fastest growing trends in the industry. Several games today are clearly influenced by FromSoftware’s work, if not entirely Soulslike games. The increasing presence and competition within the genre is undoubtedly a good thing, as it means they are getting better and better. Lies by P. is one of the best Soulslike games not from FromSoftware, not only for its signature gameplay, but also for its unique take on the genre – exploring a mythology inspired by fairy tales. It remains to be seen if another Soulslike game follows a similar path. Enotria: The Last Song. It is a Soulslike game inspired by Italian folklore with equally interesting innovations in gameplay and game mechanics.

Enotria: The Last Song is set in a world trapped in an eternal game called the Canovaccio, where everyone is held in an unnatural stasis in their set roles. Every NPC, character, and main boss is part of this Canovaccio, providing a lore justification for the main character’s constant rebirth and the set location of an enemy. It’s a unique twist in itself, but of course the player must disrupt this Canovaccio. The players are the Maskless One, the Mask of Change, the only one in the world of Enotria not to play a fixed role in this game, but to determine their own destiny. Game Rant played a short demo of Enotria at Gamescom and is generating great anticipation for the upcoming release in September.

Enotria: The Last Song: Character development and builds based on the Soulslike formula

The demo started with a short tutorial that introduced us to all the basics of Soulslike gameplay. Everything you’d expect is there: dodging, parrying, attack combos, stamina, etc. Everything felt just right for a Soulslike game and showed how well developer Jyamma Games understands the genre on a basic level. How it builds on the Soulslike genre is equally well informed. There are two big differences in how Enotria approaches character progression compared to most Soulslike games, elemental effects, and loadouts.

Elemental effects are nothing new in this genre, as many builds can sometimes be defined by the element associated with them. It is understandable to use certain spells or enchanted weapons with something like additional fire or electrical damage. However, Enotria ensures that each elemental effect is dual, both rewarding and punishing the user. This applies not only to the Maskless One, but also to bosses. For example, a status condition is essentially wine drunkenness. A boss or player, when this condition is maxed out, can deal more damage, but they also take more damage. This ensures that builds around elements have a unique push/pull, risk/reward factor that can really influence a player’s playstyle.

Enotria: The Last Song’The builds are incredibly deep and include all the spells and weapons you would expect from the genre. It seems that the game offers a lot of both build variety and build depth, two important components for a player to get the most out of their Soulslike experience. Enotria: The Last Song offers 8 different weapon classes with over 120 weapons, a total of 45 available spells and 8 ways to change the way a parry works. The main difference between Enotria and other Soulslike games is that players can equip three builds at once, called loadouts.

Loadouts are nothing new to games, but they are fairly new to the Soulslike experience. No doubt players are familiar with tweaking their build or changing it entirely when facing certain bosses in Soulslike games, but Enotria allows you to equip three at once and switch between them instantly. One developer explained to us that players might have a preferred build for mobs over a preferred build for bosses, or they might love buildcrafting in Soulslike games. This feature streamlines all of that, but also doubles down on the fine-tuning of each build.

Generally speaking, it would be simple enough to say that players can equip three different builds at once and swap them out at any time, and that would be innovative. However, Jyamma Games didn’t stop there. One build feature is called Aspect, of which there are over 30 in the game. It is best to think of these as the starting classes in Elden Ring, change the statistics. From a certain level in Elden Ringthese classes no longer matter, and this is even more true when players start playing around with respecs. This does not apply to Enotria’s aspects; players can add these to any build/loadout, each adjusting the base stats of the loadout. There are some basic archetypes that we have seen, but also much deeper ones that change each ability positively/negatively and add even more features to increase the variety of the build. This is all in addition to Enotria‘s Innovator’s Path, which is essentially its skill tree, and players can assign specific abilities to each mask in the equipment screen.

Therefore, it seems pretty clear that Soulslike fans who enjoy working and tinkering on their builds will find all that and more in Enotria.

The level design of Enotria: The Last Song is profound, almost in the truest sense of the word

We got a pretty good insight into the world of Enotria During our demo, we started with the tutorial area, walked across a field to the capital, through and under that city, and later jumped into a region based on Venice. We saw a lot of verticality in the game design, especially in the city. Not only was the entire city explorable, with plenty of tough enemy encounters, but there were also plenty of shortcuts and routes to dungeons and areas beneath the city. Enotria is literally brighter than some Soulslike games, with an ever-bright Italian sun in the sky, but there are areas that are darker and more in keeping with the dark fantasy of most Soulslike games; among them was a city. The verticality within the city itself, traveling through houses and narrow walkways, was representative of a real Italian city and made for great level structure. Fans could easily get lost in this city in the best way possible, allowing them to explore every nook and cranny at their pace.

The region around Venice understandably had a lot of broken paths and lots of waterways, which meant that players had to get creative with their exploration. In fact, one of the best things about Elden Ring is that players can explore The Lands Between and learn more about the world, the story, the lore, and the combat. The level design of Enotria feels the same; Jyamma Games really understands the fundamentals of Soulslike game design, right down to its environments. And even then, Enotria still manages to add its own touch to the exploration.

Enotria includes puzzles called Rifts that allow players to “alter reality.” This means finding puzzles that unlock new areas or secrets, sometimes traveling to a different location, and sometimes opening a treasure chest. Some of these Rifts are also permanent, for example allowing the player to reconstruct a bridge. It feels like players have a permanent impact on a world that is otherwise structured a certain way, and while it remains to be seen how often these Rifts have such grandiose effects, it’s a top-notch puzzle addition to Enotria‘s environments.

Combat in Enotria: The Last Song understands Soulslike gameplay

Enotria understands the basics of Soulslike build and exploration design, but that wouldn’t matter so much if the combat wasn’t on the same level. The good news is that it absolutely did. When dealing with mobs or bosses, it offered every kind of challenge you’d expect, and it really caters to that “one more try” mentality. Players need to approach combat by looking for the patterns and rhythms of each fight, while never taking an easy fight against a mob enemy for granted. EnotriaThe combat is Soulslike through and through.

It’s that simple: Jyamma Games knows what a Soulslike is, and Enotria implements this knowledge well.