The demo shows a lot of promise, but also highlights some points of concern.
For better and for worse, Enotria: The Last Song is an ungainly marriage of Dark Souls 2 and the classics wing of a history museum. Enotria’s demo echoes the eerie beginnings of FromSoftware’s much-maligned sequel, but the interweaving of Mediterranean folklore, history, and theater lends it a bizarre and unsettling atmosphere that has it stand out from other soulslikes.
From what I gathered, Enotria’s world is as rooted in ancient and early-modern human history as it is fantasy and folklore. If you’re at all versed in classics like the Aenid or the Divine Comedy, you’ll recognize familiar names of epic heroes and ancient empires, distorted by a deranged, collapsing mind. I genuinely loved the atmosphere of these demo areas, with the sun-bleached stonework and distant ambiance of waves lapping at broken ships resting on the coastline tempering my frustration with Enotria’s janky combat.
While pleasant to look at, Enotria isn’t nearly as fun to trudge through. Movement feels like a binary decision—you’re either running at full tilt, or you’re standing still. (Or you’re dodging.) There’s also a hint of delay to every action, like your character is looking down at their feet to make sure they aren’t about to trip over something. Paired with some bizarre attack animations where enemies throw out a wild string of attacks with legs locked perpendicular, I felt like I was taking hits from attacks that I should have been able to parry or avoid.
Those issues with responsiveness and clarity are compounded by some lackluster environmental design, with Enotria’s backstreets and alcoves rarely being laid out in a way that complemented combat encounters. I often resorted to trial and error, barreling into an area, making a mental note of which janky pieces of geometry will get my character stuck and which walls the camera would get hung up on, and then face-tanking my foe.
