Summary
Despite now belonging to one of the countless games in the Soulslike genre,Enotria: The Last Songis not without unique features that attempt to set it apart. Even with these unique features,Enotria: The Last Songstill manages to subject itself to a common criticism of the Soulslike genre.
The Soulslike genre of video gameshas indeed become increasingly popular over the last decade, to the point that the market is now chock-full of games that are and claim to be Soulslikes. However, Soulslikes aren’t without their criticisms, even from loyal fans, andEnotria: The Last Songhas now joined that list.
Enotria: The Last Song’s First Major Difficulty Spike Is Entirely Artificial
Soulslike Games Are Often Criticized for Relying Too Heavily on Artificial Difficulty
One of the biggestcriticisms of the Soulslike genreis its frequent reliance on artificial difficulty. The concept of artificial difficulty has been around for quite some time and is especially prevalent in older games that are much shorter than what the industry has to offer today. Shorter games have been known to implement artificial difficulty as a cheap way of preventing players from finishing those games too quickly, and the longer games that take advantage of the concept often seem to rely on it when their well of thought-provoking gameplay mechanics runs dry.
Artificial difficulty manifests itself in a variety of forms, but one of its most prominent forms is simply deepening enemies' health pools to increase their Time-to-Kill. This is an especially common feature in Soulslike games, and one that has been heavily criticized. Asthe Soulslike genre is all about a challenging experience, its most devoted players expect its games to challenge their strategic decision-making rather than simply increasing the time it takes to complete each game. Soulslike games that rely too heavily on this type of artificial difficulty then subject players to dozens of hours of farming, just so they can make their character strong enough to overpower — rather than outsmart — challenging foes.
Enotria: The Last Song’s Second Region Is a Massive Artificial Difficulty Spike
As many Soulslike games have been known to do,Enotria: The Last Songdecides to welcome with open arms the common criticism of the genre once players enter its second region.Enotria’s first region is fairlytypical of any Soulslike game, gradually introducing players to the game’s unique mechanics and increasingly arduous foes, but this also means players can easily learn their way through it and come out on the other side a much more capable version of themselves. The game’s second major region, on the other hand, offers players a fake challenge that masquerades as increased difficulty.
While there is a significant difficulty spike when fighting the gatekeeper boss betweenEnotria’s first and second regions, the rank-and-file enemies of the second region take things up several more notches with much larger health pools than any enemies players may have encountered in the first region. To make matters worse, most of these enemies have similar attack patterns to those found in the first region, so there isn’t much room for growth as a player since the only way forward is tofarm Memoria, upgrade equipment, and level up one’s stats as much as possible.
Unfortunately, this trend continues intoEnotria’s third region, showing no signs of quitting, and that includes many of the game’s major bosses.
Enotria: The Last Songcertainly does its best to set itself apart from othergames in the Soulslike genre, but it also chooses to embrace one of the worst qualities of those games in its artificial difficulty spikes. Perhaps there is still time forEnotriato receive a patch updating these areas, but that seems like it might be quite a bit of work to implement. Whether that happens, players may have no choice but to spend hours farming Memoria inEnotriain order to progress smoothly.
Enotria: The Last Song
WHERE TO PLAY
Enotria: The Last Song is an Action RPG SoulsLike set in a fantasy world based off Italian folklore and culture.It aims to take the genre in a new direction, with a vibrant and sun-lit world based off Italian summer where the gameplay allows you to alter the world & enemies in systemic ways.It is defined as a Souls-Like but unlike other souls-likes we are depicting a world based on Italian summer colours, as we call it, ‘‘Summer-Soul’'.The objective is to bring Italian rich past and culture to the fore in a new way that is appealing to the broader public.What we need to convey from the art direction is the colours, vibrancy and general feeling of visiting Italy.Enotria: The Last Song wants to capture the heart & soul of souls-likes fanbase, with rewarding exploration, diverse player builds, varied enemy designs while giving a unique twist.With Ardore, the player always has access to different strategies, allowing them to influence enemies behaviors, dynamically alter the world around them, solve puzzles & harness the very elements of Enotria.
