Summary
- Enotria: The Last Song fully embraces artificial difficulty spikes, a common criticism of the Soulslike genre.
- The game's second region introduces a fake challenge with enemies simply having significantly larger health pools.
- Players may need to spend hours farming Memoria to progress smoothly, highlighting the need for authentic, rather than artificial, challenges.
Despite now belonging to one of the countless games in the Soulslike genre, Enotria: The Last Song is not without unique features that attempt to set it apart. Even with these unique features, Enotria: The Last Song still manages to subject itself to a common criticism of the Soulslike genre.
The Soulslike genre of video games has 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, and Enotria: The Last Song has now joined that list.
The Unwritten Rules of Enotria: The Last Song Explained
Players should be aware of several unwritten rules about Enotria: The Last Song's combat and exploration before diving into this saturated Soulslike.
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 biggest criticisms of the Soulslike genre is 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. As the 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 Song decides to welcome with open arms the common criticism of the genre once players enter its second region. Enotria's first region is fairly typical 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 between Enotria'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 to farm Memoria, upgrade equipment, and level up one's stats as much as possible.
Unfortunately, this trend continues into Enotria's third region, showing no signs of quitting, and that includes many of the game's major bosses.
Enotria: The Last Song certainly does its best to set itself apart from other games 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 for Enotria to 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 in Enotria in order to progress smoothly.
Enotria: The Last Song
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 69 /100 Critics Rec: 31%
- Released
- September 16, 2024
- ESRB
- Teen / Alcohol Reference, Blood and Gore, Mild Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Jyamma Games
- Publisher(s)
- Jyamma Games
WHERE TO PLAY
Enotria: The Last Song is a thrilling soulsike set in a sun-lit land inspired by Italian folklore and filled with danger.
The world has been gripped by the Canovaccio - a twisted eternal play that keeps everything in an unnatural stasis. You, Maskless One, are the only one without a given role and master of your destiny. Defeat the fearsome Authors that created it and free the world from stagnation, by harnessing the power of Ardore.
Become the Mask of Change.
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Soulslike
