Overview:
A review of the latest Plague Tale game.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Review based on completion of PlayStation 5 version.
Innocence: A Plague Tale predates my usual Games of the Year roundup for Houston Press, but if I had been doing it in 2019 it definitely would have been on that list. The release from Asobo Studios, published by Focus, was a marvel of fantasy horror and a rare, but wonderful balance of stealth and combat. Too much of the genre is either a punishing Soulslike adventure or an exercise in helpless hide and seek. Plague Tale managed a chocolate-peanut butter mix of both plus puzzle dynamics straight out of old Tomb Raider games.
Cards on the table, I missed the sequel, Requiem thanks to some attention span problems, but it didn’t impact my ability to jump straight into Resonance. This prequel stars Sophia, an ally of Amicia and Hugo from the second game as she recounts her own first experience with the strange infection known as the Macula on the legendary ruined island kingdom of Crete.
Let’s start with what the game gets right. As with the first title, the setting is gorgeous. The broken mechanical wonders of Crete, designed by the mythical Daedalus, are fantastic in their rotting splendor. If you miss the outlandish majesty of the Greek God of War games, this will definitely scratch that itch.
The storyline is also wonderful. Sophia is on Crete looking for both a lost treasure and the key to stopping her Macula infection that her father was searching for when she died. As she explores the island, enemy European soldiers pursue her. She also has visions of the Greek hero Theseus and the Minotaur, and this is the game’s narrative crown jewel. Resonance offers an innovative new remix of the classic myth that serves as a dark mirror of Sophia’s own life and the struggles of Amicia and Hugo in the present. While Sophia has her own emotional journey, it’s the flashbacks that are truly epic.
Puzzle design is also near-flawless. The manipulation of light seen in the first game is given a bunch of new dimensions, from prismatic geometry puzzles to using an ancient flashlight to kill zombies. I was only stuck a couple of times, and it was nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix. While the idea of ancient, light-sensitive machinery still working millenia after a civilization is inherently silly, no one is playing these games for realism.
Combat, though, is another matter. Sophia is a melee fighter as opposed to a sniper like Amicia. The game has a lot of fights against various types of soldier, and these were often the most tedious parts of the game. The mechanics are loosely similar to the stance shifts in Ghost of Tsushima, but dummied down and far less polished. I recommend getting the upgrade that lets you parry unblockable attacks as soon as possible as it cuts down significantly on unfair gang-ups on Sophia that end in a lot of needless deaths.
The game even seems to realize that fighting is its weakest component. All of the extra exploration is built around resonance points used to upgrade melee combat, which does at least give the game a deep sense of focus. The more you look around, the less annoying sword fights with random soldiers are.
One other aggravation is that upgrades for Sophia do not translate to Theseus in the past, meaning you might have to alter your strategy on the fly. The game does allow for heals upon killing enemies similar to Bloodborne’s rally mechanic, but this is useless in boss fights. Instead, the game just heals you between phases, which is appreciated, but also feels like jerryrigging a solution to a problem that could have more elegant mechanical fixes.
Non-soldier encounters are much more fun. There are sections where you have to creep through zombies that wake-up if you’re too fast, a set of other zombies that require use of light to kill and which don’t swarm you unfairly, and pretty much every encounter with the minotaur is brilliant. It is the true enemy of the game, with a final battle that completely overshadows the lackluster finale of Innocence.
The Plague Tale games thus far have existed in this weird middle ground between exceptional Triple A titles and indie darlings. While they never really break new ground, they always seem to fill niches currently missing in modern releases while also telling a damn good pulp horror story. I think back to playing Resident Evil: Requiem earlier this year, and while that game was inarguably more impressive it just wasn’t nearly as much fun.
I think the best compliment I could possibly give Resonance is that the second I finished it I downloaded both the other games in the series just to stay in the world a little longer. There is something so earnest about the franchise that makes it feel more genuine than the big tentpole releases from Capcom and Konami. I’d rather be in Plague Tale‘s Europe than in Silent Hill or Raccoon City, flaws and all.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy releases August 27 on PlayStation, XBox, and PC. $59.99.
