Preview: Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy Brings a Familiar Lead and Promising New Ideas

The video game medium has a near-infinite number of brilliant stories to experience, with the vast majority of players coming out feeling happy, distressed, confused, or just about any emotion, really, depending on the game. And thanks to Asobo Studios' A Plague Tale games, they single-handedly invoked all the positive feelings when I first experienced Innocence for the first time in 2020.

This adoration went even further, with me gleefully anticipating A Plague Tale: Requiem from its initial reveal trailer, then emotionally breaking down as I bid farewell to Amicia and Hugo at the end of the full game. It was a short-lived journey I'll never forget, with the two siblings' heartbreaking, gut-wrenching revelations the icing on the whole ordeal.

Suffice to say, it all comes full circle for me now—Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is one of the brand-new adventures set in this archaic and gritty universe, where we get to play as Sophia, one of the central characters in Requiem and the one who also helped the De Rune siblings in their tormented survival, to the point where she became a maternal guardian angel to them both.

Resonance is a prequel game set 15 years before the events of Requiem. Besides being the origin story of Sophia, one of its main focal points is a revamped gameplay and action combat system that replaces the prior stealth-action hybrid one. I got hands-on time with Chapters 5 and 6, which are filled with a mix of narrative and gameplay moments, so let's see what Asobo cooked up for Sophia's glimmering high-stakes adventure.

Sophia Finally Takes Center Stage

Right from the main menu, I was presented with an exclusive combat tutorial section and the aforementioned two chapters to start with, but before even checking anything out, I had to sit and applaud the sheer beauty of Olivier Derivière's masterful musical composition as his signature cello work, gradually joined by the somber choir vocals, set the stage for another (possible) banger from Asobo Studios.

After that, I got to dabble in the game's combat tutorial, which allowed me to learn the basics and other know-hows from Sophia's sparring session with the gang. Pretty straightforward stuff here from what most people saw from the reveal trailers, but we'll go deeper into discussing it in just a moment.

On the run from her gang after watching them get torn down by the Venetian Army, Sophia and her friend Leni find themselves in the heart of the Minotaur's Island, a treacherous isle that has been vaguely featured in Sophia's visions, beckoning her to seek it out to find answers about her past and fragmented ancestry.

Sophia and Leni aren't alone, though; we learn that the army is still hot on their trail ever since completing the first trial, and it's only a matter of time before either they or Faro, Sophia's adoptive father, catches up to the duo with his gang. So before that happens, it's time to take on the second major trial and advance further to what lies on the island, or until it all falls apart.

What I love most in the initial moments here are the seeds of Sophia's deterministic and free-spirited nature that we saw in Requiem, evident in her youthful self here.

She's realistic about how cruel the world can be, understands danger and isn't naive about human nature when conversing with Leni about her past or unraveling what's to come on their journey. And just like in Requiem, the brilliant and awe-inspiring Anna Demetriou does a phenomenal job of once again bringing this character to life through her voice and motion-capture performance.

Steel Over Stealth

Resonance is a departure from the methodical stealth approach of combat from both the previous Plague Tale titles. Instead of an encounter feeling like a mechanical chess puzzle of navigating past the enemy's line of sight or trying to draw one out without attracting the whole platoon, you've instead got a hardened survivor like Sophia who can draw her steel to fight any and all threats at command.

The combat is essentially a foundation of the hack-and-slash formula, but for all action game enthusiasts, don't be so quick to judge the depth here. This isn't a walk-in-the-park, one-button-press-to-win kind of gig. Using her equipped sword and dagger, Sophia can cut down foes. And with each one's HP depleted, Sophia will finish most of them off with a quick or graceful finish.

Defensive options include either your blocks or dodges; perfectly blocking any normal attack will make you perform parries, with successive parries allowing you to fill up the gauge underneath the enemy's HP bar to eventually hit a stun effect on them.

There's also the fast yellow glint attacks, which, if parried, can quickly fill up that stun bar, but it's all about the choice here, since you can evade them much like the rest of the attacks or even the red glint ones that can't be blocked or parried. And when you stun an enemy, you can then use Sophia's powerful Critical Strike attack for some big chunk of damage.

And finally, a seasoned warrior and plunderer like Sophia wouldn't be who she is without a couple of tricks under her belt, one of which is her trusty grappling hook that allows you to pull down archers or other targets from higher levels for some easy kills or use it on ground-level ones to pull them towards you.

If you're looking to really up the ante in the options given to you for combat, then be sure to spend any hard-earned Resonance Points from enemy encounters or general exploration to purchase new skills for Sophia, as well as upgrade the mastery of them.

Finding Answers in Forgotten Places

One of the other founding pillars of the Plague Tale games was also the puzzles, striking a fine balance between not being overly complex while still making you think outside the box for a brief moment or two as you explored its ravaged or besieged landscapes. And with what I've got to experience so far, we're going to be putting those noggins to good use once again.

A large portion of the puzzles that I got to bear witness to and solve in Resonance were (mainly) relegated to Sophia's mysterious spherical orb, which allows her two different modes of usage; the first is being able to reflect three combinations of colors to light up prisms from a certain angle, while the other is to shine a light to reveal hidden marks or tracks.

Multiple red, blue, and green crystals are found all over the walls and floors of some spaces, so you need to form a blend of the right angles and the proper crystal formations to open up certain pathways or progress past encounters. Meanwhile, the other mode, where your orb becomes a glowing beacon or torch, includes an instance in which you need to carefully light and follow a concealed marking line on the ground to avoid triggering a floor trap.

Moreover, you can keep track of each current puzzle or obstacle in Sophia's journal, which also allows you to identify or be mindful of the clues pertaining to them, whether it's unique symbols, drawings or environmental markings. Especially evident in the entire fifth chapter, where the execution of some puzzles devolves to needing to fixate some symbols onto four different dials, as well as remember a mix of floor markings to safely cross over hazardous stone floors, all of which are helpfully scribbled down in Sophia's journal.

And much like with some other action-adventure titles you may know of that like to pull off this sort of thing, if you get stuck in a puzzle for a long while, you can then call on a hint to help you from a nearby friendly NPC like Leni. Speaking of other action-adventure titles, besides the Resonance Points I mentioned, any off the beaten path is sure to have new accessory items or trinkets stashed away for Sophia's easy pickings, which can provide passive bonuses and perks to aid you in combat and general gameplay moments.

A Promising Adventure That Can Still Tighten Up Some Loose Bolts

My short time with Resonance made it feel once again like a daring adventure I'd look forward to, especially now that we had a fresh set of ideas on the table with Sophia at the helm of it all. But I wouldn't just sign us off without going into detail about everything that was offered to me on this silver-looking platter.

And I just have to address the elephant on this platter; the animations of the Resonance's combat are by far my biggest gripe with it. Not that they stuck out like a sore thumb or anything, but in games like these, a fluid-looking animation design can largely carry the weight of the gameplay. I genuinely mean it. The combat is great and all, but the attack animation from both sides and the overall "feel" of it felt awkward and stiff, almost as if I was playing a rough build of the game, and I hope that's mostly the case here.

People who actually prefer an arcadey or PS3-era action adventure game might not mind this at all, but trust me when I say it legitimately feels a little uncanny to play when you're fighting against multiple enemies on-screen. Again, this can easily be ironed out closer to release so that they don't feel disorienting but instead feel more grounded and sharper.

I loved that the fifth chapter set the stage for the story's stakes, from the pursuers after Sophia and Leni to our heroine's ancestral connection to a mythical hero of ancient times. And there's a nice little surprise for the latter aspect that I'll refrain from speaking heavily about, since it's better to check that out on your own whim.

Speaking of surprises, you might've noticed I didn't mention or showcase anything about Chapter 6. And that’s mainly because there is a major turning point that gets introduced here, along with the entire level itself forming around that turning point in question.

Like for the majority of Chapter 5, you almost seem to forget about the supernatural aspects that this series can pull. And then the following chapter knocks that barrier down to let you know there's something more sinister at hand here than just swarms of rats this time.

It puts you in such a vulnerable state that the whole encounter, focused around that supernatural threat, had my anxiety levels spike a bit with how close it got to snatching me. And honestly, it is definitely one of the bigger things in this game that I'm eager to see getting formulated into the overall narrative or chapter structure.

So far, given how much I've experienced across two exhilarating chapters, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy feels like a bold new entry for the series, blending Sophia's compelling origin story with a fresh focus on a mythological mystery. While the new combat system shows promise, its current animation design can feel too jarring and plain awkward, making it my biggest concern so far. Even so, the strong narrative setup, promising puzzle design, and beautiful OST composition from Olivier Derivière left me eager to see more of Sophia's journey when the full adventure arrives.