Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy from Focus Entertainment and Asobo Studio is a more action-oriented take on the A Plague Tale universe. Learn more in our Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy review!
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Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy from Focus Entertainment and Asobo Studio is a more action-oriented take on the A Plague Tale universe. You’ll be stepping into the role of Sofia, a fierce young plunderer who’s currently on the run. After a high-stakes mission goes terribly wrong, you leave behind your crew and make your way to the Minotaur’s Island, a location you saw in your visions when you were young. It’s there that she realizes that there’s something or someone there that resonates deeply with her. It will be then that your real adventure begins, as you unravel mysteries from the past, solving puzzles, avoiding deadly traps, and taking on the trials that the island has for you. Oh, and there’s also Theseus, the powerful warrior from Minoan times who you’ll be playing as during some segments as well.
For this Rated M for Mature experience, you’ll be diving back in time into prequel territory for a story that takes place before the events from both A Plague Tale: Innocence and A Plague Tale: Requiem, which does mean that you technically don’t need to play those two games to be able to get into what Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy has to offer. If you do want to learn more about the first game in the series, you can check out our A Plague Tale: Innocence review, which the_nmac had a chance to work on in 2021.
The first thing to do before your new adventure begins is to select the difficulty setting for your journey from the available options: Narrative, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare. The Narrative difficulty setting is the one you want to pick if you want to focus on the game’s story and exploration without having to worry too much about the combat, since parrying and dodging will be performed automatically for you. The Easy difficulty setting bumps things up a little bit with light combat challenges.
The Normal difficulty setting is the one that offers the standard experience, balanced to test your skills so that you can take on battles with enemies that will be more than ready to take on you. The Hard difficulty setting is best reserved for those of you who have more experience with taking on aggressive and resilient enemies, while also keeping in mind that Sophia will have less health. As for the Nightmare difficulty setting, it will considerably boost the strength and aggressiveness of enemies, so you’d better be ready!
After the intro story cutscene is over, you’ll be taking control of Sophia by using the left analog stick, as you use the right analog stick to adjust the camera as needed. Sprint by pressing and holding down the R2 button. Jump by pressing the X button, and crouch by pressing the Circle button. Pressing in on the right analog stick when the icon pops up will allow you to take a closer look at things or interact with someone else. When you gain the grapnel, you’ll be able to press the L2 button to throw it, so that you can then use the left analog stick to climb up or down. You can use the grapnel to swing at some spots, or to grab onto things that you need to tear apart and break to be able to carry onward.
When in combat, you can press the Circle button to try and dodge incoming attacks. Kick by pressing the Triangle button. Attack enemies by pressing the Square button. You can press and hold down the Square button to perform a more powerful charged attack. Block their attacks with the L1 button. If you time your blocks just right, you’ll be able to parry an attack, allowing you to counterattack. Parrying consecutive attacks will destabilize your opponent, opening a window to strike back with full force.
As you take on each location, you should keep an eye out for special artefacts that you can collect, which will add a bit of extra lore to the overall experience. You can also find charms that you can equip to aid you on your adventure. These are split into beads, armbands, bracelets, trinkets, seals, and pierced coins. One of these could, for example, be a bead that adds a slight chance that an archer’s arrow misses you. Another one would be a bracelet that can boost
Progressing through the game will allow you to earn Resonance Points. You can spend Resonance Points to unlock additional skills, as well as upgrade them. There’s Echo’s Return, which, while being attacked, will snatch and throw enemies into their allies, causing stun damage to everyone… as long as it’s not used against a yellow or red attack. Heroic Surge will grant a brief surge of protection when you kill an enemy with a critical strike, thus absorbing the next hit. Or you could go with Hero’s Step, which will allow you to chain a second dodge, something that can be of great help in battle since you’re partially invulnerable while dodging.
Trophy-wise, this release features a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy waiting for you. The list is split into 22 Bronze trophies, 9 Silver trophies, and 5 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do in order to add this new shiny Platinum trophy to your collection? Along with the trophies that you’ll get for completing each of the game’s chapters, there are also trophies for collecting all charms, unlocking the 6 mastery branches, finding all of Theseus’ Echoes, defeating an archer with a throwing knife, luring a brute into killing a soldier while in a rage, defeating four enemies at once with a Focus attack, parrying 6 attacks in a row, stunning 20 enemies with throwables, and defeating 20 enemies by pushing them down a drop, to name some example.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a more action-oriented take on the A Plague Tale universe. You’ll be stepping into the role of Sofia, a fierce young plunderer who’s currently on the run. After a high-stakes mission goes terribly wrong, you leave behind your crew and make your way to the Minotaur’s Island, a location you saw in your visions when you were young. It’s there that she realizes that there’s something or someone there that resonates deeply with her. It will be then that your real adventure begins, as you unravel mysteries from the past, solving puzzles, avoiding deadly traps, and taking on the trials that the island has for you. Oh, and there’s also Theseus, the powerful warrior from Minoan times who you’ll be playing as during some segments as well.
During this journey, you’ll be splitting your time between the Middle Age of Sophia and the ancient Minoan times, as you make the most of what you learn during these flashbacks and use the information in your notebook to try and shape the battles of the present. The notebook holds crucial visions that you drew while using your power from an early age after a group of evil nuns experimented on you.
You can customize your experience by picking between the standard experience or the available Performance Mode on offer. Performance mode will target 60 frames per second while lowering the overall resolution and fidelity, for a more fluid experience. The game also offers voices in English, French, German, Spain Spanish, and Chinese, as well as text in English, French, German, Spain Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Czech, Korean, Polish, Russian, Latin American Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Turkish.
There are also some accessibility options for you to consider. You can increase the UI size, decrease or increase the size of subtitles, change the color of said subtitles, activate the Colorblind Mode, as well as adjust the blood effects to decide how much blood should be shown here and there. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy launches tomorrow on PlayStation 5 with a $59.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Focus Entertainment.
