Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy takes no time moving into the great things. The again half of the preview demo had us working and leaping up a collapsing Cretan break, hurling this story’s new protagonist – Sophia – from one crumbling historic pipe to the following whereas a monster finest left unspoiled hunted us via the darkish beneath. A half-hour earlier, we have been combating armed mercenaries within the solar, planting well-placed daggers into swaths of foes whereas fixing intricate puzzles, and following a treasure map to seek out the following clue. That is the essence of Asobo Studio’s third journey into its plague-soaked world, and the preview construct ran us two nailbiting hours throughout two attractive chapters forward of its upcoming August launch. In fact, for those who’ve touched a Plague Tale sport earlier than, virtually none of that may sound correct. The place Amicia spent two video games hiding within the grass, smuggler Sophia is way extra athletic and educated for hazard, and it performs much less like a full-blown stealth puzzler than like Murderer’s Creed crossed with Tomb Raider. On this proof, it is one of the best the sequence has ever felt in our arms.
Ship of Theseus
Story and motion share the middle stage on this iteration of A Plague Tale, so let’s begin with the motion. Sophia carries a blade in every hand, a sword on the correct and a dagger on the left, and boy howdy, is she fast. After two video games of creeping round as Amicia, it is virtually disorienting to manage a Plague Tale lead who actively needs to be seen this badly, although there’s nonetheless loads of stealth. You launch fundamental assaults with X, maintain X to cost a crucial strike that pulls the dagger for a stabbing finisher, kick with Y to interrupt an enemy’s guard, and dodge with B. Faucet the left bumper to parry – which finally stuns enemies for those who do it sufficient instances in sequence – and maintain it to dam.
It’s a bit disappointing she doesn’t have rather more ranged versatility than that, however you do get a cool gadget: tapping the left set off fires a grappling hook that drags an enemy in and leaves them off stability, open to a one-hit crucial. And there are different alternatives for technique as nicely; as an example, for those who get the drop on a roving band of human enemies, you possibly can leap onto unsuspecting foes and faucet X for an Murderer’s Creed-style execution. Time-to-kill is brief, and time to regenerate your individual well being is fairly fast, which retains fights transferring no matter whether or not you land excellent takedowns and obtain no incoming hits. Nonetheless, Sophia folded after about three consecutive hits on Regular problem within the part we had the chance to play via, so it positively looks as if one of the best offense right here is an effective protection.
Larger swings are telegraphed with color-coded warnings, typical in trendy motion video games, so a clear parry is all the time about studying the inform, not guessing. The most important enemies cannot be parried or shocked in any respect, so you may want to attend out their onslaught, slip in behind them, and repeatedly maintain X till they drop. That is improbable when fight is firing on all cylinders, with swords, spears, and arrows flying via the air in all instructions.
When you begin chaining grapples into executions, it clicks, and dropping a small military plus a couple of bruisers by no means stops feeling good. Occasionally, you possibly can smash the Y + X buttons directly to unleash a superpowered, restrict break-style assault that defaults as an enormous 360-degree AoE swing, taking pictures golden particles in every single place. It breaks via everybody’s armor, however its impact appears to vary based mostly on which sword Sophia has outfitted. Along with that huge assault, switching from Sophia’s fundamental sword tweaks the rhythm in small however vital methods: the Greek sword (present in a random, off-the-beaten-path tomb) swaps that long-X dagger finisher for a single spinning slash, and it feels simply as slick in motion.
In complete, there are about eight weapons to seek out all through the marketing campaign, which feels excellent for what guarantees to be a densely-packed single-player action-adventure that fills every stage with mesmerizing environmental artwork, enthralling puzzles, and complex motion sequences. It is easy to be so absorbed by the traditional Cretan world for prolonged sequences between fights that you simply would possibly neglect the existence of fight altogether – till you are instantly rising right into a band of troops guarding the exit to considered one of Resonance’s plethora of forgotten temples.
Aziz, Extra Gentle!
A lot of Resonance’s puzzles run on a mysterious sphere that triples as Sophia’s flashlight, a puzzle-solving machine that splits a beam of sunshine into inexperienced, crimson, and blue refractions, and the story’s prime MacGuffin – form of like Baldur’s Gate 3’s Astral Prism meets Alan Wake’s trusty flashlight. You clear up rooms by routing these coloured beams into gems set within the partitions, which crack open doorways or increase platforms out of bottomless pits. In different sections, you may merely want mild to outlive the monster. Sure, there is a monster, and sure, it is associated to the titular plague. That is the prequel to A Plague Tale, in spite of everything, and its deeper mythological connections make it each a improbable start line for the sequence and, from what we have seen to date, its implications for the primary two video games will make it a must-play for longtime followers.
Most puzzles take about ten minutes of trial and error, and dying barely stings: you rewind a couple of seconds, and autosaves are in every single place, not less than on Regular mode. Once more, that stability between combating and considering was one of many smartest issues concerning the demo. One of many extra memorable puzzles we encountered had us aiming three huge magnifying lenses to chain mild throughout a chamber in the correct order, and the reply isn’t the one it first seems like. In one other, companion Leni braces a set of wheels to carry platforms in place when you work the sunshine, which can also be the place the writing snuck in for us. Sophia and Leni have a simple, lived-in banter, and we received precisely one chapter together with her earlier than a cutscene tore her away, by ex-friends-turned-enemies, no much less, who have been implied to have as soon as been allies in earlier sections of the story, and I think about these supporting characters might be pivotal to the plot of the total sport.
Resounding Applause
You develop Sophia’s skills with Resonance Factors, which you discover within the setting or earn after a combat. There are six unlockable abilities complete, however the preview opened up three. Echo’s Return dietary supplements your parry: press B as you are hit to grab the attacker and fling him into his allies, gorgeous the entire group. It will not catch yellow or crimson assaults with out an improve, but it surely’s a great-looking transfer, with Sophia swinging a hapless soldier into the fray like a bowling ball.
Bullbreaker Kick, mapped to a double-tap of Y, chains right into a second kick that stuns and shoves enemies again. Every ability has two mutually unique masteries that sharpen it additional. For instance, Echo’s Return can study to reply an in any other case unworkable yellow assault, and Bullbreaker Kick can pile on additional stun when an enemy hits one thing stable. All abilities price extra factors the deeper you go, so your first choose issues, however you possibly can reset the entire tree totally free at any level, which takes the stress off experimenting. Each tutorial stays parked within the menu for those who want a refresher.
The island itself is the opposite motive this works. Asobo has constructed a handcrafted slice of Greece, – particularly, the island of Crete, the place Sophia grew up – out of terracotta, with blue paint flaking off stone pillars, copper statues, murals, and ruins that genuinely look historic. For anybody who’s set foot on the Greek Isles, the place reads as genuine. And to its profit, a slightly well-thought-out story sits beneath all of it. Resonance takes place between 1333 and 1334, fifteen years earlier than A Plague Tale: Innocence, and it retains chopping again to antiquity, the place you play as Theseus among the many icons of Greek fantasy, and what occurs in that previous bends the current. Sophia appears to hold a sixth sense for this historical past, and the demo hints, with out spelling it out, that Theseus could also be her ancestor. The thread tying the 2 eras collectively is her hyperlink to the Prima Macula, the cursed bloodline the entire sequence is constructed on, and the construct dangles that thriller with out untangling it. Flip via her pocket book on the d-pad, and you will find unsettling, virtually tabletop RPG-style drawings of maps and different legendary areas filling in her backstory. After which there’s that monster I preserve teasing, finest left unspoiled, besides to say it is lower from the identical material because the menace of the primary two video games. It is the one stretch within the demo the place stealth nonetheless mattered, and it constructed to the demo’s tensest sequence, the tunnel chase teased at the start of this preview, the place slipping previous the factor in the dead of night was much better than combating and even working away from it.
Toggle of Conflict
Like every self-respecting PC participant, we checked out the choices menu, and Resonance’s is deep – six tabs overlaying normal, language, graphics, audio, accessibility, and controls. Hints are a slider (none, uncommon, frequent, or frequent) that adjustments how lengthy earlier than Sophia or a companion gives a nudge, and whereas switched to “frequent,” a touch not often surfaces throughout these two chapters so long as you retain transferring. The truth is, we solely noticed it as soon as whereas working circles round an early beachfront space throughout the first couple of minutes of the demo.
Invincible mode makes you immune to fireside and human enemies, letting you stroll via fight, although hazards and non-human threats stay deadly. This is smart to cater to gamers of the primary two video games who will not be as into intense melee fight, but it surely most likely unbalances the expertise when switched on. There are colorblind presets, a high-contrast mode, absolutely remappable controls with on-screen prompts, and granular HUD toggles for enemy assault warnings, the creature indicator, and grapnel help. Particular actions that usually require a held enter or a spun stick can auto-complete as an alternative of asking you to mash, and you may dial again digital camera shake and vibration too. The construct ran easily on a PC with an RTX 4070 Ti and an AMD Ryzen 3900X at 2K ultrawide, totally on extremely with DLSS switched to Balanced mode and Body Era switched on.
Two chapters in, that is plainly one of the best A Plague Tale has ever performed, the uncommon third entry that reinvents the method as an alternative of nudging it. The fight is quick and satisfying, the puzzles are intelligent with out turning obtuse, the island seems and feels as encompassing as probably the most superb environments from Murderer’s Creed: Odyssey, and the ability tree has clear room to open up. Loads continues to be unknown: how lengthy the total sport runs, how the dual-timeline story truly pays off, what that redacted menace turns into at full scale, and the way a lot depth this fight system can actually present. For a sequence that made its title on dread and hiding, watching it commit this difficult to motion is an actual shock. However two chapters are definitely sufficient to make Resonance some of the thrilling issues on our 2026 calendar, and that is not one thing I anticipated to say about A Plague Tale with a fight overhaul.