Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is the newest entry in a three-game Plague Tale franchise. However, Resonance doesn’t require any knowledge of those previous titles. It’s very much a standalone prequel that incorporates Tomb Raider-like environmental puzzles, the rich character development of games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and the parry-heavy swordplay and massive scope of something like a God of War game.
In fact, when you consider all that the game makers at ASOBO Studios have attempted to pack into this gaming blueprint, it’s a pretty impressive package. Of course, it’s also a very M-rated one.
Resonance begins in the year 1320 when Sophia, the game’s protagonist, is just 9 years old and being held in a secret convent in Venice. The nuns there conduct dangerous experiments on Sophia, injecting her with a strange blood-like substance that triggers powerful visions.
The girl is able to eventually escape and reunite with her father’s tribe of plunderers, where she learns to fight. But years later, she takes on the mysteries of her previous visions on the lost Minotaur Island.
The now twentysomething Sophia believes that the visions she saw and scribbled down in a notebook were all cryptic clues to a great hidden treasure—and so do her pirate-like clansmen. But she soon realizes that those revelations depict far more than that.
Sophia discovers enormous ruins and underground environmental challenges that bewilderingly link her to myths, an ancient kingdom, deadly bloodsports and a nearly indestructible and lethal smoke creature that can only be dispelled by light.
Gameplay wise, Resonance includes the need to manipulate enormous environmental puzzles and grapple-hook past life-threatening traps. And when Sophia isn’t solving this world’s riddles or leaping into its ancient history through visions, she’s jumping into battle with scores of enemies.
That combat takes place at every other turn (against soldiers, petrified creatures, zombie-like humans and others) with a well-executed, parry-focused battle structure.
Sophia can take up to three hits before succumbing to a foe. But when she defeats an enemy, she recovers one of those health hits. That’s a little tweak to a prototypical fighting/health system that keeps the sword battles fresh and the perfectly timed countering moves essential. (It should be noted that there are several levels of play intensity to choose from in the game menu, the lowest of which eliminates the danger of dying in combat.)
Once the incredibly dangerous smoke creature is introduced later in the game, stealthy movement takes center stage. That creeping and crawling alternates with terrifying, button-mashing timed runs when discovered. Some players will hate these interactions, but they’re instrumental to the storyline and a memorable part of play. Along the way, Sophia also finds stacking buffs and unlocks skill upgrades that impact her attacks, defenses and survival abilities.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a single-player title that does not require a full-time online connection.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a graphically appealing and well-designed game that casts players as two heroic and hard-fighting women (one in the 1330s and one in the ancient past) who both strive to protect loved ones and stand against oppressive forces.
The game’s environmental puzzles are creative without being overly difficult. And the characters and mythology at the story’s core are well-defined.
Between Sophia’s many, many frenetic battles and the many, many destructive puzzle challenges, there are screams of pain and blood-splattering aplenty. Foes are stabbed in the face and chest through special finishing moves. Heads are lopped off. We see scores of corpses and pools of blood. Sophia is impaled in a gore-spattering gush by environmental traps. And the camera takes time to watch Sophia’s death throes when she’s caught by the life-sucking smoke creature.
Young women are threatened, manhandled and beaten by much larger men in this game. (In one case, a woman is battered by her own father.) And a young boy is forced to be infected and transformed into a massive creature; his body drained into a shriveled corpse. Rot and filth corrupt certain areas and scenes.
Along with an ongoing parade of violence, the game also injects quite a bit of foul language into the mix, including the f-word, c-word and some spattered uses of “h—” and “d–mit.”
There are enjoyable elements in the adventuring and puzzle-solving of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. But you can’t avoid the M-rated, messy side of this game.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
