A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem are a pair of pretty good stealth adventure games set in 14th-century France, following Amicia de Rune as she protects her younger brother, Hugo. Together, they evade the Inquisition and face terrifying swarms of supernatural, plague-ridden rats linked to a dark curse in Hugo’s blood, leading them on a heartbreaking journey across the country in a desperate and tragic quest for a cure.
During their adventures in Requiem, Amicia met Sophia, a charismatic sea smuggler and pirate captain who becomes a crucial ally and surrogate older sister figure. She became one of the most memorable parts of the story, and the developers thought so too, as they made a spin-off prequel set during her younger days, about 15 years before Amicia and Hugo went out on the lamb. Without stealth or an ocean of rats, what does Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy have to offer?
As a child, Sophia was held captive at a convent run by The Order, the shadowy alchemy organisation introduced in Requiem. She was subjected to black blood experiments that granted her prophetic visions of an island, a labyrinth, and a large horned monster. Though her father and a crew of plunderers eventually rescued her, her father died trying to find the island, prompting a grown-up Sophia to embark on a swashbuckling treasure hunt to Crete’s Minotaur’s Island to uncover the truth about what was done to her. The setup is full of intrigue, but it doesn’t take long for this prequel to punch a few holes in the continuity of the previous entries.
There are some epic, world-altering supernatural events and trauma in Resonance, yet Sophia never once mentions or references them when helping Amicia and Hugo. Regretfully, the story has huge gaps in logic. It plays out a bit like Uncharted, with the heroes exploring the ruins of a lost civilisation, solving puzzles, and unlocking ancient passages untouched for thousands of years. Somehow, though, the antagonistic Venetian army has already skipped past the puzzles and is conveniently waiting for the heroes on the other side.
The story sometimes shifts from Sophia to Theseus, an ancient Minoan warrior set thousands of years earlier. By switching between the eras, players see how actions taken in the Bronze Age reshape paths and puzzles in the medieval era. The whole game is set in an unbelievably massive super dungeon with traps and puzzles, and it unfolds with players seeing it during its heyday and when it’s a crumbling mess. While most of the game is primarily puzzles and swordplay, there are still a couple of stealth sequences involving a very imaginative interpretation of a minotaur that detects based on smell and doesn’t resemble a minotaur at all. It’s an intriguing take on the Theseus legend, one that could have stood on its own apart from the Plague Tale franchise and perhaps would have been better for it.
Sophia and her redheaded roguish friend Leni are well-acted and likeable characters, although they don’t really feel convincing as medieval-era women. Leni is seemingly designed to be very Amicia-like and shares multiple thematic similarities. They both avoid combat and have similar sculpted facial features. It’s a cheap narrative parallel that serves to retroactively explain why Sophia forms such an immediate, protective, and sisterly bond with the French noble girl.
The story begins grounded, and as Sophia’s brigand family is broken up by the Venetian army and reaches Minotaur Island, it gradually becomes more fanciful. By the time she and Leni are traversing an impossibly large labyrinth, the story abandons all pretences of it being historical fiction and goes full on fantasy-horror. Apart from some plot holes and leaps of logic, Resonance is an exciting story full of intrigue. The scope is more epic than it initially leads on and veers close to having nigh-apocalyptic stakes. It doesn’t really tie in neatly with the first two Plague Tales, which only highlights why it should have downplayed their connection.
Gameplay-wise, Resonance is still a heavily scripted and overly directed, linear action-adventure game like its predecessors. The setting was a perfect chance to finally open up and let players explore at their own pace with a more open-ended structure à la Resident Evil. A labyrinth chock-full of puzzles, traps and even a dangerous stalker enemy is a premise that’s exploding with possibilities, yet it plays it too safe and unfolds with choking linearity.
Resonance has a frustrating habit of including collectables, hidden weapons, and upgrade points, but also making it too easy to miss them and accidentally pass a point of no return. An auto-save kicks in right after, cutting off any chance to go back and explore. Regretfully, Sophia can’t swim… in fact, she falls through water like it’s air. Jarringly, there’s no splash or sound effect either, which is bizarre because there’s usually a lot of attention to detail in this game.
Sophia fights like a rogue, utilising a reverse-grip sword technique, dirt-fighting tricks, and quick-footed pirate mobility, emphasising a high-stakes, parry-focused battle rhythm. Tapping the block button just as an enemy weapon connects triggers a parry, staggering foes and leaving them wide open. Attacking right after a parry delivers a quick light strike, which can be immediately followed by holding down the attack button to execute a critical strike. It’s not much, but it’s marginally more complex than Hellblade‘s combat, with a lower skill ceiling than the Batman: Arkham games, with flashier and more varied animations that give battles cinematic flair.
The skill tree isn’t thought out and has moves that make no sense. Sophia can learn how to parry unblockable attacks as early as the fourth chapter. The double dodge roll should’ve been part of her default moveset. Overall, most of the skill tree feels tacked on, and the game seems to deliberately make Sophia subpar just to justify having a skill tree.
Not all aspects of the gameplay work as intended, but at least the visuals are stunning. It’s true that most modern games have hit a graphical ceiling, but Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is genuinely a beautiful sight to behold. The impressive attention to detail is one thing, but the colour choices, costume designs, painterly skies, dazzling lighting, and particle effects make Resonance stand out in the art direction department, putting it a cut above most AAA productions.
