The moment I finished 2022’s A Plague Tale: Requiem, I had a hard time imagining how Asobo Studio could legitimately continue the series. The harrowing journey of Hugo and Amicia came to such a definitive and heartbreaking end that, even with the little intriguing post-credit stinger, I remained unconvinced the series could move forward beyond these two.
For all the tension, intrigue and nihilism at the heart of both A Plague Tale games, at its core, this was the story of a young girl trying her damndest to save her little brother from an inevitable and tragic fate. That emotional core defined so much of the experience. So, could future games really work without Amicia and Hugo as their center?
With Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Asobo Studio is finally making the case for how it plans to keep A Plague Tale going. Set 15 years before A Plague Tale: Innocence, this prequel focuses on a different character and a different approach to gameplay. Now it’s the time for the proof to be in the pudding.
Ship of Theseus
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy stars a young Sophia, the charming pirate who helps Amicia and Hugo escape France in A Plague Tale: Requiem.
Positioned as an origin story for the character, Resonance gives us a glimpse into Sophia’s life before she became a respected sea captain. Abandoned at a convent as a child plagued with strange visions, she was eventually rescued and joined her late father’s gang of bandits, becoming one of their fiercest warriors in the process. But when a high-stakes plundering mission in Venice goes south, Sophia leaves her crew behind and heads to the island of Crete to get to the bottom of her visions that never went away.
Once Sophia reaches the island, those visions take on a whole new meaning as she begins experiencing vivid glimpses of the distant past. Through these flashbacks, Sophia finds herself stepping into the shoes of Theseus, the legendary hero of Greek myth, slowly piecing together the ancient mysteries buried within the island. What follows is a journey of self-discovery that ultimately reveals the origins of Sophia’s long gestating infection and her visions, the whereabouts of her late father, and how all of it connects to the origins of the series’ Prima Macula.
If anything, the story of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy certainly presents itself as grander in scope than the previous two Plague Tale games, particularly the dual narrative setup that has you playing as both Sophia and Theseus. While filled with excellent moments throughout, the expanded scope does tend to come at a cost, as the Theseus side of the story ultimately feels far more important to the grand scheme of things than Sophia’s own journey. Resonance was supposed to flesh out Sophia as a character, but at a certain point, you realize she doesn’t have much of a character arc of her own. Instead, she often feels more like a vehicle for the story the writers actually wanted to tell with Theseus.
It also doesn’t help that many of the side characters Sophia interacts within the present are thinly characterized or simply forgettable. For the majority of her time in Crete, Sophia is joined by a companion named Leni, but beyond the swagger she brings during her introduction, there isn’t much to her beyond simply existing alongside Sophia. Faro, Sophia’s adoptive father figure, quickly bounces his motivations around too broadly to feel natural or believable. Considering how well rounded Sophia feels as a character early on, the thin characterization from the rest of the cast robs her side of the story of much of its emotional, um, resonance. Moments that should elicit a stronger emotional response simply don’t land as intended, which is a far cry from how A Plague Tale: Innocence and Requiem consistently made you feel something beyond your inherent attachment to Hugo and Amicia.,
Thankfully, the Theseus side of the story is where the real meat of the story lies. The moments when Sophia flashes back to the Minoan era are consistently thrilling, providing a great contrast to her present-day journey while establishing a parallel narrative that gives her actions the emotional weight that’s lacking elsewhere. The flashbacks also expertly weave together the mythology of Theseus, Daedalus’ Labyrinth and the Minotaur, putting a slight twist on the well-known myth that offers a different perspective on the lore surrounding the Prima Macula. These connections inadvertently give even more weight to the ultimate resolution of A Plague Tale Requiem, doubly emphasizing the tragedy that made that game’s story so effective in the first place.
In a way, Resonance both alleviated and justified my concerns about A Plague Tale continuing as an ongoing franchise. As a story intended to flesh out one of the previous game’s side characters, it’s unfortunate Asobo Studio couldn’t fully nail the Sophia side of things. Most of her characterization happens early on, before her personal story gradually takes a backseat to the larger narrative. And there’s a certain irony in the fact that Resonance is at its strongest when, almost by accident, it manages to emotionally parallel the relationship between Theseus and the events surrounding the Prima Macula with the story of Amicia and Hugo. It ultimately shows where the emotional core of the franchise lies. If A Plague Tale can continue to thrive as a franchise without repeatedly drawing parallels to the story that started it all, however, remains an open question.
Rise, Daughter of Theseus
If A Plague Tale Innocence and Requiem were Asobo Studio riffing on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is certainly a stew combining Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and Ghost of Tsushima. Where Asobo’s first two games established themselves as stealth-focused narrative adventures with brief dips into action, Resonance flips the script, leaning much more heavily into high-energy action and adventure, complete with puzzle-solving and direct melee combat.
What made the first two Plague Tale games stand out was how they emphasized the fragility of the young protagonists, using stealth and evasion as both gameplay and narrative tools. Of the two, Innocence maintained that focus the best, at least until its final stretch took an unwelcome detour to more action-heavy territory to its detriment. Never forget fighting waves of enemies while pushing a painfully slow cart, followed by a boss fight against a priest who controlled rat tornadoes.
Requiem was more uneven in this regard. While its story was stronger and more impactful than the first, it attempted to have it both ways by maintaining and expanding its stealth mechanics while stretching them into increasingly action-heavy set pieces that occasionally betrayed the game’s original conceit. From that perspective, considering the franchise’s gradual shift toward bigger action and spectacle with each subsequent entry, Resonance feels like the natural evolution of where Asobo wanted to take A Plague Tale from a gameplay perspective
To Asobo Studio’s credit, they certainly managed to make an action/adventure game that can still be recognized as part of the Plague Tale franchise. The series’ penchant for beautiful production values remains at a high level, with Asobo’s proprietary technology absolutely shining in its depictions of Venice, the island of Crete, and its sprawling underground areas. The Plague Tale games have always punched above their weight in the visual department, and while some pesky framerate issues and screen tearing occasionally spoil the presentation, they don’t detract from the sheer beauty of it all in the grand scheme. This is certainly the best a Plague Tale game has ever looked. And that’s before even getting to Olivier Deriviere’s soundtrack, which continues to provide the melancholic atmosphere that defines the series while adding a distinctly Greek flavor to the music. It has easily become one of my favorite soundtracks of the year. The main theme alone has been increasingly difficult to get out of my head.
As for the action/adventure focus, while it is certainly the logical evolution of where Asobo was taking the series, it unfortunately comes at the expense of making Resonance a slightly more derivative gameplay experience than its predecessors. The influence of The Last of Us informed much of the pacing in the other games, but their emphasis on fragility still gave A Plague Tale a unique flavor. With Resonance, however, you can trace a much more direct line to its other inspirations when engaging with the combat and puzzles. For the most part, it’s a good facsimile of what you’ve experienced in those other franchises.
The combat is a perfectly serviceable open-flow system that will remind you of the aggressive hit-and-parry rhythm of Ghost of Tsushima, albeit without the stance and weapon variety found in that series. As someone who wishes action combat didn’t lean so heavily into the Soulslike genre, I appreciate Resonance taking a simpler approach. Its combat is fun, and considering the game’s 13-to-15-hour runtime, there’s something to be said for keeping things relatively straightforward.
With that said, I also wish the combat had a few more tricks up its sleeve. Most of Sophia’s combat kit is given to you relatively early, consisting of a single-button attack with a stronger variation when held, a dodge and parry, the use of a grappling hook, and the ability to pick up and throw objects at enemies, similar to the melee combat in this year’s 007 First Light. Around the fourth chapter, a special move is unlocked, but from there, the combat largely remains unchanged. The only additional options come from the game’s rather small skill tree and a small variety of swords you find as collectibles which provide slightly varied combat flavors. It isn’t until the eleventh chapter that another wrinkle is introduced, combining your combat abilities with one of the game’s puzzle mechanics. It’s a great addition that made me wish it had been introduced much sooner. As it stands, the variety in Sophia’s increasingly brutal executions is what mostly provides the combat with its flair.
As for the series’ trademark stealth, Resonance relegates it to specific set-piece moments and doesn’t give you much opportunity to engage with enemies stealthily outside of them. Other than the occasional surprise air kill to initiate combat, stealth is largely reserved for this entry’s plague equivalent, which, in previous games, was represented by the swarms of rats. For Resonance, the plague takes on such a unique and difficult-to-describe form that I’d rather not spoil its actual appearance. What I can say is that these sections continue the series’ fascination with light and shadow while adding an extra wrinkle through sound cues. They also provide some of the most thrilling moments in the entire game. The final chapter, which culminates in an extended stealth and platforming sequence, serves as a fantastic crescendo for the experience.
Rounding out the package is Resonance attempting to wear its best Uncharted and Tomb Raider hats, with extended bouts of platforming and puzzle-solving. The game nails a good action adventure tempo with how you go through the island of Crete, finding balance between the death defying platforming as you get deeper into the island’s innards, all while letting the environmental storytelling breathe. If you certainly have bemoaned the lack of high-energy action-adventures, Resonance manages to fill that void incredibly well.
As for the puzzles, Resonance finds a comfortable middle ground between both inspirations, with puzzles that favor the breezy pace of Uncharted rather than the more elaborate and complicated challenges found in Tomb Raider. That said, the puzzles lean a little too heavily on light manipulation, whether that means bouncing light around a specific room, using light sources to reveal symbols, and variations on the same idea. With the exception of two puzzles in Chapters 4 and 10 that genuinely stumped me for a while, I found their pacing to be unobtrusive. They arrive frequently enough to break up the action without becoming annoying, and the game is generous enough to throw you a bone with a hint or two if you can’t figure out a solution.
In an era where we see so many franchises continue long after their original stories have ended, I don’t bemoan Asobo Studio finding a way to continue a series which became a beacon of hope for AA gaming when it debuted in 2019. Considering the narrative dead end Requiem left them on, even with its tease of a new direction, I wanted to give Asobo the chance to pitch us the future of A Plague Tale. I feel Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy mostly delivers on that pitch.
While it isn’t as groundbreaking an experience like the unique stealth focus that defined their last two games, Asobo has proven there is potential in expanding the A Plague Tale franchise to a different style with a different focus. Even if that new focus occasionally circles back to the emotional core that defined its predecessors, Resonance demonstrates that his world doesn’t necessarily have to end with Hugo and Amicia.
Even as derivative as its gameplay may be, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is still a damn fine action-adventure epic. It’s tight in scope, knows where to place its focus, and fills the void with a style of game that’s been gone longer than it needed to be. It may not be my favorite game in the A Plague Tale franchise, but it’s proof there is still light to be found in this nihilistic world.
Thank you to our PR partners and Focus Entertainment for review access to Resonance : A Plague Tale Legacy. You can find Seasoned Gaming’s review policy here.
Thanks for the well thought out review and the thoughtful comparison between the previous games and other series – really outlined how this fits in in terms of both story and gameplay. Looking forward to this one!