Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy was provided by Focus Entertainment for review. Thank you!

I have long been a fan of Asobo Studio's A Plague Tale series. It has had engrossing stories mixed with solid gameplay that I fell in love with. So, when they first announced Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, I was both skeptical and excited. I wanted to dive more into the world, but I was worried that the new focus would undermine what the series is known for. Not only was I wrong, but I fell in love with the powerful story that surprised me more often than I expected.

The main draw of the series is the powerful narrative beneath it, and Resonance nails the storytelling. In this spinoff, we follow Sophia, whom we met in A Plague Tale: Requiem, when she was younger. Here, we follow her and her friend Leni as they traverse a creepy island, filled with puzzles and ancient memories that house a dark secret that should have stayed buried.

Developer Asobo Studio has always shown its chops when it comes to storytelling, so I wasn’t surprised by how much I enjoyed the narrative in Resonance. The impact of the events on Sophia is felt as the story progresses, and there are so many different twists and turns I did not expect. I was kept on my toes, curious about what was going to occur next and what was really happening on this island.

The masterful performances and voice acting made the emotional impact of the weight on Sophia’s shoulders feel so real. I was tearing up as I saw the hardship that she had to face just to be free of the curse that was forced on her as a child. And it culminates in a brilliant ending that was heartwarming, saddening, and a little bit uplifting.

It pairs nicely with the gorgeous world that we will be exploring. From the beautiful beaches with bright blue oceans to the creepy caves with golden light shining through, there were so many moments where I was truly engrossed in the world.

There are some minor issues here and there, and some of the motivations for the enemies don’t feel justified, but it wasn’t enough to stop the overwhelming excitement of the narrative. It’s a great story through and through, and if you’re a fan of the series, you will love Resonance.

Unlike the other games in the series, where stealth was the main focus, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy embraces combat. In doing so, we have a more fluid combat system that I felt had more positives than negatives. It’s quite simple in its premise, but the execution works and is quite enjoyable.

The bulk of the combat will be attacking, blocking, dodging, and parrying. Each attack takes one block of their health away, and if we charge up, we have a critical strike that can take two. If we pay enough, we can build up their stun bar to stun them, which gives us an opening to attack multiple times. It works and feels solid most of the time.

However, what I really enjoyed was the interactables and skills. As we fight, enemies will drop throwables that we can chuck at the closest enemy by clicking down on the right joystick. These range, with some of them (like bottles) stunning enemies, and others, like knives, dealing damage. This, along with how fluid combat and finishers feel, keeps the fighting moving along and feeling great.

There were a handful of times when we were trying to fight against multiple enemies that weren’t as great, and it did lead to my death a few times, but it didn’t happen often enough to harm my enjoyment.

This combines well with the skills. We will find and collect Resonance Points as we play, which will be used to unlock skills. There are only six skills that can be unlocked, as well as two mastery paths for each. It’s not extensive, but most of these skills will be appreciated. Specifically, I liked the one where we would get an extra kick to stun and push enemies, one to get us a second charge to our charge attack, and getting protection after killing an enemy with a charged-up attack.

All the skills serve a purpose, and I enjoy them, but I didn’t feel like there were enough Resonance Points spread around the levels to find and try out each skill. I wasn’t able to actually try out as many skills as I wanted, and I only really had two of them for about half of the game. They get increasingly expensive, but we don’t find extra points to accommodate that.

Apart from that, we are able to find other blades and charms. None of the blades increase our attack or anything like that, but it does provide passive facts to tune our play style. Some deal bonus damage after a successful charge attack, make the last hit of your combo deal stun damage, and more. Charms give us passive effects that get stronger the more of them we find. I found both of these systems to be useful, and I enjoyed going out of my way to find them.

There are some puzzle elements spread throughout as well that we will need to progress and find blades. Most of these are manageable and fulfilling to complete, though there are a few that felt unnecessarily challenging. There aren't many hand-holding elements, so there were a few times it felt almost impossible to figure out how to connect three lights to open doors. However, there's only a few that made me feel this way, and the rest were solid.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy - Steam Deck Performance

As far as Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy’s performance on the Steam Deck, it’s not terrible, but there are some issues that stopped me from recommending it. It can handle 30 FPS throughout most of the game, with some areas hitting higher CPU usage and causing some stuttering. At the default settings, the game looks decent, with some very obvious upscaling in some areas.

So, there isn’t much that we can do to improve this. We can lower settings even further, but we are still going to get some CPU usage spikes that cause some stuttering. I would say 80% of it is decently playable, but expect some drops and stutters along the way. We can get away with turning Textures up to Medium, but that's really about it.

However, the reason why I don’t recommend it is that I found a spotter that completely freezes and crashes the game. The most prominent spot I found was the beginning of chapter 9, right after the cutscene. No matter what I tried, as soon as I got past it, it would crash. There seems to be a huge CPU and GP usage spike right at that moment, and that seems to be the issue.

I don’t think this is a Steam Deck problem, since I actually had the same crash on the Steam Machine. Sometimes, after the crash, we can reload the game, and it will pick up right after where it crashed, but this doesn’t happen every time, so you may be stuck in a perpetual loop where you can’t get past that spot and keep crashing. The fact that this can happen makes it unplayable all the way through, and that’s why I can’t recommend it right now.

結論

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a fantastic story-driven adventure that shows Asobo’s dominance in storytelling. I was hooked and drawn into every single part of the story, and it was backed up with some interesting and fun combat in a beautiful world. There were some story beats that I couldn’t completely understand, and I wish there were more ways to increase our skills, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a worthwhile experience, no matter what.

It runs decently well on the Steam Deck most of the time, but there are a good chunk of stutters due to CPU usage and a hard crash that happens consistently. At the end of the day, we can’t play the game fully without running into this crash, so I can’t recommend it for the Deck at this moment.

このレビューはPC版に基づいています。

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