In the end, it wasn't what I expected

I'll start a little backwards this time, because when Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy was announced, the truth is that I wasn't excited. The first A Plague Tale: Innocence had really won me over, because it had something I hadn't seen exactly like that in a game before. It had a very distinctive atmosphere, but also various mechanics, such as the infamous rats, where you had to trick them by directing them elsewhere so you could get through certain areas or manipulate them in different ways to attack the guards. Requiem continued the story of Amicia and Hugo and, although it had quite a few very beautiful moments, personally I started to feel that the good ideas from the first game were being repeated without seeing that something different that would make me excited again.

So, when I heard about another Plague Tale, my first thought was basically, "I'm not going to get it, it'll be the same thing again." I didn't expect Resonance to manage to change my mind so quickly. The more I read about the game, the more I realized that Asobo Studio didn't simply want to continue what it had done in the previous two games. This time, it leaves Amicia and Hugo aside and takes us fifteen years before the events we know from the series, into a different era and an entirely different story, with Sophia as the protagonist, the woman we met in Requiem.

And that's where it started to get my attention.

Sophia is on a personal quest that leads her to the mysterious Isle of the Minotaur, searching for answers about her father and about events that have left behind more questions than answers. Together with her friend Leni, she finds herself in a place full of secrets, ancient ruins, and a story connected to one of the most well-known myths of Greek mythology. And this is perhaps the first thing that makes Resonance stand out so strongly from the previous games.

Because suddenly I'm no longer in France, being chased by rats and soldiers, but in a world with strong Greek and particularly Minoan elements. The Minotaur, the Labyrinth, Ariadne, Theseus and Ariadne's Thread are not simply names being used to create a nice atmosphere. They are part of the story itself and, as you progress, you increasingly understand that the game wants to reveal a much older story to you, one that is directly connected to the world of A Plague Tale.

And here begins one of the most interesting parts of the game, because through Sophia we essentially experience a story that took place thousands of years earlier. This ancient story leads us to Ariadne and the Labyrinth, while gradually we realize that quite a few things we know from the classic myth are not exactly as we expected. The warrior we see through the ancient memories and parallel scenes is ultimately not Theseus as we know him from the myth. It is Ariadne, who uses the identity of Theseus to enter the trials and try to reach her brother, Asterion.

And as you progress, the familiar myth begins to change before your eyes. The Labyrinth, Daedalus, Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur are no longer simply the characters from a story we have known since childhood. Asobo takes these characters and incorporates them into its own mythology, creating a story that connects the ancient world with that of A Plague Tale.

And in the middle of all this, there is one of the best monsters I have encountered in a game in recent years.

I really mean it. It isn't simply a powerful enemy that appears at some point to make your life difficult. It is a creature that manages to create that very specific feeling of fear you get when you know something is out there and you absolutely do not want it to detect you. And the best part is that the game doesn't give you the ability to deal with it like you would with a normal enemy. It's not "pull out the sword, hit it a few times and it's over."

This creature stays with you from around the middle of the game until the end, and your main job is to avoid it. The game uses darkness, light, Sophia's sphere, and above all the way you move through the environment to create this tension. It isn't enough to simply know where you need to go. You have to figure out how to get there without giving the creature what it needs to find you.

And there is actually a very clever mechanic where, when Sophia moves quickly, she leaves behind a distinctive blue dust trail, which can act as a trail for the creature to follow. So even your attempt to escape can become the reason it finds you. And that's where the game manages to make you think about even the way you move.

Where will you go? Which way will you take? When should you run? When should you wait? When should you use the light? And most importantly, how quickly can you move without leaving behind a path that will lead the monster straight to you?

And when it finds you, there isn't much discussion. If it catches you, you die almost instantly.

It's one of those situations where I genuinely felt like I could hear my heart beating while I was playing, because you aren't simply afraid that it will appear. You're afraid that it will see you. And that makes a huge difference. There are moments when you have to figure out the solution yourself for how to get through an area without attracting its attention, while in others you simply have to run as fast as you can because it's right behind you.

And yes, there were moments when it found me literally at the last second, and the house would hear all kinds of swearing and colorful language from me, while my wife would ask me if everything was okay. That alone probably says quite a lot about how well the game managed to create that feeling of being hunted.

Without going into more detail, the fact that towards the end you learn what this creature really is makes the whole experience even more interesting. Because then you realize that it wasn't simply another monster added to the story to scare you. It is part of the very story unfolding in front of you.

From there, Resonance also changes the way we play quite a bit. The combat is clearly more intense compared to the previous games, and Sophia isn't a character who constantly has to hide and wait for the right moment. There is now a much greater emphasis on close-quarters combat, with parries, counters and a much more active combat system.

At first, I liked this quite a lot, especially because you can feel that Sophia is a different character and that the game wants to show you that through the gameplay as well. There are also some fights with important characters that require good coordination and proper use of the mechanics to get through them.

On the other hand, as the game progresses, the fights start to feel easier and easier to me. I wouldn't say they bothered me, because they are still interesting, but they are one of the areas where I felt that after a certain point I had learned very well how the system worked, but I had also invested my skills in such a way that I wasn't losing easily anymore and I could handle most situations without much difficulty.

And perhaps this is one of the few points where the game gave me the feeling of repetition that I had specifically wanted to avoid. The combat and the light-based puzzles work very well, but in some areas they start repeating the same logic. Fortunately, the game has quite a few different situations and, above all, it has this huge story component that keeps pulling you forward.

And if there is one thing I really didn't expect to impress me so much, it was the music.

The music in Resonance is composed by Olivier Derivière, the same composer who worked on both previous A Plague Tale games, but here the music takes on an entirely different identity. And the reason is that Asobo decided to build the game's sound around Greek and Cypriot musical traditions.

The main voice of the soundtrack is Vasiliki Anastasiou, while the female choir The Amalgamation Choir also participates, consisting of twenty women from Cyprus. If you look at the photos I've included at the end, I've also included one where their names can be seen. The lyrics were initially written by Derivière and were then adapted into Cypriot Greek by Vasiliki Anastasiou and Giorgos Kalogirou.

And this is where something really won me over. I didn't like the music simply because someone was singing in Greek. If I were a foreign player and heard exactly the same music without understanding a single word, I would still like it. What drove me crazy was its rhythm.

There are tracks that remind me of laments, others that feel more like ancient rituals, and others that almost function as the voice of Sophia herself, expressing what she is feeling without needing a dialogue to explain it to you. And the more I played, the more I felt that the music wasn't simply something playing in the background. It was part of the experience.

Vasiliki Anastasiou actually recorded the soundtrack while she was seven months pregnant (!!!), during recording sessions that lasted around nine hours a day, and Derivière eventually dedicated the music to her newborn daughter, Cleo. There are also several Greek and Cypriot musicians who participated in the recordings, which largely explains why the game's sound has such a distinctive identity.

Derivière also didn't simply want to put a few Greek instruments over his music. He collaborated with musicians from Greece and Cyprus, using, among others, yaylı tambur, rebab, bouzouki, guitar and other instruments, so that the music could develop its own identity. And that is something you can hear.

And because we're talking about Greek elements, the musical connection to them couldn't be missing either.

And here we're not simply talking about a few Greek instruments being placed over cinematic music to remind us that we're in Crete. Derivière essentially changed the musical language of the game, replacing much of the familiar sound identity of the previous titles with yaylı tambur and rebab from Evgenios Voulgaris, bouzouki and guitar from Giani Caserotto, carnyx and horns from Samuel Meric, while the cello of Éric-Maria Couturier remains as a connecting thread to the previous Plague Tale games. And on top of all that come the voices of Vasiliki Anastasiou, Giorgos Kalogirou and the Greek-Cypriot Amalgamation Choir. So this isn't simply music that "sounds Greek." It is music built from specific sounds, specific musicians and specific voices in order to create its own identity.

The result, at least to my ears, is excellent.

The other major advantage of Resonance is its visuals.

If someone has played the previous two games and expects to see that same dark, dirty and depressing France again, they will find themselves looking at something quite different. Here we have sea, light, greenery, ancient stone, Minoan elements and landscapes that are genuinely beautiful at times.

And this change isn't simply aesthetic. It also helps the story itself, because you feel that you're traveling through a world different from the one you experienced in the previous games. Asobo has studied Minoan civilization and used real architectural and artistic elements, while at the same time taking liberties to create its own version of this world.

This is particularly evident in the Labyrinth, which doesn't simply function as an impressive setting. It is one of the game's main components, and there Sophia has to use the Minoan sphere, light and the environment to solve puzzles and progress.

And somewhere here we begin to see the biggest connection between Resonance and the previous Plague Tale games.

Because, despite the fact that the game is different in almost every way, it remains a Plague Tale.

The Prima Macula, the mysterious force we came to know through the story of Amicia and Hugo, gains a much larger and much older past here. In the previous games, we mainly experienced the Macula through Hugo and its effect on him, but we had never seen its ancient history. Resonance takes us to Minoan Crete, roughly two thousand years before Sophia's era, and introduces us to Asterion as one of the oldest carriers of the Prima Macula.

And that's when the myth of the Minotaur takes on an entirely different meaning.

Asterion isn't simply a mythical monster waiting inside a Labyrinth. He is a human being, a Minoan prince who carries the Prima Macula, and his story is the one that lies behind the myth of the Minotaur. His father, Minos, keeps him imprisoned, and the Labyrinth isn't simply a place where people can get lost. It is essentially part of the attempt to contain what lies within him.

This is what I liked most about the connection to the previous games. Resonance doesn't simply tell us, "the Macula existed in the past too." It shows us that what we knew as a curse connected to Hugo and the era of the plague is a phenomenon with much deeper roots. And suddenly the stories of Amicia and Hugo feel like another chapter in a much larger story that began centuries, or rather millennia, earlier.

And I personally liked that a lot.

Because in the end, Resonance didn't try to give me Amicia, Hugo, the rats and the same problems again with a different coat of paint. It took the A Plague Tale universe and went far back into the past, to an era we had never seen before, while also giving it a completely different setting and a new protagonist.

And that's how I reached the end and realized that what I feared most before starting the game was ultimately what the game managed to avoid.

I didn't want another Plague Tale that would give me the same ideas all over again. I wanted something that would give me that feeling of discovery I had with the first game again. And Resonance, without being perfect and without always managing to keep the combat and puzzles at the same level, managed to make me enjoy the series again.

I liked Sophia, I liked the change of era, I liked the connection to Greek mythology, and most of all I liked the fact that the story wasn't afraid to go far back and expand the world of A Plague Tale.

But if I have to keep one thing from the entire experience, it will be the monster and the music.

One made me constantly look around and wonder if it would see me, while at times it made me scream around the house because it found me literally at the last second. The other made me stop several times just to listen.

And ultimately, that's what I want from a game. For it to leave something with me when I turn it off.

I didn't expect Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy to excite me. I went into it thinking that I might once again see the same ideas with different characters and with the logic of "I'll play it for a few minutes and if it's like that, I'll probably play it in the future." Instead, I found a game that took the A Plague Tale universe, went back thousands of years, brought it into the heart of Greek mythology and managed to give me that feeling again that there was something new to discover.

And of course, all of this also left me with a little lesson. Maybe in the end we shouldn't judge a game, a movie or a series because a previous chapter seemed weaker to us. Especially when we're talking about a series that continues to try different things. I had practically decided before even starting it that I wouldn't buy it and that it would be the same thing again. I finally started it and at some point thought, "Whoa, wait... this is different."

And a few days later, after finishing it, I had that really nice feeling that I had a good time. Not that I had played a perfect game. Not that there weren't things that could have been better. I simply had a great time.

And ultimately, that matters more.

So, come on, don't wait. Get it yourself and give it the chance that I almost didn't give it.