Developed by Asobo Studio and published by Focus Entertainment, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is the latest title in the long-running and critically acclaimed Resonance series. The third entry serves as a prequel, telling the story of Sophia, who was introduced in A Plague Tale: Requiem but received little background in that game. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy goes back around 15 years before the story of the previous game; it allows us to experience Sophia’s life and her difficult journey leading up to her becoming a ship’s captain. This is our review of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy on PC via Steam, in which we explore the deadly yet gorgeous Minotaur Island and try to solve its mystery before it consumes us.
The story kicks off with Sophia, still a child, abandoned in a convent that is performing experiments on her. She is ultimately rescued by her father, who is part of a group of bandits who are trying to find the Minotaur Island’s key and solve its mystery. As Sophia grows up, she learns the ways of the group and becomes a valuable asset. However, one disastrous mission sends things spiraling, and she barely escapes with her life, arriving on Minotaur Island as she tries to figure out what to do next.
Throughout the story, as you explore Minotaur Island, at key locations, Sophia will be overwhelmed by supernatural forces, causing her to see the history of that particular era through the eyes of Theseus, a Greek warrior from the Minion Era. During these flashbacks, you will get to see the island and its various locations in their full glory during the times when ancient civilization was thriving. These sections completely transform the game’s dynamics and add an exceptional way to see similar locations from two different perspectives. Instead of ruins, you see halls and arenas full of people, celebrations, and announcements being made during tournaments and other celebrations.
Accompanying Sophia through the journey is her friend Leni, who helps her out in combat, puzzles, and other gameplay mechanics. The synergy between the two friends is excellent and also adds a bit of emotional touch as their friendship is tested through different scenarios. Sophia is also a solid character in the game, and playing with her does not make you miss the cast of the original franchise. The whole story takes around 20 hours to complete, even with added time for puzzle-solving; during this time, the characters are deep enough that you start caring for both.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the story of the game, there were a few points where I questioned why I needed to solve a particular puzzle. There are a few locations where I solved an intricate puzzle to progress further in the game, only to find the human armies waiting ahead to ambush me. Sophia had the key, and at certain points she even mentions that no one has gone beyond this point, but moving ahead, she would find an army of enemies just waiting to ambush her and Lina. Small details in the story felt a little out of place in an otherwise amazing narrative.
One thing that becomes clear right from the start of the game is that its gameplay style is completely different from the first two titles in the franchise. Instead of a stealth-oriented game, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy ditches the slow gameplay and introduces a fast-paced, combat-focused gameplay. Sophia is an agile and sharp fighter who uses a sword in her main hand, along with a dagger in the other. Using both these weapons, she can land powerful combos and kill enemies without any remorse. While it is not a soulslike game, its combat is more action-focused and gives you the freedom to block incoming attacks without significant repercussions.
The combat in the game feels a little bare-bones at first, with Sophia only unleashing her basic combo along with a kick to stagger blocking enemies and opening windows to hit her, but as you progress and unlock new skills, the combo starts to feel satisfying. While not required for combat, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy features a parry system that rewards players if they master it. Pressing the block key at the right time triggers a parry, and if you block enough successive attacks, you can stun the enemy. A stunned enemy cannot attack back, giving you a decent window to land some blows. Bigger enemies cannot be stunned, so you will need to stick to dodging their attacks, but most of the smaller enemies can easily be stunned with timely parries.
Alongside buying skills, Sophia can find and equip multiple items known as charms, which grant passive bonuses. These charms are divided into five categories, with each one relating to a different type of jewelry. These range from beads, armbands, and bracelets to pierced coins. As Sophia finds them, she will wear them, and each one adds a small passive bonus. These stack together, and hence, the more you find, the greater the effect of a passive bonus becomes. These do not affect combat directly, but they act as small passive bonuses, like giving Sophia a low chance to increase the parry window, or a slight chance of an archer missing its aim when it fires an arrow at you.
You will find these charms in the environment, or at key story locations. These add to the exploration and give you a reason to go off the beaten path. Since Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is not really an open-world game, certain environments do give you a little bit of freedom where you can explore a little or check out that lone corner at the end of a platform in a chance to find a charm or a relic. Relics do not give Sophia any sort of passive or active bonus; rather, they give you details about the game’s past world, such as past expeditions, its world, or even the Minion era.
Another great feature during combat was how the enemies Sophia and Leni interacted with each other. There were often insults hurled at each other that catered to recent events. At one stage, a big shield enemy attacked Leni and made her fall. While Sophia was trying to take him down, she asked Leni if she was doing alright, and the enemy chimed in: ‘Does she look alright to you?’. These quips during combat add a personal level of hatred between the main characters and the enemies and felt very immersive during gameplay.
With story progression, Sophia and Theseus’ bond gets stronger, which allows Sophia to learn some new tricks in order to deal with the enemies. The Focus Attack is one such example, and it can be unleashed once your Focus gauge is filled by landing attacks on enemies. Each hit fills the gauge a little, and once it is full, a powerful AoE attack can be unleashed on the enemies. Sophia can also use her grapple ability to pull enemies for stun damage or make them fall from roofs or other platforms. Similarly, you can also kick enemies to make them fall down as well. You can also pick up environmental items and throw them at enemies to stun them. These abilities make combat increasingly interesting as the game progresses.
Apart from combat and exploration, puzzle-solving is also a key element of gameplay. The whole game is filled with different, intricate puzzles that will test your skills. These range from simple light puzzles where you must light up medallions to open paths or match symbols and activate the right switches to turn off traps. Nothing is too complex, but they sit very well with the overall theme of the game. The scale of some puzzles is massive as well. Lighting up some symbols to see a gigantic minotaur statue feels out of this world, but it is simply part of the game design.
The level design of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is nothing short of breathtaking. The Minotaur Island is a gorgeous place to explore, and each location in the game is just a visual treat. From puzzles located deep inside ancient ruins to Mediterranean beaches soaked in water, every location in the game is beautiful to explore. This, coupled with an excellent soundtrack by Olivier Deriviere, who also created the soundtracks for the first two games, creates an atmosphere of tension, immersion, and beauty.
Coming to the technical aspect of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, there are still some rough edges around here and there. The most prominent issue for me was Sophia getting stuck in random places. She didn’t get stuck on the main paths or in major areas, but in certain side areas or paths, there were many instances in the game when I was stuck in something invisible that blocked me from climbing a platform, or the ground just blocked me from moving ahead. If I approached the same climb or path from a slightly different angle, it was fine. Apart from this, the visuals sometimes popped up for me. Moving objects like bushes felt like smoke from a distance. The draw distance is not impressive for small details, despite playing on a powerful PC with an RTX 5090, AMD Ryzen 9950X3D processor, and 96 GB of DDR5 RAM.
Other gameplay inconsistencies include no ability to lock onto a single enemy. The camera is otherwise fine, but in tight spaces. In tight spaces, especially when surrounded by enemies, the camera can become a little glitchy as it moves around on its own. It tries to focus on the nearest enemy but can get blocked by walls and other environmental hazards, resulting in awkward viewing angles. Platforming can sometimes feel a little less polished as well due to the character clipping with environmental objects. There were at least two instances that I remember in my playthrough that caused me to fail a jump as my character clipped into an invisible item that blocked her.
The game comes with a detailed settings tab for Accessibility. It offers both visual and audio options, which are excellent for players who want to tailor the game to their needs. There are different vision options like reducing camera shake, motion blur, increasing UI size, displaying subtitles, and changing its layout and size to make text easier to read. There’s also a High Contrast Mode along with different Color presets to address color blindness conditions. Players who have hearing disabilities will find options like subtitles and displaying characters’ names in subtitles. Players with motor disabilities can also adjust settings such as joystick swaps, holding or toggles for various options like walking, sprinting, and sphere usage. Compared with recent games I played in previous months, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy has the best accessibility options.
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a great game; however, during my initial hours, I felt like I was either playing Uncharted or Tomb Raider. During the island landing sequences, I also had some glimpses of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. I’m not sure whether playing it recently influenced the comparison, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of these three franchises throughout my playthrough. I don’t mean this as a negative comparison. If anything, I see it as a compliment that the game reminded me of franchises of this scale. The game takes a big leap away from its original design and concept, and it manages to pull it off just fine.
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Final Verdict:
Die-hard fans of the A Plague Tale franchise might need some time to get used to its new gameplay direction, but once they do, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy becomes an exciting new chapter for the series. It retains the franchise’s strong storytelling, exploration, puzzle-solving, and atmospheric world design while introducing faster, more action-focused combat. Despite some technical issues with character clipping, camera behavior, and environmental collision, its gorgeous visuals, excellent soundtrack, and strong accessibility options make it easy to recommend. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a bold new direction that successfully builds upon the franchise’s foundation while offering something fresh for both returning fans and newcomers.
Final Score: 8.5/10
Disclaimer: A PC Steam code for Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy was provided by Sandbox Strategies on behalf of Focus Entertainment for this review. For a detailed breakdown of our scoring and review process, please refer to our Review Policy.
