In September 2024, Jyamma Games developed and published Enotria: The Last Long, a fresh entry into the Soulslike genre. Based upon Italian folklore, the game turned a lot of heads thanks to its captivating art style and execution, but it received a lukewarm reception at release due to show-stopping bugs and stilted combat. The developers wasted no time publicly releasing a roadmap of the next six months of development to patch up and polish their work, and that roadmap ended in March. I’ve always wanted to play this game, but like most games these days, it’s often best to wait a few months so that the game can be patched, balanced, and content added (not to mention price cuts). I had a chance to review Enotriathese last couple of weeks, and while my day job has kept me from finishing the game, I have spent some time with it and read about the patch notes and what the devs have fixed or changed upon release. Unsurprisingly, if you’ve been on the fence about this game, patience was rewarded as this is the best version of the game to date, though it remains unperfected.
The game begins by offering players the Story Mode or Soulslike Mode. I still consider myself a Soulslike apprentice at best. I have come to like the genre, and lately have been playing The Last Faith on Switch, which is like a Metroidvania Soulslike and that’s been super fun. But, often times life gets too busy to grind away at Soulslike games, so for Enotria, I chose Story mode. It’s not clear what the difference is, but from what I have gathered reading online, Story mode is easier is that you do more damage and gain more XP. And so off I went, as the Maskless one, diving into the tutorial and learning some of the game’s basics as far as parrying, dodging, heals, save points, heavy attacks, and all that good stuff. Your long term goal is to defeat about nine unique bosses that are introduced during the game’s opening cinematic which describes a world that is in chaos due to some dark actors that you have to reckon with. Violence ensues.
In reading through the patch notes and online posts, it’s clear that Enotria was very flawed upon release, between game crashes and glitches to over/underbuffed weapons and bosses, and stilted combat animations. So much of this has been addressed and I’m glad I never played the old version. You can read many of the patch notes in the included image here and online, but as I said before, patience has been rewarded for those that did not partake at launch.
As far as story goes, I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said untold times already, but it’s a charming tale of the pursuit of redemption. Each character, from the protagonist Alessa, to the bosses, have a history and development that’s pretty cool. One of the most interesting aspects of Soulslike games to me is the story, the characters within the story, and the environoments that often have a story of their own. Enotria does a good job of given players an interesting narrative to latch onto and that helps keep them going even at times when things are either a little predictable or get a bit tedious. I will say one of the shining aspects of my time with Enotria to this point has been the ability to wonder off trail a bit, find secrets and goodies, and get further engaged into the folklore and atmosphere that was very much at the forefront of the game’s development.
After the patching it’s undergone in the last several months, Enotria: The Last Long is a solid Soulslike for not just hardcore Souls fans, but for anyone that likes a third person action RPG with a beautiful visual and aural presentation. For me, it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of Souls games that I have played; I liked the old, and new, Lords of the Fallen better, and Lies of P — but Enotria is significantly better above Mortal Shell and Thymesia. Ultimately, I’m happy to recommend it.
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