Forget Shadow of the Erdtree or Black Myth: Wukong - the dark horse of summer is this Italian-inspired RPG dripping with Catholic guilt

Enotria: The Last Song has a good time. After publicly pushing back its release date by several months in order to avoid Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, it’s now quietly generating some decent buzz. That’s largely thanks to an eight-hour demo that’s proving popular on Steam, but in a one-hour demo at Summer Game Fest 2024, I discovered it was also down to a clever soul, accessible and versatile that continues the genre’s push. towards new types of stories.

During the demo, I faced three bosses in a row, jumping straight into their arenas; a shaded ritual room; a broken church with the faces torn off from the figures in its frescoes; a neoclassical arena surrounded by dizzying wine moats. This meant I had fewer opportunities to explore Enotria than I would have liked, but it also allowed me to see up close how its world draws on the cultural history and folklore of the Developer Jyamma Games’ native Italy.

Enotria spends little time dwelling directly on her tale, preferring, like many souls, to allow the world to tell the story for her. Here, it’s built on Commedia dell’arte, a form of theater popularized in Italy around the 16th century and best known for its masked character archetypes. The exaggerated faces of these characters are resurrected in Enotria, allowing you to collect the masks of defeated enemies to rebuild your playstyle around them. Religion, however, is a little more subtle but just as present: my first fight takes place in a church, the faces of saints and angels being scratched into its hand-painted frescoes. In another fight, my fallen enemy calls upon a Madonna statue, crying out not to be abandoned. Catholicism is only one part of this world built primarily around folklore and theater, but Enotria’s religious overtones are among the most interesting aspects of its tale so far.

In my time-limited, Boss Rush-style demo, I moved quickly through an incredibly detailed building system. I barely got a glimpse of Enotria’s sprawling skill tree, but I was impressed by a streamlined leveling system that lets you focus on broader types of upgrades rather than a more granular approach, one by one. A spell system exists alongside your martial abilities, allowing you to enjoy a handful of powerful bonuses if you manage to deal enough damage to recharge them. The mask system goes even further, allowing you to create something like loadouts to switch between when you take on a new face.

This means that Enotria is not limited to a specific similarity to FromSoft. One of the bosses I faced struck quickly, encouraging a parry-based approach that, thanks to “Unraveling” – Enotria’s answer to Sekiro’s balance system – would eventually allow me to stagger him and to launch a massive attack. Another, however, was more fragile, encouraging a more intimate, Bloodborne-style approach as I dodged and rolled inside of his attacks. The gluttonous final boss I faced, however, was punished by being so close with massive AoE attacks, but couldn’t do more damage with a lifesteal charge and swings from my powerful greatsword hands.

Enotria sells itself on its sun-drenched Italian vistas, an attempt to lighten the traditional setting of Souls with an aesthetic that would travel through the darkness of Blighttown itself. But even in my brief interaction with his world, I discovered a more fascinating world in his blend of theater and religion. Add in a classic soulful feel that still manages to push the boundaries with its wildly changing systems, and this quickly proves to be a game that deserves all the buzz it’s getting. Having hopefully done enough to step out of Erdtree’s shadow, its September release date could make it the perfect follow-up for those who are done with FromSoft’s next release.

I was already a little turned off by Enotria’s Italian soullike, and now that I’ve seen her trident blunderbuss, I’m all in..