Review: Resonance A Plague Tale Legacy

The plague tale series is one of the most underrated series in video gaming. The OG game, plague tale innocence came out in 2019 and was critically acclaimed. It was followed by the sequel, requiem in 2022. Now in 2026, the new plague tale game Resonance is out, which focus a completely new story and character set. I have grabbed this game day one and started playing it to see how similar or different it is from the other games and if it lives up to the high mark set by the previous games.

Like the previous games, this one is also developed by Asobo Studios and published by Focus Entertainment. While Requiem was a sequel to the first game, this is a prequel set in a time before innocence. The game is available for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. I have played it with Game Pass on my Series S.

Setting

The game is set in the year 1334, if you have played the OG plague tale innocence, you know that it is set in the year 1349, so this game acts as a prequel, set 15 years before the events of the OG game. The protagonist of this game is a smuggler, Sophia, who discovers her connection with the Prima Macula.

Gameplay

Resonance sees a departing from the original stealth based mechanics introduced in the OG innocence game. This game is full on action adventure style. While the original plague tale game focused on stealth and the second game expanded it with some offensive options, this one asks you to keep fighting. Combat is challenging and you need some skills to pull of a good job even on the game's normal difficulty.

Like the previous games, we play in third person for this one too, taking control of Sophia, the protagonist. There are some stealth elements to the game but most of the game is more action oriented. Sophia is much more capable in combat when compared to the previous game's characters, so that is clearly evident in the play style. Combat consists of surviving through waves of enemy assault, parrying and pulling of deadly finisher moves.

There are sequences in the game where we jump between the past and the present, taking control of another character from the Minoan period. From that we see the mystery of the island we are exploring unfold in front of our eyes.

Combat

According to Asobo, the studio that developed the game, they had little experience working with melee-based combat, but this is important in the development of the game to meaningfully tell Sophia's story. The studio said they were forced to learn how to make a combat oriented game from scratch. The game's combat mechanics take inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Sifu.

While playing the game, I noticed the difficulty of the combat even on the normal difficulty setting. This is adding to the fact that this game took inspiration from souls like games. The studio said they had to scale down the difficulty of the combat to make it accommodating for players coming from the previous stealth oriented games. The Combat is challenging and it took me a few tries on even some minor battles to get it right.

The combat to me was on the harder end of the spectrum. I was mostly dodging, trying to get crit hits in and using skills I unlocked a lot more that parrying or blocking attacks.

Skills and Resonance Points

While exploring the island we play in, we can collect resonance points, which allows us to unlock skills which will give us an edge in combat. We can also learn a particular mastery of the skill out of two options by investing more resonance points into a skill. Skills are the primary way by which we can make combat easier in the game.

Collectibles

During gameplay we can collect items that give us a boost in combat, increase crit rates, give better survival options, etc. We can also collect new types of swords each of which also may have certain secondary effects.

Puzzles

There are a lot of puzzles in the game, and most of that involving light, just like what we expect from a plague tale game. Compared to the previous titles, this one have a lot more I will say. And some of them took me a few minutes to figure it out. But nothing was too much difficult that I had to look up any guide.

My Review

While this game definitely was a good break from the previous two games, the style in story and combat is very evident. If someone asks me if they need to start playing the plague tale series from this prequel or the OG game, I will still ask them to play the OG one first. The story was good, not great, but good. The length of the game was also perfect for someone who is a casual gamer and enjoys games like plague tale where you don't need to spend a lot of time to finish the game. Overall I will give this game a 7/10 rating.