After sitting down to play Asobo Studio’s Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy for a couple of hours, I couldn’t take my mind off the fact that I didn’t see a single rat. Not one of the furry buggers. Instead, this spin-off follows Sophia and her companion, Leni, as they venture out into a lush Mediterranean island full of puzzles and treasure-hunting adventure in a compelling fusion of Uncharted, Indiana Jones, and Jungle Run.

Jungle Run was a hit TV show in the UK when I was a kid, about a team that had to solve puzzles in a series of rooms to eventually reach the heart of a spooky temple. That, to me, is exactly what Resonance feels like.

You may recognise Sophia from A Plague Tale: Requiem, where we were first introduced to the seasoned pirate smuggler. Resonance is a prequel set 15 years earlier, and follows Sophia as she retraces her origins and tries to learn more about the mysterious Macula, a horrific curse that we saw ravage much of Europe in the mainline titles. It also therefore appears that the cliffhanger at the end of Requiem is likely to be left unanswered... for now.

New Characters, New Mechanics, A New Style

Sophia and Leni’s back-and-forth banter is sometimes incongruous given the severity of the setting, including encounters with some cosmic horrors, but I’ve grown used to this sort of ludonarrative writing in video games. It has that familiar, quippy "Well, I guess we're fighting the Minotaur now" energy that never quite works for me. While the previous games had lighter moments, I don't recall them relying on this kind of banter.

Based on what I saw during my preview, these two are certainly no Amicia and Hugo, the characters we've grown to know and love across Innocence and Requiem. I'm willing to give them more time if Resonance plans to provide such a thing.

Resonance is a spin-off, and it immediately feels like one. Rather than expanding upon the gameplay formula established by Innocence and Requiem, it hopes to carve out its own identity. It's impossible to tell how much of the story will ultimately be important for Amicia and Hugo's progression in the next A Plague Tale game. After all, how can Sophia learn anything significant about the Macula or her origins that she wouldn't later share with Amicia in Requiem? We'll have to wait and see.

But that's enough speculation, let’s dig into the meat of things. Sophia is more aggressive than Amicia and wields a sword and grappling hook to fight enemies or get around the environment, while you can pick up objects in the world and hurl them into people's faces as well. I quite enjoyed my time with the combat. It has a decent parry system, feels suitably weighty, and even has a small learning curve. During one mini-boss fight against a particularly large member of the Inquisition, it took me three or four attempts to memorise the attack pattern and take him down. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's enjoyable enough for combat to justify its expanded role.

Combat earns its moment in the spotlight, but puzzles remain the core focus. I am actually a little sick of puzzles after delving extremely deep into recent titles like Crimson Desert, and the puzzles I encountered here did not inspire much enthusiasm. Each one felt functional rather than engaging, another unfortunate trait true across A Plague Tale. Move some tiles, redirect a beam of light, match a few symbols. Nothing I encountered demanded much thought or delivered much satisfaction once solved. If you do get stuck, extensive hints and tooltips can be enabled to help you breeze through them. Or, you just use Sophia's magic lamp to illuminate the surroundings and get a nice face full of yellow paint. The focus here is clearly on telling an action-focused story rather than getting the player stuck on a particularly hard brainteaser.

That being said, I did enjoy the inclusion of Sophia's notebook. This mechanic allows you to pull out a beautifully designed sketchpad that Sophia uses to keep a record of her adventures. It provides a more organic alternative to traditional objective markers and tooltips, while also making puzzle-solving easier by allowing you to quickly reference Sophia's notes. During these sections, Leni would sometimes get involved as well, helping by standing on pressure plates or directing beams of light across trap-filled rooms. It made the experience feel less lonely, as though you were adventuring alongside someone else.

A Stunning World

Despite some concerns with the puzzles and writing, I can't deny that Resonance is a cinematic delight. The setting of the Greek Heroic Age, an era in which Theseus journeys to Crete to slay the Minotaur, is woefully underutilised in video games. The landscapes and world design are classic Asobo Studio: detailed, rich, and clearly well researched. There was a robust photo mode built into the preview and, although I wasn't able to take actual screenshots, I had a lot of fun admiring the world from different angles when I could.

The sheer scale of the level design was impressive. Sophia and Leni descend a spiraling path into the heart of a ruined temple, all overlooked by the towering statue of a Greek warrior.

As the pair delve deeper, the feeling that something else is lurking in the temple with you, and not just the Inquisition's goons acting as cutlass fodder, continues to build. This eventually culminates in a fantastic sequence that sees Sophia stepping into some kind of time warp. It's an excellent set piece that I won't spoil here, although I'm sure you'll end up seeing clips of it before launch anyway. Just know it's rich in Greek mythology, and as someone who loves that sort of thing, I was thoroughly enthralled.

Throughout the preview, I often felt like I was on rails: solve these puzzles, defeat these enemies, witness the set piece. That's perfectly fine if Resonance can continue delivering memorable spectacles, but I also hope it captures some of the emotional weight that made the previous Plague Tale games so effective.

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Sophia and Leni do experience a minor falling out following the events at the centre of the temple, but I wasn't particularly invested in their relationship just yet. That's not necessarily a criticism, as it's difficult to establish that sort of connection in a short preview, but it does mean the emotional moments landed with less impact than they might have otherwise.

Resonance looks set to be visually compelling but perhaps less emotionally engrossing than its predecessors. It feels like the action film to Requiem's more ponderous drama. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and as a spin-off it's refreshing to see Asobo Studio experimenting with a different style. It does, however, leave me wondering exactly how Resonance will fit into the wider Plague Tale series.

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Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

Adventure Action Puzzle Stealth Systems Released August 27, 2026 Developer(s) Asobo Studio Publisher(s) Focus Entertainment Sequel(s) A Plague Tale: Requiem, A Plague Tale: Innocence Franchise A Plague Tale Number of Players Single-player
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Genre(s) Adventure, Action, Puzzle, Stealth Powered by Expand Collapse