Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy hands the controller to Sophia, and she hits back. Asobo Studio built its reputation on stealth — on children hiding in grass and slingshots fired from shadow. Here the studio puts a grown woman at the center of a more action-oriented game, and the series turns out to have a fight in it.
The game is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It scores 8.2 out of 10.
Trailer, via Focus Entertainment.
Sophia Leaves the Convent Behind
Resonance is the third A Plague Tale game and a prequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence, set 15 years before that 2019 title. The year is 1334. Sophia, voiced by Anna Demetriou, is a smuggler and plunderer who learns she is tied to the ancient history of the Prima Macula, the affliction that runs through the earlier games.
The structure is a chase. As a young girl, Sophia was sent to a convent by her mother, where nuns injected her with a mysterious substance and forced her to draw the visions it produced. Her father Alec raided the convent with his bandit army and rescued her. He promised to find the truth behind her visions and perished in one of his expeditions.
His lieutenant Faro took over the bandits and kept the promise to look after her.
The Key in Venice
Faro’s investigation points to Crete, but the crew needs a key first, held in Venice. The raid goes wrong — the Venetian army was tipped off by a traitor. Sophia recovers the key, a mechanical orb, and flees the city while her fellow bandits are left behind.
She returns to the hideout to find it in flames, attacked by the Venetian army. She escapes with her friend Leni, but only after fighting past a furious Faro, who believes Sophia is the traitor.
A Labyrinth on Minotaur’s Island
Crete is where Resonance plants its flag. Sophia and Leni find the doors from her visions, and behind them the ruins of the Minoan civilization. The orb and the visions pull her deeper into a Minoan labyrinth while Faro’s surviving bandits and the Venetian army converge on whatever treasure they believe sits at the center.
This is a more action-oriented game than its predecessors, and the shift is deliberate. Previous A Plague Tale titles were primarily focused on stealth. Resonance puts a much more capable Sophia in the player’s hands. She parries incoming attacks and answers them with deadly finishing moves.
The dual-timeline mechanic is the boldest idea here. Players switch between the Middle Ages and the Minoan period, and events in the Minoan past can affect the present day of the Middle Ages. That is a real structural gamble for a series that has always been linear and forward-moving.
Asobo Learned to Fight
Asobo had no previous experience developing melee-based combat before this project. The studio felt the inclusion was important for telling Sophia’s story, and it learned the system during development.
Lead level designer Valérian Robert named Ghost of Tsushima, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Sifu as influences on the combat mechanics. The first version Asobo built was more difficult than intended and had to be scaled back — the team knew that loyal A Plague Tale players were arriving from a stealth game, not a soulslike.
We wanted a “challenging” combat system that can still be enjoyed by players unfamiliar with soulslike games.
That is the design brief in one line. It is demanding without being punishing, and it never assumes the player has parried anything before.
The Creature Behind the Myth
Resonance leans on mythology in a way the earlier games did not. Sophia’s journey to Minotaur’s Island comes with deadly trials, treacherous trails and puzzles, and the creature hidden behind the myth is not just set dressing. The game’s own framing is blunt about it: the terrifying creature hidden behind the myth will soon resonate with her.
That ties the mythological material directly to Sophia and her visions rather than treating Crete as a themed backdrop. The puzzles and the combat share space with that story instead of interrupting it.
What Asobo Proved
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a prequel that justifies itself. Sophia carries a full game here, and Demetriou’s performance gives the character the weight the story demands. The move from stealth to melee is not a betrayal of the series. It is Asobo admitting the series had outgrown hiding.
The 8.2 score, from an IGDB critic aggregate of four outlets, lands on a game that is confident in its protagonist.
What matters most is what Asobo proved: it can build a fight. A studio with no melee experience taught itself to make combat that Robert describes as challenging and still open to newcomers. That is the detail to watch going forward, more than any labyrinth or myth.
Play it on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S or PC.
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