Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy has potential – if only it weren’t for the confusing story

Franziska Behner-Thang

26/8/2026

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pictures: Franziska Behner-Thang

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy plays like a challenging treasure hunt full of action-packed battles on a beautiful Caribbean island. The only thing ruining this beach vacation? The story.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy has done more than just switch around its name. It’s set 15 whole years before its predecessors, Innocence and Requiem, and sets off in a completely new direction in terms of gameplay and lore. Instead of stealth passages and slingshots as weapons, I’m presented with parkour elements and a female protagonist who doesn’t blink an eye at killing. It feels like Uncharted with swords. Neither the plague that gives the series its name nor the two protagonists from the previous instalments make an appearance in part three.

We’re off on a treasure hunt!

In Resonance, you play Sophia, a young looter whom I first met as an adult in A Plague Tale: Requiem. As a kid, she was injected with various substances that induce visions. While in a trance, Sophia draws cryptic images of an island containing a legendary treasure that her village of looters is determined to recover. Plot beats come thick and fast, and Sophia sets off on an adventure with her friend Leni to recover the treasure herself.

Gameplay in Resonance is divided into three slices: exploration, combat and puzzles. With the help of a small diary filled with drawings from Sophia’s visions, you make your way across the mysterious island. For example, it reveals a tree with a distinctive shape, marking the entrance to a cave.

Instead of following a destination marker, I consciously pay attention to my surroundings and look for places listed in the journal. This allows me to consciously take in my surroundings and actively enjoy them. I try to ignore minor graphical issues, such as textures reloading and occasional flickering after a cutscene.

The tropical island offers a backdrop of dense jungle and breathtaking flora, standing in stark contrast to the dark caves. As Sophia, you leap over chasms, slide down slopes and climb up ledges to venture deeper and deeper into the cave system. Outdoors, you need the journal to help navigate; underground, it serves as a guide to the game’s many puzzles.

Endless tricky puzzles

There are many mirrors in the island’s catacombs you use to direct a beam of light across the room to activate doors or mechanisms. Although the puzzle structure often repeats itself, it’s never monotonous. And because of various distractions as well as ever-changing room layouts, you have to keep your brain working hard.

Sophia also has a mysterious orb, allowing her to light the way and reveal invisible markers. You use it to navigate rooms littered with traps, search for secret inscriptions and solve hidden puzzles. Over time, you unlock more sphere features that you can use to solve the extensive puzzles. In most cases, these problems are structured logically and can be easily solved with a little trial and error. If you get stuck, you can activate two hints after a few minutes.

Open battles

Sophia and her friend aren’t the only treasure hunters on the island. Other (mostly) nameless looters follow in droves, and they never shy away from a fight with our young protagonist in order to nab the treasure.

Luckily, Sophia has been trained in swordplay for years and can take on ten enemies at once. Targeting a baddie apparently wasn’t part of this training – intentionally targeting an opponent during combat just doesn’t work.

When you take damage, you lose one segment of your three-segment health bar, which refills when you kill an enemy and after battles. Often, you can lure enemies into traps or push them off a cliff. This counts as a kill, too, filling up your life bar.

Battles are easy to handle thanks to Sophia’s abilities, which you unlock throughout the game by finding resonance points. You use your grappling hook to pull enemies towards you. Knives or cans lying around can be used as projectiles in fights too. My companion Leni’s combat skills are negligible. She usually takes on just one or two enemies, while Sophia handles entire groups.

Resonance lore: incomprehensible

The biggest problem with Resonance is its story – it just gets in its own way. Your main goal in the game is to find the treasure from Sophia’s visions. To do this, you have to use clues from her dreams and various keys to make your way into the heart of the island.

Time and again, people you talk to emphasise that only Sophia can pull this off. And yet, starting in the second half of the game, you encounter enemies deep within the ruins who reached the island later and couldn’t possibly have been there before Sophia was.

In the final third, you painstakingly open massive gates that have been sealed shut for decades and venture deep into the island. There, you run into other looters once more and find evidence that many treasure hunters had already been here ten years before me. Strangely enough, NPCs tell you, almost in unison, that no one has ever made it this far. This contradictory flow of information is confusing and dilutes the story, which actually kept me hooked during the first half of the game.

There are moments, time and again, when Sophia falls into a kind of trance and has visions from the past. During these, you slip into the boots of a warrior and have to prove your skills in competitions. Right up until the very end, I don’t get why this happens, since it doesn’t move the story forward. Everything you learn there, Sophia experiences herself shortly after in a slightly different form. Ultimately, these visions shed light on certain issues and events. I doubt I would’ve needed them for the entire playthrough.

There are other secrets throughout the story of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy too that I haven’t mentioned to avoid spoilers. The looting story takes a mysterious turn that I didn’t expect early on, and I don’t want to ruin that surprise for you. The gameplay elements associated with this blend seamlessly into the experience through a variety of light-and-shadow puzzles.

In a nutshell

Resonance: a blast to play, but poorly told

I really want to like Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, but the nonsensical story just lets it down. It looks fantastic, features a complex protagonist and offers well-crafted puzzle and exploration gameplay. The idea of following clues from Sophia’s visions instead of a quest line – and solving puzzles in true treasure-hunter style to find a mystical prize – brings out the Indiana Jones in me.

But I certainly didn’t need Sophia’s friend Leni as my sidekick. She provides minimal help during battles and rarely does more than push one button to assist with puzzles. However, dialogue between the young women contributes greatly to the atmosphere and immersion. Unfortunately, all of this is ruined by the inconsistent story, which, over time, shifts from confusion to incomprehension. If you can overlook that, you’ll still be treated to a thrilling adventure.

Pro

• Wonderfully executed setting
• Solid German dubbing
• Action-packed battles featuring a variety of abilities
• Variety of puzzles while maintaining a clear overarching theme
• Adventure vibe feels great

Contra

• Contradictory, illogical story
• <negativeConclusionDetails>Minor graphical issues – elements take a while to load, flickering
• minor graphical issues such as pop-in elements and visual flickering

Video games

−8%

New

EUR61,45 was EUR66,91

Focus Home Interactive Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

PS5, DE

1

Franziska Behner-Thang

Freelance Editor

info@franziskabehner.de

I didn’t have a Game Boy or a Super Nintendo as a child, and only joined the world of gaming at 15. I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since. But looking at the ever-growing number of game releases each year, it seems the entire industry is conspiring against me. more

---

Review

Which films, shows, books, games or board games are genuinely great? Recommendations from our personal experience.

Show all