This game deserves a mixed review. Every time I find something interesting about Enotria: The Last Song, the game always reminds me that this is a buggy mess. Combat certainly rocks, but the camera angle has a mind of its own; weapons and masks all look fancy, yet I need to roll through an inconvenient and forgetful UI to get to the things I want. However, if you are willing to look pass the technical issues and the lacking of quality of life changes, there is definitely something special here.


1. Italian Style And Theatrical Theme
A refreshing take to the otherwise usually gloomy and hopeless Souls-like.

• The bright color and the Italian touch certainly feels refreshing. The sceneries are beautiful. I guarantee you will be amazed by the golden sunflower fields in the beginning.
  
• The exotic town of Quinta, the crystal-clear water and the bright white shore of Falesia Magna, and the gorgeous watercity of Litumnia, each area in this game is nothing short of wonder.
  
• Of course the whole mask feature and the flamboyant costumes are inspired by the Venice Carnival. This pique my interest greatly.
  
• I like the theatrical theme. The world is a stageplay drafted by the powerful mask bearer. Because of stalemate between each being, this stage is forced into stagnant script. You, a mask-less one, are born from change, and it's on you to write an ending to this lasting interlude.
  
• I also like how the characters speak in such a bombastic way, especially bosses. The exaggerated gestures combining with their quirky intonation easily make them memorable. Shame not everyone is voice-acted though.

2. Mask-changing System And Builds
Basically, an instant loadout switch.

• One of prominent features of this game is the mask system. You can customize three loadout slots and you can switch between them freely on the go.
  
• You can equip one mask(usually a passive ability and an awakened one), one role(stat boosting and some minor enhancements), four mask lines(active abilities that need to be charged first), and six perks(playstyle modifiers) in a loadout.
  
• The sheer amount of perks, masks, and mask lines allows you to create your own playstyle. And on top of all these, weapons and consumables can also be equipped separately between loadouts to truly tailor your ideal build.
  
• One thing worth noting: switching masks also grants you the "awakened" state, meaning you can fully take advantage of each mask's awakened condition by actively switching loadouts.
  
• This naturally leads to some interesting playstyle. You can have an aggressive build going all out for a second, then switch to a more defensive/healing-focused build to either parry or recover. The flexibility is amazing if you experiment around.

3. Other Compliments

• You can refund upgrade materials from a weapon as many time as you want. You still need to farm memoria though.
  
• Wearing certain masks can trigger special dialogue for some NPC.
  
• Tons of cool and unique weapons to collect. I also like that rarity actually adds something new to the weapons(Rare grants some attacks elemental bonus, Epic adds new attacks to existing combo, Legendary offers completely new move sets).

The Four Elements
Intriguing on paper, in need of refinements on execution.

Like
• Instead of using the usual elemental trope, Enotria: The Last Song creates its own elements and gives them a sort of double-edged effect. Vis cause Dizzy, giving you attack boost and stamina regeneration at the cost of lower defense; Fatuo cause Wicked, increasing your elemental damage output but enemies will heal when they hit you; Gratia causes Radiant, offering passive healing but will make you explode when hit; Malanno causes Sick, a poison DOT that will affect you stand too close.
  
• Knowing their effects and playing around them can be a massive boost to your power. Likewise, inflicting enemies with the right element can often turn the tide.
  Dislike
  
• Currently I think Vis and Fatuo are way too strong. Their status effects are useful no matter who the receiver is and completely overshadowed the other two. Sick status decays way too fast considering its DOT ticking way too slow. Radiant is just not worth the trouble. The explosion doesn't justify the healing effect.
  
• I wish there were some interaction between each element. Something along the line of Sick status can also trigger Wicked's healing effect, or Dizzy can boost Sick's DOT damage or reduce Radiant healing power.

1. Some Quality of Life Needed
From bugs to bad UI designs, it is quite annoying.

• I hate that you have to manually click the increase button every single time if you want to buy multiple.
  
• Scroll down from the bottom will be bring it to the top, but somehow it doesn't work in reverse?!
  
• Please add more columns to all the menu. Rolling down a single long column just to find one thing can be tedious.
  
• On the same note, why can't the game remembering my sorting method? Whenever I equip a weapon, I have to re-select the sorting options every single time.
  
• If you click to read the compendium entry pop-up during any NPC dialogue, you will be soft-locked and neither your controller nor keyboard will work(only in game).
  
• If you stand right under the bosses when they do any jump attacks, there's a chance their AI will freeze for the whole fight(very inconsistent though).

2. Other Complaints

• Please for the love of god add a storage box or something similar.
  
• I feel like the Ardore Burst and the whole "reshaping reality" thing are under-utilized.
  
• Half of the mask lines are just re-using weapon move sets.

中文小簡評
→義大利風味的類魂，體感不錯，可惜一些不人性化的UI和bug很勸退。
→意外地很喜歡這種明亮且充滿異國風情的設計，開場的向日葵花園令人印象深刻。
→故事背景深受威尼斯面具影響，再搭配舞台劇風格，造就出與眾多類魂截然不同的體驗。
→角色也因為演員的身分常常有浮誇的獨白，特別是Boss很有記憶點(雖然不是每位都有配音)。
→至於戰鬥的部分除了架招和閃避外，有個特別的面具系統。基本上是能讓你隨時切換不同的裝備組合，多樣主被動技能配合不同面具的能力可以玩出很多花樣，可以先用高傷害的面具進攻，情況危急時切換防禦或回復型面具架招回復。
→遊戲也鼓勵玩家多切換，切換面具會自動進入覺醒狀態觸發面具特效。
→諸多很酷的武器供玩家蒐藏，本作也讓你隨時降級武器取回強化素材，去嘗試不同武器與裝備。
→武器有不同級別，稀有級別會讓部分攻擊上元素傷害，史詩級別動作會新增額外攻擊，而傳奇級別則有完全不同的連擊。
→四種主要元素相互克制，每個元素都有雙面刃的特性(暈眩會讓降防增傷)，玩家和敵人皆適用，有效迴避負面特性就能獲得強力增幅。可惜就目前狀況只有兩種元素好用，另外兩個的效果非常雞肋，除非是敵人有屬性相剋，不然完全不建議使用。
→太多不人性的UI設計：買東西要一個一個點不能按著自動增量、往下滑動到底部會自動回到第一項，但向上滑動卻不會拉到底部、裝備介面應該要多點格子而不是一格拉到底、系統也不會記得我的分類，每換一把武器就得重新設定。
→太多bug：在與NPC對話時如果點文件提示閱讀的話很容易讓你的鍵盤或搖桿完全失靈(僅限遊戲)、如果你在Boss跳躍攻擊時站到他正下方，他的AI有機率完全癱瘓。
→怎麼會沒有儲物箱的設計啊.....
→「改變現實」這項設計的運用稍嫌不足。
→近一半的法術都只是借用武器攻擊的模組而已。

Oh boy, where to begin? This game is a mess. It's buggy, unpolished, the combat is laughably bad, there really isn't anything going for it outside of the aesthetics. And this is after the batch of post-release updates outlined in the roadmap have all been delivered.

For combat, enemies come from the Elden Ring school of delayed attack animations, which beyond being obnoxious to fight also makes them look utterly ridiculous in motion. Enemy damage is extremely inflated, where even with HP as my primary stat throughout the game, enemies would be hitting me for 70% of my HP bar in a single attack. The player has access to four spells that charge by hitting enemies, but these have ridiculously long start up animations and the slightest poke from any enemy will knock you out of them, leaving their charge empty. This similarly applies to the game's slow and heavy weapons, which almost make up for it with how much damage they deal in a single hit.
At the same time, the game wants to have rapid parrying in combat which pairs badly with the enemies' absurd attack animations, and enemies can begin attacks and hit you in the time it takes to activate a single spell, meaning all you can do in combat is play defensively and wait for the few enemy attacks you've identified as safe, or you easily deal with the enemies that don't have hyperarmour and stunlock them to death; there's no in between here. Additionally, default stamina regen in this game is extremely slow by Souls-likes standards, though there are means to speed it up.

The visuals of the world are probably the best element, but at the same time this is marred by extremely low quality distant LoDs, so vistas that should be stunning are instead a blurry mess of messed up assets. The locations in the game are huge and wrap around themselves well, but at the same time an inundation of bonfires means you have little reason not to just warp everywhere instead, and you inexplicably teleport between various game areas, leaving the various levels feeling totally disconnected.

The player has various masks that serve as both outfits and equipment. Most of these are gained from beating bosses or talking to NPCs, but some are from enemy drops, but rather than being dropped themselves, enemies drop anywhere from 0-10 shards on defeat, and a given mask requires 100-300 shards to create. This makes all of these masks an extreme and unreasonable grind to acquire.
There are a large number of weapons throughout the game, but with so many repeated movesets and so little differences in scaling between them they probably could've cut an entire half of them and little would have changed.

The game is extremely unpolished, from the UI having the game constantly trying to switch back to M&K while using a gamepad, to enemies snapping between animations with no transitions, cutscenes having delayed transitions in which it'll cut back to gameplay with characters that were dead briefly standing around, to bugs where talking to an NPC refused to let me close the dialogue box and required an alt+F4 (which I can see being talked about 5 months ago and still hasn't been fixed), or one instance where mid-combat an NPC started talking which locked my controls and forced me to close the dialogue before continuing to fight. Opening the menu completely covers the game screen with the menu making you think the game would be paused, but it actually keeps going underneath; an inexplicable choice given the game is purely single player.

Enemies are also heavily reused. You'll fight the same enemies over and over, sometimes with different elemental boosts and stats, other times as minibosses with even more inflated stats, and additionally various animations are reused across different enemies, resulting in different enemies with the same attacks or throwing animations, and laughably death animations being shared across different enemies too, which makes it extra funny when you fight skeletons and they slowly fall to the ground clutching their wounds because they didn't think to give them their own death animations. Just something more that pulls you out of the game world.

Lastly, NPCs in the first area of the game are voiced; NPCs throughout the rest of the game are not. Surely it could not have been that much extra work to get some people to read a few extra lines of dialogue throughout the game rather than create such a noticeable discrepancy?

In summary I don't really recommend this for anything, it's a sub-par game in everything except aesthetics, and aesthetics alone cannot carry a game this badly designed otherwise.

I really tried to like the game, but there's glaring gameplay and experiential issues that just makes it unenjoyable to me.

Gameplay:
-The Stance system they use is hyper convoluted and acts only to slow down gameplay into tedious menuing. You have 3 stances you can use during combat, but these stances can only be modified at the bonfire analogues. Each of the stances have 4 abilities, 2 item passives, and 6 skill passives you can equip; the abilities and items you find in the overworld; the skill passives, from skill trees using resources that you get somehow(?). The passives have effects that are reminiscent of Dark Souls rings, but they also have effects that can drastically change the way that you play. This introduces a huge aspect of complexity. Some may like that, but this variance just forces the player to overthink about how they would like to play and preemptively equip the passive they would like ahead of time.
-Overall, the game gives you too much. It gives you too many weapons, abilities, passives, consumables, and it doesn't feel like it paces itself. This is good for challenge runs where you heavily restrict yourself to certain things, but for the casual gamer, it never feels like you're given enough opportunity to try something before they give you a new thing to try.
-The elemental system is interesting with the rock-paper-scissors system they have, but I just wish there was an easy way to remember the matchups. There's really no way to intuitively remember what is good/bad against what and the matchup wheel that's constantly on screen is a bandaid fix. It also doesn't help that the names of the elements are in Italian in service of the theming.

Experience:
-The plot is heavily dictated to you. It's rife with symbology and overly wordy. I honestly don't know enough about Comedia del Arte to know if this is by design. Not all souls games have to be cryptic with their lore, it's just a thing that I like. I like creating a world for myself, but this game has a very deliberate story to tell.
-The game is heavily themed which is nice, but the areas are very overly busy with the set design. It's like a cacophony of colour.
-The game lacks polish. I'm not sure about other bosses, but Zanni will just snap from his idle animation to an attack animation with no transition.

Good things:
-This game showcases the power of AI by using it to boost framerate with little compromise to fidelity. I hope innovations like this continue because the effect is incredible.
-The exploration is the best aspect of the game. The areas loop back in on themselves and there are some areas that introduce light puzzle or combat challenges. I don't care for the puzzles, but the combat areas are a nice way to change the world.

Overall:
-Clunky combat experience.
-Front-loaded pacing.
-Theming at the cost of gameplay.
-Less is more and this game is certainly not less.

I might give this another chance in the future, but I think I just won't use the stance nor elemental systems. It hurts the experience more than it does enrich it.