Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy Review - Crete Without the Rats

Asobo Studio spent two games teaching me to be afraid of a floor that moves. Then they took the rats away.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy landed on 27 August 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC at the standard $59.99 asking price, and it is on Game Pass from day one. That last detail matters more than the number at the bottom of this page, so let me put it up front: if you already pay for Game Pass, this is an easy weekend. If you don't, it's a harder sell at full price - though not a bad one.

What it is

It's a prequel. We're in 1334, fifteen years before *Requiem*, and the setting has moved from plague-choked France to the Greek island of Crete. You play Sophia (Anna Demetriou), a smuggler who as a child was experimented on in a convent and came out the other side with visions of an island she had never seen and a warrior named Theseus she had never met. Years later she and her friend Leni are chasing a stolen sphere across the Minotaur's island with soldiers closing in behind them.

The hook is a dual timeline. You slide between medieval Crete and the Minoan era, and what you change in the deep past reshapes what is standing in front of you in the present. It isn't a gimmick bolted onto a corridor - a good chunk of the puzzle design actually lives inside it.

How it plays

This is the big shift, and it's where opinions will split. Amicia's games were stealth games about being weak. Sophia is not weak. She strikes, blocks, dodges and above all parries, and she carries a grappling hook that yanks enemies into range instead of letting you slink past them. Resonance points let you upgrade the parry until even the red-flash attacks are fair game. Combat is snappy, readable and genuinely fun in a way no previous Plague Tale ever managed.

The cost is the dread. Requiem's rat swarms were a physical threat you could not fight, and that powerlessness was the whole identity of the series. Without them, Resonance is a very handsome, very competent action-adventure - but a far more conventional one. A few encounters around the midpoint start to feel like arenas with nice set dressing.

The rest

It looks superb. Asobo's own Zouna engine pushes sunlight through olive branches and crumbling frescoes with a confidence that should embarrass studios five times its size - roughly 70 people made this. Performance capture is strong, Sophia is a more interesting lead than she needed to be, and the score does a lot of quiet heavy lifting.

Length is somewhere between 12 and 20 hours depending on how much optional material you poke at. It's paced well, too; I never wanted it to end early, which I absolutely did during Requiem's back third.

Who it's for

Anyone who liked the Plague Tale games for the storytelling and the art direction, and quietly wished the combat wasn't so limp. Anyone who came specifically for the rats will feel the hole where they used to be. Newcomers can start here, though two late reveals hit harder if you've played Requiem.

Verdict

The best-playing game in the series and the least frightening one. Asobo traded atmosphere for agency and mostly came out ahead - I just miss the fear.

Score: 8/10

Image: Annatsach / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruins_of_the_Minoan_Palace_in_Knossos.jpg