Don’t be fooled by the stunning environment of Enotria: The Last Song. It may not look as foreboding as many other soulslike games, but it takes place in a place in a world that has become a stage for an endless play.
Ever since the world has been struck by ‘canovaccio,’ the people of Enotria have been stuck on a perpetual script. Even death would be preferable to stasis, but it seems that canovaccio prevents people from dying.
Anyone who has ever participated in theater knows that it’s torture to have too many show dates. You can even say that the people of Enotria are just actors playing on encore. But as bad as this all is, something tells me that we’re also going to be stuck playing Enotria: The Last Song for hours on end.
Enotria: The Last Song will officially be released on September 19, 2024. While waiting for the game’s release, you can play the demo on Steam and PS5.
A Sunny But Eerie Environment
A theater in stasis
The game borrows largely from Italian folklore and theater traditions. If you’ve read or watched performances of the Commedia dell’arte, then you’ll find many characters and concepts in the game familiar. Even Pulcinella, your creator, is one of the many mascheras from the Commedia dell’arte.
In a world with a demented script, you, the Maskless, are the only one who has no assigned role. As the Maskless, you are unaffected by the same script that others are forced to follow. It is your quest to bring change to the world, one improv at a time.
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The “soulslike” genre of games have a very specific vibe commonly associated with them. Enter Another Crab’s Treasure, which has all of the quintessential gameplay hallmarks of a soulslike, but instead of being drab and grim, it’s cartoony, colorful, and goofy.
Named after Fromsoft’s pioneering games Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, you typically imagine soulslikes entrenching you in a gloomy, serious world. (Not that Fromsoft games are devoid of humor. Far from it—remember the Turtle Pope?) Still, you imagine a brooding main character inhabiting a world dominated by a grayscale color palette.
But those characteristics aren’t what actually makes a soulslike. What makes a soulslike is the extreme challenge. It’s the extra-hard bosses you need several attempts to defeat, the scarcity of save point and options for health regeneration, and the anxiety of losing your resources upon death and having to retrace your steps to reclaim them before you die again and lose them for good.
Another Crab’s Treasure, a new indie game from developer Aggro Crab that came out in April, shares that gameplay despite its friendly vibe. Ahead of its launch, developer Aggro Crab was even petitioning fans to get the Steam store to list more soulslike in the similar games column, instead of easy, cartoony games.
In the game, you play an adorable crab with a boyish voice and green kerchief, traversing the ocean—highly polluted, yet mostly beautiful and bright. Information on game mechanics asks that you confirm you “acknowledge knowledge.” Bravely, against the well-known oceanic slang established by SpongeBob SquarePants, you’re immediately introduced to new world-specific curses like, “Crab! Crab! CRAB!” Then, a giant lobster captain completely destroys you as he screams at you about the law.
As such, Another Crab’s Treasure offers something completely new. In the same way that, for example, One Piece Film: Red asked, “Why can’t shounen be a musical?,” Another Crab’s Treasure asks, “Why can’t a soulslike be bright?” It breaks apart gamers’ expectations and opens up an exciting new world of possibilities for the future of soulslike gaming.
F*** the Loan Shark
As opposed to Elden Ring and most other Fromsoft games, Another Crab’s Treasure gives you an obvious mission from the get-go. This might be its greatest deviation from the hallmarks of soulslike gameplay, which typically give you the teeniest morsel of story before dropping you off in the world and letting you wander around to slowly pick up environmental clues as to where you are, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.
Personally speaking, I welcome this deviation wholeheartedly. I remember well my first hour or so of Elden Ring, and it was incredibly disorienting. I remember yelling at my TV at some point, “WHAT AM I DOING?”
By contrast, Another Crab’s Treasure immediately gives us a story that most players can deeply empathize with. Our hero, Kril the hermit crab, is minding his own business when a Loan Shark pops up and informs him that a duchess now owns where he lives and he must now pay taxes. Since he can’t pay up, his shell—his home!—is confiscated. Kril’s adventures begin as he does whatever he can to get his shell back.
It’s not that there’s a complete absence of dark themes in Another Crab’s Treasure. The themes get darker as you go along. For one, you’re immediately beset with the direness of oceanic pollution. You’re not even an hour in before you can talk to a young crab eating a cigarette, saying they’re the new hot snack in Big City. Pollution is actually a major driver of the game—and can cause the once-colorful environments to look more like a “conventional” souslike.
A wonderful adventure in the sea
It would be one thing if Another Crab’s Treasure were simply testing new waters about how a soulslike can look and, environmentally and tonally speaking, feel to play. But the main reason it works is that Another Crab’s Treasure is just a good game.
I’ll be honest—I got hooked. All the anxieties of Elden Ring about getting my resources back before I died came flooding back to me, but in addition to the thrill and excitement of wanting to see what happened next in Kril’s tale. Add an inviting world with some solid-but-easy-enough platforming, and you’ve got a phenomenal combination.
What’s more, the combat is excellent. I usually dodge instead of guard in games like this, but Another Crab’s Treasure makes hiding under Kril’s various makeshift shells such a joy. The shells’ special abilities—which are hilariously called “umami”—are a delight to try out.
As such, Another Crab’s Treasure isn’t just open an entirely new realm of possibilities for future soulslike games; it’s also an excellent first soulslike. Elden Ring allows you to take things at your own pace, but is also gigantic. By contrast, Another Crab’s Treasure can be beaten—at least in theory—in under 15 hours. I also found it “approachably difficult.”
In other words: holy crab, I’ve found one of my games of the year.
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Have you ever wished you could exercise your Second Amendment right on a formidable video game boss? Well, one upcoming Soulslike will let you pull out a gun and one-tap bosses if it prove too impossible to “git gud” and vanquish them the normal way.
This Brutal Gothic Metroidvania Is Shaping up To Be Something Special
Another Crab’s Treasure, by Going Under developer Aggro Crab, is a 3D “Shellslike” in which you play as a hermit crab named Kril as he scours the land for his long-lost shell. Somewhere along Kril’s journey, you’ll explore the littered ocean floor for a makeshift home and duke it out with other ocean-faring beasties. The game has a Windows demo for Steam Next Fest and is slated to come out sometime next year on the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Now, about the gun thing. Another Crab’s Treasure’s Steam page notes that you can play the game at your own pace, saying it was “designed to be an approachable experience for newer Soulslike players as well as provide a challenge for hardcore fans.” Typically, any online conversation about whether or not a Soulslike game should have lower difficulty option or (gasp) some sort of assist mode is met with vitriol from genre die-hards. Nonetheless Another Crab’s Treasure’sdemo happily showcases one of the game’s apparently many assist modes, which equips Kril with a gun that completely eviscerates his foes.
Aggro Crab definitely buried the lede by omitting the fact that the game offering “something for any level of skill or time commitment” would include a freaking gun available to anyone who tires of panic-rolling with only a rusty spork with which to defend themselves. I don’t have much more commentary to add to the sheer power of the above clip except to say that I hope more video games follow suit by arming players, be they animals or lowly dung-eating swordsmen, with proportionally enormous guns.
Lies of P is a tough game. Everything can kill you, from the hardest of bosses to the most predictable of trash mobs, which is to be expected of a Soulslike game. Although there’s no difficulty setting to make the Bloodborne-inspired RPG any easier, there are some tips you can take with you as you skirmish with the humans and puppets waiting to kill you in this gothic reimagining of Pinocchio.
Like Bloodborne, Lies of P features a regain mechanic in which you can replenish a portion of lost health by attacking the enemy who hurt you. But in addition to regaining your lost health, staying on the offensive slowly builds up your foe’s stagger and, when their health flashes white, leaves them open for a powerful attack that’ll put them into a Groggy state. Essentially, they’re stunned, at which point you can execute a Fatal Attack to deal massive damage. Thus, the game rewards being aggressive if you want to stay alive and quickly defeat your foes. Hesitate, and you’ll die. It’s as simple as that.
Keep your weapon sharp
Battling with humans and puppets across the nightmarish city of Krat will eventually leave your weapons dull. Attack enough without addressing its plummeting durability and that blade you’re using will break, which is why it pays to maintain your armaments’ peak sharpness. However, honing your blade with the in-game Grinder does more than just ensure its optimal effectiveness; it can also give you a damage buff once you’ve leveled up the item’s capabilities. Furthermore, equipping the Grinder with an element like fire or poison will imbue your weapon with that same power, giving you an elemental edge over the violence in Krat. Take care of your weapons and they’ll take care of you.
Break your weapon in half
This might sound contradictory to the above tip, but they coexist. Lies of P lets you combine weapons together. By breaking them into their two halves, blade and handle, you can mix and match gear to create something that pairs well with your build. So, say you’re focusing on strength but like the rapier, a dexterity-based weapon. You could take the rapier’s handle, which actually dictates the armament’s attack pattern, and attach it to a blade that scales better with your stats and boom, new weapon unlocked. Now, by sharpening the blade in combat and leveling it up at the main hub world of Hotel Krat, you’re taking care of a weapon that’ll likely carry you through the rest of the game.
Level up your dodge quickly
Following feedback from the summer demo, co-developer Neowiz Games tweaked Lies of P’s sluggish dodge mechanic. Well, it needs to be reworked even more. It’s still imprecise, nonfunctional, and slow—until you level it up, that is. P has P-Organs, artificial components that mimic a real human’s organs, and which can be upgraded with Quartz, a resource you find in certain chests or get when beating bosses. Upgrading your P-Organs will do things like increase the number of healing items you have, or allow you to carry more stat-buffing artifacts. You can also unlock dodge upgrades that let you chain multiple evasive maneuvers together and roll out of a knockdown animation. Silly that you have to upgrade the dodge instead of starting with these abilities off the rip, especially since combat can be so punishing and dodging is a surefire tactic to hit-and-run gameplay. But trust me, you’re going to want to upgrade that dodge. It’ll be easier if you do.
Read those item descriptions
This may come as no surprise to Souls veterans, but Lies of P’s items have descriptions that detail much of the game’s lore. When things went to shit, how violent the puppet massacre was, who lived here and what you’ll find there—all detailed within the notes of the items you pick up around Krat. However, certain Ergo, this game’s rendition of FromSoftware’s souls resource, also contain descriptions that will tell you if a rare trader will want it in exchange for a rarer item. This could be a legendary artifact, a piece of gear that enhances your stats, or a powerful weapon. Of course, you could consume that Ergo for a massive amount of it, which will likely give you enough to level up at least once. But, if you’re willing to take the risk, you could just get a better piece of gear. Besides, defeating enemies gets you Ergo anyway. You can always make it up.
Change your outfits often
Considering Lies of P takes place during France’s opulent Belle Époque, you’ll absolutely see an assortment of beautiful—and bloodied—garments tinged with steampunk accouterments. It can be tempting to dress P up in different outfits as you journey through the darkened Krat. He is a puppet, after all. However, wearing an outfit in the game is about more than just looking stylish. Certain NPCs will interact with you differently based on what you’re wearing. Maybe they’ll attack you on sight or, instead, give you an option to work together, all depending on their relationship to the attire you’ve got on, which you can read up on in the item’s description. What’s that one quote? Knowledge is power?
Work On Your Perfect Guard Skills
So, not only does the dodge not feel that great, but to be totally honest, blocking and parrying aren’t particularly well-executed here either. That said, while the timing can be difficult to nail, mastering the perfect guard will help you go a long way in Lies of P. By pressing the block button right before an attack lands, you’ll perfectly parry your enemy’s strike. No, there’s no satisfying animation a la Sekiro. (There is a loud “clang” as the weapons collide, though.) And no, you won’t leave them immediately off-guard. However, perfect guarding your enemy enough times will increase their stagger, making them more susceptible to the Groggy state and a Fatal Strike, and break their weapon. You’ll probably die a lot on your way to figuring out just how best to perform the perfect guard, and that’s OK because mastering the move is totally worth it.
Summon—And Then Buff—Your Specter Bestie
As in many FromSoft Souls games, you can summon an AI-controlled NPC just before boss fights, and I highly encourage you to do so. There are some tough battles in Lies of P, with multiple enemies at once or truly, terrifyingly towering foes. It’s overwhelming. The specter you summon—a gorgeous, black armor-clad knight with flowy, snow-white hair—can serve as a distraction when you summon them via Star Fragments, a very common resource found in easy chests and on trash mobs and in vendor shops. This companion is already pretty tanky and can dish out plenty of damage on their own. However, attaching the mythical Wishstone crystals you come across to the Cube that functions as an additional healing item can give your specter—and you—added benefits. You can, say, prevent their death one time with the Indomitable Wishstone. Or, you can temporarily increase their damage or restore their HP with the Frenzy and Friendship Wishstones, respectively. Either way, tweaking the buffs your specter bestie has will do wonders for you.
It’s rough out there for a puppet. Thanks to the puppet frenzy that’s caused the marionettes to go ballistic, no one trusts a doll. It helps to be prepared, so these tips should make your time in the horrific world of Krat a little less frightening.
Lords of the Fallen was already a game, one that came out nearly 10 years ago by developer Deck13 (Atlas Fallen) and publisher CI Games. It was fine, but felt too much like a lackluster facsimile of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls formula to have much of an identity of its own. CI Games is back, though, with newly founded studio Hexworks to take another stab at Lords of the Fallen. And this time around, at least based on the previews, it sounds like a stellar Soulslike might be in the offing.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Out on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, Lords of the Fallen is a third-person action-RPG with an interesting conceit: With the help of the Umbral lantern, you can reveal secrets hidden in the land of the dead while still traversing the world of the living. But should you die and end up in Umbral—which will happen since this is a Soulslike—you’ll still be able to fight for your life for the chance to return to Axiom. Die here, though, and you’ll start back in the land of the living having lost your XP. Typically Soulslike stuff, but that two-realm implementation offers a new perspective for the genre, something the previews call attention to.
So, considering the game comes out in two months, here’s a roundup of what early players are saying about Lords of the Fallen and how, as many of them purport, it’s sounding like an exciting Soulslike worth paying attention to.
After playing the opening hours of 2023’s Lords of the Fallen, our journey through this nightmarish world was eerily familiar, yet filled with a current-gen polish that games like the Dark Souls trilogy and Bloodborne could only dream of. Our initial impressions were that the game felt a lot like the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls, which is not a bad thing, but from an aesthetic point of view, Lords of the Fallen leans even more heavily into the grimdark setting.
Image: Hexworks
I’ve played a couple of hours of new Lords of the Fallen and crucially, I can tell you it’s: good. If you’ve played a Soulslike before—or as Hexworks wisely describes the genre, which extends to Nioh, The Surge, and the rest, tactical action-RPGs—it’ll be immediately familiar. You can create a character from one of several preset classes, ranging from glass cannon mages to sword-and-shield warriors, with some more lore-y archetypes in between with a little clan-based backstory behind them: a raven-like archer, a brawler with a twist of wolves.
The moment-to-moment in my Lords of the Fallen demo ticked most of the Souls boxes I have when it comes to combat, but this game distinguishes itself in its concept of dual worlds. Axiom, the land of the living, is more or less the “normal” dimension, but it exists in parallel with the Umbral realm, the land of the dead. The two realms run simultaneously as you play, which takes advantage of tech on latest-gen platforms. It’s similar to The Medium or Titanfall 2‘s Effect and Cause mission, but spread across an entire sprawling dark fantasy world.
What surprises me most, however, is Umbral. This is the realm of the dead and exists parallel to Axiom. It can be accessed at almost any time, in real-time. But, once you’re there, you must fight through its more challenging enemies to reach an access point that brings you back to Axiom. While you can select to explore Umbral on your own, Lords of the Fallen will bring you there almost every time you die. Dying gives you a second chance in Umbral, where, if you survive, you can reach the realm of Axiom once more. This eases the usual challenge of the genre—mind you, Lords of the Fallen is still extremely tough—but also opens up a unique playground for puzzles I welcome.
By tapping into two distinct worlds at once, Hexworks completely revamps how we view death in a Soulslike. Lords of the Fallen turns the most infamously iconic, eternally frustrating thing about a FromSoftware game into more than a second chance: It’s a second world, one that functions entirely differently from the place we start out in. The result is a varied combat experience in a truly untamed universe, one that pulses with unknown wonders and its fair share of chills—no matter your familiarity with the genre.
Image: Hexworks
There’s a great fluidity to Lords of the Fallen’s combat too. You can seamlessly flow from light attacks to heavy attacks, and can even change weapon stance in the middle of a combo as well. I could start with two light attacks, press the stance switch button, and do another light attack, I’d get a unique attack in which my character seamlessly goes from a dual-wielded slash, into a two-handed thrust. This is even better when you add magic to the equation, as you’re able to easily swap between melee and magic attacks even mid-combo. It opens the door for a lot of freedom of expression through combat, which is something you don’t see all too often in the Soulslike genre.
While in the Umbral world, enemies slowly become more aggressive and powerful, but the XP multiplier increases as well, amping up the risks as well as the rewards in an enticing way. Being able to respawn allowed me to progress much faster and alleviated some of the frustrations that come with the genre. The Umbral world also offers access to shortcuts and gives you wild abilities that mirror Jedi powers. Lords of the Fallen is at its strongest when it leans into the mechanics of the Umbral world.
Umbral also softens the difficulty level of its chosen genre—up to a point. If you die in Axiom, you are resurrected in Umbral, then given another chance to defeat your enemy before you give up the ghost completely and need to corpse-run from the last Vestige to reclaim your Vigor (Lords of the Fallen’s souls). This doesn’t refresh your healing items, though, and the longer you spend in Umbral, the more Dread builds up, and the trickier things get. Enemies get tougher, and increasing numbers of zombielike creatures materialize in your path—they’re easy to kill, but their presence complicates the battlefield considerably.
Outside of exploration, you can use the lantern to rend a baddy’s soul from its body, then batter it for extreme damage. You can’t do this all the time, as you’ll need to power the lantern up to do it. This can be done by bursting pustules in the Umbral realm and sucking up the resultant juice, but if you can’t find a pustule, you might encounter an enemy with a blue glow—which means they’re invulnerable unless you reveal their parasitic Umbral companion floating alongside them. Hoover this critter up and not only can it power your soul attack, it will also remove their pal’s aura of invincibility.
Image: Hexworks
The game is not as obscure as its FromSoft progenitors, and that works in its favor, because when you’re being pulled in two directions and interrogating the tension between worlds, you want a sense of what’s going on, and where to go. Lords of the Fallen is all about playing as a heathen, shunned by the world for embracing a dark lantern that allows them to traverse the realms of light and dark. It’s all about being sacrilegious, defying the common knowledge and tasting the forbidden fruit. If you wanted to do away with subtext, you could say it’s what Hexworks is doing in discarding the commonly held beliefs around how death should work in this genre. How traditionally hard it must be. But the studio eschews that. And the result, at least at this early stage, is unique and compelling.
My time with the 2014 version of the game was quite frustrating. While the review is no longer live—the site I wrote it for is now defunct—I essentially said that, although the game had a compelling narrative, its cumbersome gameplay and unintuitive systems made for an ultimately forgettable experience.
The previews of the new Lords of the Fallen reboot are based on just two hours of gameplay, so a lot of questions will remain unanswered until the game drops in October. But based on everything I’ve read so far, Lords of the Fallen is sounding like it’ll be a pretty solid take on the Soulslike style of game.
Lords of the Fallen launches on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
