Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy review: "Rivals Uncharted and Tomb Raider with a snappy sword fighting take on treasure hunting adventure"

Deadly rats are out, but a new supernatural threat is in. Underdog slingshot fights are replaced by brutal, punchy sword combat. Bleak, muddy Medieval France gives way to the gorgeous sunshine of a Greek island, temples displaying vibrant colors. Yet, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy still feels like a Plague Tale game through and through. Set before the events of the other games, protagonist Sophia must forge herself as she pursues a treasure with rivals hot at her heels, with stakes both personal and world-shattering thanks to a strange curse.

If previous games felt like a medieval riff on The Last of Us, then Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is developer Asobo Studio's take on Uncharted or modern Tomb Raider, trading guns for snappy swordplay. With incredible production values and a real sense of craft across puzzle and level design, this is the team's slickest production to date and – given it's been so long since the last Uncharted or Tomb Raider – Sophia's adventure really holds its own in comparison. If, like me, you're always on the lookout for a new single-player, story-driven action-adventure game to play while flinging popcorn into your mouth, look no further. Resonance is a treasure that doesn't need dusting off – this gleams.

Bring the plunder

As a prequel, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy can be enjoyed standalone as Sophia's journey is complete in and of itself. Even so, Plague fans will find plenty of rewarding expansions to the series' lore, themes, and worldbuilding, adding much more than I initially expected – though I'll avoid spoiling quite how it relates.

We're introduced to Sophia as a child, confined to a convent where a strange substance is pumped into her veins, and nuns force her to detail the visions she has as a result. These nightmares point to the legendary Minotaur Island that was once home to the advanced Minoan civilization, revolving around a series of dark holes and a bull-headed figure that seemingly brought ruin to the forgotten people.

Before long, she's freed from imprisonment by her father, who takes her back to his home of plunderers, smugglers, and pirates. The game's opening tutorials have an almost 007 First Light quality with its smart use of jump cuts as she's trained in combat, evasion, and stealth by her rough-and-tumble but loving found family of misfits. All the while, her father uses her visions to hunt for the island in the hopes of freeing her from the hold of the curse (with plenty of booty up for grabs as a bonus). The crew come tantalizingly close, finding the island, but struggling to crack its defences without a special key, an artefact they finally get a lead on when Sophia herself has become a young adult.

Cue a Venetian heist that, in typical treasure hunting fashion, doesn't go completely to plan. Before she knows it, Sophia is sailing off key-in-hand with only her thieving friend Leni at her side, with plenty of other interested parties hot on the trail, and no idea who else she can trust.

While the pair can use the key to crack the island's puzzles, better equipped rivals are more gung-ho about smashing their way through the already crumbling and flooding ruins, careless about what else on the island they may awake in the process.

Sophia's smuggler home, Venice, and the Minoan island itself are all simply gorgeous, full of sights that'll have you lingering just to take it all in. Playable flashbacks – Sophia's visions become stronger once she's on the island – add to the sense of splendor, ruins you explore in the present being shown in all their decorated, vibrant glory as Theseus fights through a tournament to crown King Minos' successor.

Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a linear, chapter-by-chapter adventure, but some sequences are wider than others. A couple of moments have Sophia tracking down navigation landmarks through large jungle spaces, and another highlight offers up four challenges around a hub area I can tackle in any order.

At other points, Sophia must retread the grounds of sacred trials in a more direct manner, puzzling out ancient tests while contending with half-destroyed environments through snappy navigational puzzles. These all have an immediacy that complements how good Sophia feels to control, which are a far cry from the slower pace of Amicia in previous games having to carefully navigate rat-infested areas.

Rat in a cage

The eventual supernatural elements play into Sophia's speedier pace of play even as she has to utilize stealth to survive – though I'll avoid spoiling specifics around these enemies. In play, these threats revolve around being tracked rather than immediately swarmed.

Slow movement and cover can throw off this attention, but so can smoothly taking jumps or slipping through crawling spaces or cracks in walls. There are times you're better off being careful, and others where you should be making a break for it, with the exact boundaries between those in your hands. I love the mechanical moments this produces, but – again, avoiding spoilers – none of these manage to be quite as striking as a literal wave of gnawing rats.

Sophia comes on this journey with her dream journal, which eventually doubles as expedition notes for her father and his crew, meaning with the touch of a button she can consult notes for many of the puzzles that lay in wait, as well as jot down new observations such as uncovered runes and the like.

Functionally, this is an excellent riff on Nathan Drake's perennially underrated journal in Uncharted. Resonance doesn't evolve the mechanic all that much – you can move Sophia's hand to tap on parts of the page to have her comment in greater detail – but I still value its presence. Alongside the option to ask a companion for one of a series of escalating hints, it helps you follow puzzle logic in-game if you're stumped or need a reminder on information you've uncovered, while never being truly necessary if you want to remember bits on your own.

Replaying A Plague Tale: Requiem alongside Resonance, I could really feel the journal's absence, making a bunch of its puzzles less satisfying to engage with. Resonance really nails the vibe of solving riddles and traps in ancient tombs, all evolving neatly on a core light-reflecting mechanic that genuinely has some novel approaches to one of the medium's oft-revisited puzzle types.

There are plenty of collectibles to find, from ancient treasures to upgrade points – all of which glitter periodically with impossible white light like in Uncharted. With ancient ruins this intricate, they're a joy just to investigate, and I relished obtaining all of the optional swords that are hidden in tombs behind their own side puzzles.

Combat upgrades themselves are cursory – the ability to throw an enemy as a counter, or parry previously unparryable attacks – but they at least don't get in the way (the overwhelming menu'ing in previous Plague Tale games isn't a factor here). In part, the relative unimportance of Sophia's combat upgrades are because the core fighting system works really well with the kit you get from the beginning. Sophia will come up against plenty of enemies who she will cross swords with, and she's every bit as skilled a fighter as those she's against.

Simple, but snappy, Sophia can create order out of a fight's chaos. All enemies have health bars made out of pips, with basic attacks dealing one point of damage and charged attacks three, alongside a break meter that will temporarily stun them. These can be filled by parrying, but also by using Sophia's grapple to pull them off balance, or an always-available kick to knock to send them tumbling into walls or crates.

Stand next to an object like a dropped knife or a piece of pottery and a click of the stick will throw it at an enemy noggin, stunning them in place (this is a nod to Sifu, the developer told me earlier this year). Even the bulkiest foe stacked with pips can be stunned and then punted with Sophia's kick into one of the island's many mysterious holes.

Sophia herself only ever has three pips of health, but killing an enemy always restores one. It's a forgiving system that lends itself to the sense of pace and momentum Sophia always embodies. She can't take many hits, but plowing through enemies with satisfying, quick finishing moves will always put her back on top. It's a great way to keep melee combat rewarding and approachable without detracting from Resonance's cinematic ambitions, and the sense this adventure is always unfolding at a fast clip.

There are moments I'm reminded Resonance doesn't quite have the massive budget of something like Uncharted 4. While I enjoy each fight, combat areas are often quite basic and static – though I do appreciate a commitment to having lots of pits to kick enemies into. Likewise, only a few areas really have particularly interesting traversal – the grapple is used more as a weapon in combat than it is for exploration, and when it does it's always fairly simple.

Still, it's testament to great design craft that more often than not I'm not thinking about these limitations. Resonance does more than enough with the tools it has to deliver a fantastic treasure hunting adventure, with action and puzzling that escalates and varies enough that I'm always thrilled to be tackling something new as Sophia's quest builds to its inevitable conclusion. More than a detour, Resonance shows just how much more the Plague Tale series and Asobo Studio still have to bring to the table – and I'm more excited than ever before to see what comes next.

Take a look at our best single-player games list for more to play!