Before you start
There is one autosave and no manual saves, but six profile slots, one per playthrough. Difficulty can be changed at any time, and no achievement depends on it. The one thing to watch from the first chapter is the Resonance Points: they pay for every skill, and they do not carry over when you replay a chapter.
Fighting
🛡️ Parry and deflect
Enemies carry a stagger bar that fills as you deflect their combos. A clean parry plays a chime and stuns the attacker. Attacks that glow red are the heavy ones a Brute throws in a rage.
🦶 The kick
A kick staggers enemies, makes shield-bearers drop their guard and can push anyone off a ledge or into spikes. It is a real alternative to mastering the parry timing.
✨ Critical strikes
Hold the attack to charge a glowing heavy blow that does more damage. Parries and critical strikes also fill the Focus gauge next to your health.
⛓️ Focus attacks
Unlocked in Chapter IV. With the gauge full, press the two buttons together and Sophia swings a chain around her, hitting everything close. It also breaks a grab.
🍾 Throwables and knives
Bottles and other objects lying around stun whoever they hit, in stealth or mid-fight. Knives on the ground, or dropped by enemies, can be thrown at archers.
🪝 The grapnel
Given to you in Chapter II. It climbs walls, swings across gaps, pulls down barricades and drags archers off their perches.
Who you fight
- Soldiers and archers — The army and the rival plunderers chasing the same treasure. Archers shoot from high positions.
- Brutes — Bigger soldiers with a club or mace and red, glowing attacks. In a rage they can hit their own side.
- Puppets — Heavily armoured enemies (the achievements call them the Corrupted). Knock the head off and aim the sphere's beam at what is exposed; they can grab you.
- The Petrified — Stone-like figures woken by the sound of your footsteps and destroyed by light.
- The creature — A huge worm-like monster that chases you through much of the game. You survive it by running, jumping gaps and reaching the safety of light, not by fighting.
The sphere and the puzzles
Sophia's stolen Minoan sphere bends light. Most of the island's puzzles ask you to shine it, rotate coloured lights until they match the gems on a bull pillar, reflect a beam off a mirror, or stand on floor symbols in the right order. It reveals hidden messages, burns away the white dust that blocks some passages, and is upgraded several times; in Chapter X it learns the Light Concentrate, a burning beam. Pillars and monuments topped with a skull mark the Heroes' Graves that hold most of the blades, and many open only once you solve a light puzzle at a bull pillar. Your notebook holds the clues, and hints can be switched off or set to one of three timings.
Growing stronger
| What | How it works |
|---|---|
| Skills | Six mastery branches of three skills each, bought from the Sophia menu. Every skill you buy raises the price of the rest: buying all 18 costs 165 points. |
| Resonance Points | The skill currency. Each glimmering white pickup in the world is one point, and some fights award more. There are 200 in the game, so you can miss 35. They only save at the next checkpoint and do not carry over through chapter select. |
| Charms | 30 of them: 25 in small chests, and five from Theseus' Echoes, the axe chalices. Sophia wears them, and each type gives a passive bonus, such as a longer parry window or better critical hits, that grows the more of that type you own. |
| Blades | Eight swords, most from Heroes' Graves. Each changes how Sophia fights, from bleeding to stuns to stronger parries. You switch blades in the Sophia menu, never mid-fight. |
Difficulty
- Five levels — From Narrative, which focuses on story and exploration and parries and dodges for you, through Normal, to Nightmare, where enemies are at their most aggressive and resistant. The official accessibility table lists them as Story, Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard.
- Invincible Mode — A separate on/off switch under Settings, General.
- Achievements — None needs a particular difficulty. Two combat achievements are reported to unlock more reliably on Nightmare with Invincible Mode on; see the Achievement Roadmap.
Accessibility
🗂️ One Accessibility tab
Asobo and Focus put every option in a single menu tab, with features carried over from Requiem and new ones added.
🌓 High Contrast mode
Highlights the objects and characters you can interact with.
🎨 Colour-blind options
Presets for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia, or fully custom colours, previewed live, for the sphere's lights, combat UI, health bar, effects, HUD and puzzles.
🎮 Motor options
Joystick swap, hold or toggle for sprint, walk, the sphere and special interactions, automatic quick interactions, an automated grappling hook, aim assist and adjustable vibration. There are no quick-time events.
💬 Subtitles and camera
Subtitle size, colour, names and background; steady camera, camera assistance, motion blur from none to ultra, and brightness.
🩸 Blood off
A sensitive-content switch removes blood completely.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 7 October 2026, and re-checked on 9 October 2026, against Asobo and Focus's Accessibility Features post on Steam (24 August 2026), the Steam store page, Xbox Wire's developer interview (20 August 2026), PowerPyx's trophy guide and collectible guides (26 August 2026), IGN's collectibles hub (27 August 2026), PC Gamer's review by Jody Macgregor (1 September 2026), SPACE4GAMES' guide hub, blade guide and review by Josef Erl, Vandal's skills and charms pages, and EliteGuias' difficulty, skills, charms and Theseus' Echoes pages. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it, and what the sources do not describe is not on this page.