Thymesia review, Today we will review this new souls like game. In this review we will give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinions about the Thymesia game. So without waisting any time let’s get started.
Some basics about the game, Thymesia is developed by Overboarder Studios.
It’s $30 U.S. and it’s another souls like, yes, but it’s a pretty cool one. Now this game takes place in like a plague-ridden type of kingdom and it’s a mysterious place built into this huge tree and you play as Corvus.
This incredibly awesome-looking character is stricken with amnesia.
And the main goal is to acquire all the cores and find a cure for this deadly plague that is destroying everything.
Thymesia review: Gameplay
Like many souls like games, the story here is vague. They drop you into this world and expect you to figure it out.
We’ll get more into that later, but gameplay-wise, in our opinion the combat mechanics are definitely the major highlight of the game.
On the surface, it plays like a standard soul like but when you hit an enemy, some green remains on their health bar.
That’s their quote-unquote “wounds” and the only way to kill regular enemies and bosses is to drain both their white health meter and their green wounds meter.
However, if you wait too long with a wounded enemy, it’ll eventually restore all of its lost health.
So you have to keep the pressure up by attacking or using feather darts that don’t do too much damage but can interrupt critical attacks and interrupt their healing.
When you only have your standard sword as a weapon, you can mix up your arsenal with plague weapons.
Which can be stolen from enemies with this special reeve attack or permanently unlock using shards dropped by enemies.
These permanent plague weapons can be pretty further upgraded. And while the ones you reeve from enemies are single use the ones you unlock cost this energy instead that you burn.
Now, it’s a fun system that it encourages you to steal powers from every enemy you find.
Types of Enemies
The only disappointing thing is the relative lack of enemy variety, which kind of affects the overall experience.
But there’s still a decent collection of powers to unlock.
The powers and plague weapons, the green and white, and the management kind of provide a nice shakeup dynamic.
You know, it makes you think slightly differently than your average “Soulsborne.”
Sometimes enemies will get too far from where they started and their health will refill, it’s kind of frustrating.
It felt kind of like BS sometimes to me. But, I don’t know, most people who like these games are masochists so it’s not really that big of a deal right? Now, the way death and the XP loop work is essentially memory is interrupted and then converted into memory shards.
You get memory shards for killing enemies, which you then spend to level up.
Now, if you die, of course, You could fight back to where you died and then pick them back up again.
And along with that, you have a bonfire system, here called beacons, that does exactly what you’d expect.
Along with a safe haven hub area, you can return to between missions that don’t really offer much, but hey, it’s there.
Thymesia review: How to level up
Leveling up is straightforward as hell.
There are only three attributes. There’s strength, vitality, and plague.
And they’re pretty self-explanatory, so there’s not really too much room for screwing up.
Still, I do like that they have respect items that you can collect if you ever just wanna start over from scratch, you know? Simplicity is not a bad thing by any means.
After grinding so many RPGs lately, you’re probably in the same boat. Like it’s just refreshing to have a good, simple, progressive system, less focused on intensely unique builds and more on just a few solid, good avenues to go down.
You can also unlock talents to expand your attacks. This reminds me of “Sekiro” more than any “Souls” game.
I mean, straight up, there’s a Mikiri Counter style attack and just the way all the combat flows, yeah.
But talent-wise, certain ones are clearly way better than others.
And you might end up sticking to the same, but still, you’re free to learn and unlearn talents whenever you want. So you can experiment with your build, which again is a refreshing change.
You know, the respecting and relearning stuff all adds up to a really good amount of player choice. Considering, as I said, you’re not making drastically different character types.
The wiggle room to mess around is still good.
Combat Mechanics
Now, all in all, you may have already heard this elsewhere, but it’s true, the combat does feel like a mash-up of “Bloodborne” and “Sekiro.” which introduces some awkwardness into some things.
You know, for us the deflect move feels a bit finicky and you might end up just kind of defaulting to dodging everything when you can get away with it the game becomes much easier.
Also worth noting, there are sub-quests you can access from the map that takes you to bite-size sections of previous areas where you can gain experience and collect some more items.
Now, these are also necessary to get the best ending in the game.
If this is your type of thing. You can rush through the game pretty quickly, but certain endings only become available once you fully explore the world and find these story clues that can give you greater insight into what your goal in the game really even is.
Even if you don’t totally care about the story, You know, it didn’t grip us the most.
It is good for injecting some emphasis into a little bit of replayability. Oh, and the bosses are all pretty fun.
Even if they’re not all the most challenging.
In our experience, this game doesn’t feel quite as tough as other “Souls” style games.
Boss Fights
You know, it does take a little bit to get accustomed to the flow of the combat, but once you do it’s pretty simple and straightforward, like I said at the start, you know? The first real boss is the one that was really one of the few roadblocks.
Mostly because I was still getting used to how the game played.
Whether intentionally designed or not, that first boss is kind of one of the big teaching moments.
I think really the best thing about the combat, which again is probably the best thing about the game, is the rhythm of damaging enemies with standard attacks and then draining their wounds with the claw attacks is very satisfying.
You could tell that they put a lot of time into getting the combat right here.
And in our opinion, it feels better to just play than a majority of some of the other soul-like games out there, excluding the big ones like “Neo.”
Now, this is just a fun and intuitive system.
Everything else just feels kind of adequate, you know? Definitely not bad, but not super compelling and ultra memorable, and it doesn’t have a ton of charm.
You know, the enemy types, as we said, aren’t much to write home about. Some of the bosses are cool, and some of them aren’t.
Most of them aren’t the most challenging.
Thymesia review: Environment Visuals
The environment’s eh. A little dull around the edges here, especially considering the fact that it’s based on this whole cool plague world, there’s definitely kind of been a bit more for us.
Just more atmosphere overall we would’ve loved to see.
And the game is fairly short, you know, with only a few small-ish main areas. As we said, you are gonna want to collect all the extra stuff to get the real ending.
But it depends on how much you care about the story. And if you like the combat enough to really dive into that replayability.
To be honest, we’re always down for other souls like style games, this newer genre is pretty awesome.
And this one is fun to dive into, But if you’re looking for the next big thing with this style of game or a really big refresh, I don’t think you’re gonna get that here.
Thymesia review: Conclusion
It wasn’t quite what I wanted. Like, it didn’t totally fill in the gap. You know, that hole in my heart that is missing a “Bloodborne 2” I was hoping another developer would come and do it.
And this looked like that, it’s not quite the case, but it’s still a decent playthrough. If you’re looking for something like “Elden Ring” no, just no.
But if you like a straightforward standard soul-like RPG combat experience for half the full price, or even if you get it on sale, it might be worth checking out if you’re an enthusiast.
So that is your Thymesia Review and those were some pros, some cons, and some personal opinions.
And now we want to hear yours. Have you jumped into this game on day one? Did you blast through it as we did? What do you think of the combat? Are you also more intrigued by Corvus and the story and the world? It kind of bounced right off of us, but if you feel differently, definitely let us know. Let’s talk about any of this stuff regarding the game down in the comments.
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