Thymesia – Review
The action RPG Thymesia looks to be yet another grim and gloomy Souls-like. You play a protagonist tasked with ending a dying planet full of corruption, madmen, and monsters. While it shares a lot of DNA with the Souls games and similar titles, if you take away Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s emphasis on navigation, you’ll find that this game more closely resembles Sekiro.
It’s a strong cocktail that, in less capable hands, risks becoming yet another ordinary and dull genre movie. Though it proudly displays its influences, Thymesia stands on its own as a unique experience because to its excellent combat, extensive customization options, and challenging boss battles.
There are three main aspects to the gameplay of Thymesia: attacking, deflecting, and employing Plague weaponry. The act of attacking is simple to define. One can use one of three unlocking combos by pressing the attack button. The deflect mechanic is similarly succinct, especially for Sekiro veterans: press the deflect button at the exact moment an enemy’s attack connects to deflect it and deal the damage to the attacker instead.
All of your adversaries, even the bosses, will have weapons that you can equip with plague weapons. In a nutshell, each type of enemy only employs a single type of weapon, and you can obtain access to that weapon by collecting Skill Shards following their deaths. Each Plague weapon has its own path of upgrades and special effects that make them more effective in certain contexts.
In Thymesia, applying Wounds to an opponent is the sole purpose of attacking, deflecting, and employing Plague weapons. In a nutshell, every foe has white and green health bars. Total health is represented by the white bar. There’s a green Wounds bar underneath it.
After employing Claw strikes to exhaust the white bar, the red Wounds bar will become visible. The opponent will ultimately restore all the green to white if you don’t clear the Wounds bar.
While Thymesia’s Wounds function similarly to Sekiro’s Posture, the bar must be depleted with Claw attacks rather than built up with merely weapon blows. The system is distinct enough from its source material that it never becomes stale, and I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to defeat each new foe.
Thymesian culture places a premium on boldness; defence and caution are more of a means to an end, a means to better understand the environment. Bosses require extra care; at their most hostile, you’ll have to deflect more times than you’ll be able to land a single Claw attack. Like in Sekiro, the key to defeating a monster is to stay in its face the entire time, deflect when you can, and use your Claw attack while the boss is regaining health.
It’s not to be taken lightly to steal from a game as well-crafted as Sekiro. Thymesia does a great job adapting the deflect system to its own mechanics. Souls fans who imagine they can simply drop in and fit right in to life in Thymesia are sorely mistaken. You’ll quickly find out how difficult the game can be if you don’t play it the way the developers intended.
The success or failure of a Souls-like hinges on two things: the quality of the combat and the difficulty of the game’s bosses. I’m pleased to report that Thymesia starts strong, with a formidable first boss that serves as an excellent introduction to the game’s ultimate challenges and a fair test of your abilities.
There isn’t a single manager in Thymesia that I didn’t find interesting because they’re all unique. Some of them move quickly, and keeping up with them requires you to think quickly on your feet. However, others are more about the show than the challenge, and ask you to think outside the box. The few genuinely excellent instances manage to pull off both, with set-piece moments that call for improvisation and innovative thinking just to get through.
Similarly, the limitations Thymesia places on its design are responsible for the high quality on show. You can’t alter Corvus’s arsenal or equip him with special weapons. His primary skills, which include attacking, dodging, and using Plague weaponry, will never change. Modifying his equipment doesn’t fundamentally change how he operates, thus designers have more leeway to craft engaging boss fights.
Is there a Thymesian leader on par with Sword Saint Isshin or Owl (Father)? Not at all, although a handful of them come dangerously close to the watering hole in question. Thymesia’s designers deserve praise for the devilishly difficult final boss, which is well worth the game’s 10–15 hour investment to reach.
Of course there are some problems. One issue that Thymesia and Elden Ring share is that they both have trouble with significant input reading from their more humanoid opponents. Some of the less challenging bosses have weak attacks and boring mechanics, serving only to soak up your health. The most frustrating part isn’t a particularly difficult fight, but rather a level filled with hazards that aren’t especially entertaining.
These problems in no way diminish the entertaining nature of the fights or their spectacular nature. Overall, their presence lowers the quality of the game’s boss battles, but none of them is terrible enough to ruin the experience.
The storytelling and world of Thymesia are its weakest elements, yet these are also the things that make Souls games so beloved. As I progressed through the game, I learned that Thymesia’s level design was a poor imitation of Dark Souls III, despite my initial impressions that it followed the style of Demon’s Souls. The vast majority of stages can be reduced to a network of two or three straight lines meeting at a central location.
Even though each level looks different, it all uses the same boring fantasy cliches and relies on a single colour to distinguish itself. I wish I had more to say, but none of the places I saw left an impression on me.
Both the narrative and its presentation are underwhelming. The history of Thymesia is not told through item descriptions or NPC dialogue, but rather through notes you can find on the floor or tables. I often ignored story windows since I couldn’t figure out what they meant without further information.
I discovered the same trite cliches that can be found in every generic dark fantasy story when I finally got around to reading something. Males are notoriously cruel to one another. The nobility was aware of how dire the situation was but did nothing to help. Do not mess around with abilities you don’t fully understand; even the ones you can control have been corrupted. I could go on and on.
Nothing in the levels does a very good job of setting the scene. The first region is called the Sea of Trees, and it’s supposed to be a carnival that went corrupt due to some shady experiments. The typical elements of a carnival are present, although they are difficult to make out due to the overwhelming presence of brown.
The early levels and side quests of Thymesia have a typical difficulty curve, but the late game becomes much easier once you’ve upgraded your Potion healing items and mastered the deflect mechanic.
The first boss, Odur, was a huge test of my abilities, and I killed dozens of times to him. It only took me two or three tries to beat the last few bosses, not because they were fun or well-designed or easy, but because I was so well-equipped and protected that I could afford to make mistakes without suffering dire consequences.
There are countless options in the character’s Strategies tree to counteract deadly strikes and save yourself from otherwise hopeless situations. Having a fully upgraded Potion makes dealing with any difficulty much less intimidating because you can restore your health and get back into the fight in a matter of seconds.
Thymesia’s difficulty depends in part on how much time and effort you put into it. If you try to rush through the main campaign without seeing anything beyond the primary quest, you will face a much harder task than if you take your time and discover what the game has to offer. On the flip side, this is a game that truly rewards mastery, and there is no greater feeling than dispatching a particularly difficult boss or foe without resorting to a single heal. To locate the good material, you may have to wade through some filler now and then, but when you do, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Also, the music in Thymesia is quite solid, so there’s no need to go on a search for it. The game isn’t quite as good as the main Souls titles, but it’s miles ahead of anything else in the genre. Even though none of the songs will stick out, they do a good job of setting the mood for each level and complementing the events that occur within it.
One of the best Souls clones that wasn’t developed by FromSoftware is Thymesia. In addition, it confidently embraces its influences while forging its own identity within them. It’s not flawless; in fact, the game’s strongest features (narrative and level design) are also its worst; nonetheless, the game makes up for its flaws with excellent boss fights and realistic combat.
If you’ve had your fill of Elden Ring and are searching for a compact yet satisfying alternative, this game offers a variety of satisfying conclusions for fans of the Souls series.
