Thymesia

Release: 2022

Developer: Overborder Studio

Publisher: Team 17

Gameplay Stats: 12 hours, 20/38 achievements

An indie souls-like that I played for the video game club. Not my pick, but definitely an interesting one.

Aesthetics: The visuals of the game are pretty good. The areas, main character, and some of the enemies fit the game really well. They are interesting and definitely lend to the bleak vibe chosen by the game director. In particular the main character really stands out as having strong design, definitely not a coincidence he's featured heavily on the promotional artwork. His name is Corvus (get it? He has a plague doctor mask which is kinda like a corvid's beak) and he's silent. There were 4 different worlds/areas that you visit and I think they are arranged in descending order of how creative they are. The first one is really strong, it's like Endor mixed with a creepy circus/carnival. The next one is a greenhouse/library which is neat. And then a castle and a flooded birdcage? The music in this game is okay. I didn't notice it while I was playing which means it wasn't a bop but also didn't detract from the experience. The sound effects were odd. They didn't really work very well in my opinion, lots of swooshing instead of what you might expect from swinging a sword/claws.

Plot: You know the secret cure to the plague but you've forgotten! So you have a small alchemist sidekick that helps you relive your memories somehow... It ends up being a menu with kind of a Nioh-style level select. Lots of reused areas that you travel through backwards for no explained reason. In the levels you can find notes from NPCs talking about what they were experiencing while living/dying in the area but they are so heavily redacted that they really only give you vibes? The notes annoyed me so I stopped reading them. The plot was like a weird hazy retelling of some Bloodborne themes looking back on them after a few years. Lots of mentions of different types of blood and transfusions and such. I wouldn't really say the plot gripped me.

Gameplay: This game does shake up the Souls formula a bit, credit where credit is due. The big difference here is the dual health system. You give the enemies "wounds" by parrying or hitting them with your sword. This removes the white health bar and exposes the green one underneath. Then you need to hit enemies with your claws to damage the green "health" bar. The white health bar's maximum is capped by the green health bar and will refill over time unless you hit enemies quickly. I think this sounds interesting in theory, but in practice it made EVERY single enemy feel extremely tank-y since they essentially had twice the amount of health the bar seemed to show. Another issue is that most enemies seem to have super armor through extremely long multi-hit combos. If memory serves the dual swords enemies had like 12 hits in their combo without an opening to counterattack or break them out of it. They would also pirouette on the spot and interrupt your combos frequently. Sneak up to an enemy hoping to complete your combo before they could counterattack? Nah, they spin to face you after you hit them once and then they're locked on to you for the duration of the fight. They will spin to strike at you mid-swing or while winding up an attack. I found it to be frustrating.

Overall I don't think I'd recommend this game unless you are a die hard Souls fan and are running out of the genre to try out. I started playing Lies of P towards the end of my playthrough of Thymesia and it seems like that game took similar inspirations from From Software's games but executed it better. I'd bet that the Lies of P devs took some inspiration/notes from Thymesia to make their game. This game has some interesting concepts but I didn't think that it followed through on them particularly well.