Thymesia Review

 We have Sekiro at home, but in this case that's a good thing.

An ambitious indie title, Thymesia is easiest described as a carbon-coby of fromsoftwares style of Souls-like. Taking the most influence from Sekiro but as a whole a clear love-letter to their design philosophies and gameplay tropes. Enemies move with the same intent and wind-up as Elden Ring and the dodges and amount of time you're locked into an attack is almost immediately familiar to any Sekiro player.

The game is not long, but that's to it's benefit. It's genuinely amazing to me that an Indie team was able to put as much polish and love into a combat system as Fromsoftware has. When you consider how many clones have tried and failed from larger studios, to take nothing but the right lessons from every existing example of the genre and put it together into a game without major flaws or issue? That's a huge boon to the game and genuinely the reason I am going to come out of this review recommending it.

It wouldn't be my first choice for a souls-like for someone to play. In fact, I think I would explicitly only say it's worth playing if you finished either Sekiro or Bloodborne and immediately wanted more. The difficulty curve is a bit of a brick wall and it definitely feels like there's expectations that some would be familiar with the tropes of the genre.

But Faris, you spent the whole review talking about how wonderful it is for a game to nail the souls-like gameplay. What about Thymesia's unique gameplay aspects, like the two hit health system for enemies or the stealing weapons?

Umm, I'll be real with you I went through the entire game parrying and clawing. 80% of my levelups went to claw damage and the talent points all went into that and parrying. I couldn't speak on them even if I did think of something worth saying. But damn was this a fun game to parry through.

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