This is one of those instances, where Steam should have a "mediocre" button. And not because Thymesia is uninspired or average in the majority of gameplay. Quite the contrary — it's a polished, well made game, but unfortunately it also has some design mistakes and flaws that kills a lot of fun when playing. The good things barely outweigh bad ones.
I begin the tutorial level with the expectation of Thymesia being just another soul-like. Then I started noticing things — why the hell my dodge is so short and have practically zero I-frames (with not entirely true, but hey, that was my first impression), why my parry don’t make enemies open to riposte, why they have infinite poise? And then I realized — this game is not souls like.
It's Sekiro-like. And as a person whose favorite FromSoft game is Sekiro, this picked my interest almost immediately. And if you wonder, what’s the difference, then let me explain to you, my sweet pumpkin pie. Souls-like gameplay is slower, more reactionary (with mean — you mostly respond to enemies moves, waiting for openings and gaps in their defence) and your primary way to avoid getting hit is by dodging and counting on your i-frames. In sekiro-like YOU DO NOT DODGE. That is the most important rule — do not try to move away. Instead stand your ground, face the enemy, parry their attacks. Timing is crucial and hesitation is defeat.
So, how well all of this works in Thymesia? Well, unfortunately, not quite. And the devil is in the details — all the flaws slowly creep in, raising your frustration levels gradually, like when you boil living frogs, so initially you will think that the game is quite okay. But then, at some point… To create good sekiro-like combat you need three things: consistency, precision and responsiveness. I cannot say anything bad about the first one — I was consistently smacked in the face on almost every occasion. But precision and responsiveness… When you press your block button, you need to be damn sure that your character animation will connect with enemy’ attack in a sensible manner. And I will die on the hill that there is something wrong with these principles here — some of the animations are misleading, vide tentacle attacks of the Mutated Odur boss. You press the block, see hitboxes that should connect, but it’s wrong, the attack still hits you for some reason. There is also this feeling of your block being weirdly delayed — basically every time when your brain yells “PRESS THE BUTTON RIGHT NOW!!!!” you need to fight the urge and add like 0.5 second of delay, or it will be too early. There was multiple instances when I was trying to block the attack just to fail doing it, and telling to myself “Well, in Sekiro it would connect”
Another thing that defines Sekiro combat is aggressiveness — you definitely cannot wait for enemies to end their combo, you must take initiative and start putting pressure on them. You see an opening, you attack, put enemies into defence, and finally break their stance. This will totally not work in Thymesia. Firstly, there is no stance here, enemies will not even try to defend themself, they just tank all the damage. Secondly, breaking their posture is incredibly hard and it will stun them maybe for a few frames, which is not enough to regain control over the battlefield or kill them. So YOU MUST WAIT FOR THEIR ATTACKS.
But hey! There is more! Every — and I mean it! — every enemy has delayed attack. ALL OF THEM. From simple axemen from tutorial level to end game minibosses, they all have delayed attacks that love to abuse. And you know, they are not bad when used sporadically, but holy heck, it is annoying when you build combat around it. A good example is a footman with sword and shield from the Royal Garden area — his basic moveset is a three hit combo, all of his attacks are delayed. Combine this with inability to break their posture and you have a recipe for disaster — you cannot be aggressive, because they don’t give a damn about damage, they will tank it, so you must wait. And wait. And wait even more until they decide to attack, because when you try to do it, you won’t have enough time to execute a block. In some cases I was literally standing in front of the enemy, waiting patiently for them to do something. This game takes combat from Sekiro and tries to combine it with enemies from souls games, creating only frustrating experiences. Riveting gameplay.
And then occasionally the game decides to do 180 and pivots to ultra-violence. In Sekiro if you get hit, you can almost always roll over or start to “wiggle” your sword to catch some attack, for the price of losing a big chunk of posture. Not in Thymesia — every time you posture brakes, it's basically saying goodbye to ⅔ of your health, because recovering takes an ungodly amount of time, thanks to long-ass animation. The best example of this is when fighting the final boss — he has two sets of 5 or 6 hit combos, if you get caught by the second or third attack in the row, it’s basically over, you will tank every next hit. Why, why is this game sometimes so unresponsive?
Okay, okay, okay, we talk enough about core mechanics. What the hell is this game even about? To be honest I didn’t pay attention at all, because this is yet another instance of creating a vague storyline for the sake of being hard to follow and understand. All you need to know, you are a dude named Corvus (Nevermore, Mr Poe, Nevermore), you look like a plague doctor, and there is — yes, you guessed it — a plague that turns people into monsters. But it’s not something unique or worth remembering at all, just another fantasy story set in a decaying, slowly rotting world. One thing worth mentioning is that this game have no voice acting at all — normally it’s not a problem, I don’t have this hilarious irrational fear of reading like the majority of gamers has, but in this instance is could help, because bosses love to talk while fighting, and there is no chance that I will focus on some text instead of trying avoid getting killed.
Now, let’s talk a little about character progression. You only have 3 stats in this game: Strength (for damage), vitality (for health) and plague (for your special abilities), but the max level is 50, so your stat distribution always will be similar to builds of other players. Up to level 25 you also gain talent points, which you can spend on 6 different skill trees — and this is the bread and butter of building Corvus abilities. Some of them are more obvious to choose — like better damage (with is super important, because you cannot upgrade your main weapon at all) or longer dodge (with still have very little I-frames), some make your parry window longer, in exchange of less damage or allow to gain more energy with attacks. What is more important — you can swap them without additional cost at any checkpoint, and with this, adapt to any challenges. And you should do this, especially when facing bosses — changing my loadout was make or break in more than one instance. But I think restricting talent only to 25 points is a bad idea, because it steals fun from developing our character. What do I need to do to fight enemies when I reach level cap, I just go and run past them.
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