It's a very decent soulslike game but it's smaller as a production and size compared to the games you mention. You could try Lords of the Fallen too, which is massive and very good.

The bosses are really high quality. When you master the game's mechanics, you can enter a similar flow state as the one you have when fighting sekiro's bosses (genichiro, ishin,...). The level design is lackluster in my opinion, but the place where this game shines is in combat mechanics, the customization of your special attacks, mini bosses and bosses. So if this what you enjoy from souls like games, I'd say take the plunge

Its pretty fun ngl

In case you're still interested, this was the review I posted today after beating the game and getting all endings.

TLDR - This game will will either send you back to play Dark Souls or Sekiro, but still a nice experience. 6/10

For all of the glaring flaws of this game, there are some very nice ideas that helps Thymesia stand apart from other souls-like games. I would say it's worth getting on a good sale, but don't expect the polish of a Fromsoft game.

Thymesia has a handful of mechanics brought in from prior souls-like games and Fromsoft titles. The way such ideas have been implemented was actually quite refreshing where you could play this game like Dark Souls with a dodge-focused build, you could play like Sekiro with a parry-focused build, or a hybrid. Enemies have two health bars that can be seen as recoverable armor and true health. Having the ability to focus your damage on exposed health with 6 different ways to dish out damage kept the game fresh. Despite having so many methods - primary sword, claws, one-time ability, mana-based ability, ranged, and parrying - the feel and flow worked very well. After an hour, I was able to seamlessly weave in the different attack types without issue or confusion.

The strength of this game falls into the regular world and replaying levels from my perspective. There were a few memorable boss fights, but I found most of the bosses janky, forgettable, gimmicky. I'll focus on that later. The regular world had several mini-bosses that posed decent threats with a rewarding challenge. Most enemy placement felt like a good challenge without being cheap or too reliant on ganks/ambushes.

Let's get to the real gem of this game. Your Reave abilities or plague weapons. Despite not being able to change your primary weapon, you have a good degree of versatility by having the ability to change your plague weapons at any resting point. Although their strength is tied loosely to specific level thresholds, every single one is viable regardless of where you invest your leveling points. Ideally, these should be changed and swapped out depending on the challenge of that map, mini-boss, or boss that you're facing. In reality, you can simply identify your favorite and use that through the game, but it could create more challenging hurdles than necessary. There is so much potential with these plague weapons and this game just scratches the surface. Even so, what they implemented feels great.

In terms of game difficulty, it falls on the easier side for a souls veteran. Mind you, there is only your own skill to rely on when facing the game's challenges. There are no player summons or NPC summons. It's you against the boss. If you're used to facing such challenges solo, you'll breeze through the game pretty quickly. If you are used to other things pulling the boss' aggro, you may be in for a greater challenge. From my experience, there wasn't a single boss that kept me stuck for more than 20 minutes.

This is, again, a time when I wish Steam allowed for a mixed review. Forced with a binary choice of "yes" or "no" on a recommendation, I fall towards "yes. But this game has flaws that can become quite frustrating.

When bosses become difficult, it is more frustrating and annoying than challenging. Being a short game, there aren't many bosses to pull from as an example. However, having bosses as a weak point in a souls-like game is a tragedy. And bosses are a weak point in my opinion here. The first real boss you face, and the end boss for chapter 1 were the best and gave such hope for a great experience. Then it all went downhill. There are numerous hitboxes that are inaccurate to the visuals (problem in the regular world as well). The boss animation tends to be quite subtle for each move where it's hard to tell what is even happening. Specifically with Urd, so many of her attacks look the same but have different timings and combos. On top of that, there are effects that obscure your ability to see what's happened. Your parry creates massive sparks making quick follow-up attacks tricky to identify. Urd's attacks have this magical cone around her weapon obscuring her movements. Lastly, the character models seem quite small. I'm unsure if the FOV is too far out or this was just the intent but humanoid enemies (the majority of enemies) can be difficult to read as their models are small.

The graphics are weird. I don't mean performance; the game ran very smoothly for me. I mean the motion blur and bloom appeared to be dialed to 11. I didn't see an option to turn off motion blur sadly and it even made me a little nauseous at times - I almost always play with blur off and bloom low. These effects also contributed to my prior complaint about it being difficult to see what the enemy characters are doing.

The subtleties in this game were a little too subtle, and the story was too generic to care. Unless I'm missing something, the story was extremely bland. There's a plague, it creates monsters, but some also become superhumans. I don't mind a souls-like being bland in the story, but there are around 100 pieces of lore to find. Hidden within that lore, there are secrets to unlocking certain endings as well as identifying buffs for your character. I went the entire game without using or discovering recipes, which are quite powerful. The game intended for you to find pieces of paper that told/hinted at certain combinations that would create effects greater than the sum of the elements used. In finding these hints, they are not logged under "recipes". You need to discover the combination first and it will then be logged. In my checking from time to time to see if I picked up a recipe, I always found that page blank and didn't care enough to investigate. That is partially on me, I will admit. But the game could have encouraged the player to experiment and make these discoveries. Or they could have made an interesting story where I actually wanted to read all the lore I picked up. Similarly, if you didn't read, you won't know what combination of items to use at the end to unlock special endings.

There are no voice-overs. Everything is done in text. I don't particularly mind this, but the implementation of this is silly. We have a souls-like that have no audible voices where the boss says things to you in a boss fight. When you're supposed to be watching the subtleties of the boss' actions, I don't want to be distracted by a shadowed area appearing at the bottom of my screen with text. It's a small distraction but I found it annoying.

The last thing I will say is that this game is extremely short. I have 14.5 hours on record, got all 5 endings (you can do this in a single playthrough) and finished all missions. I also left my game on pause for a few hours. I anticipate that the real time is closer to 9-10 hours of actual gameplay. If you were to ignore the option sub-missions, I wouldn't be surprised if you could start a new game and see the credits within 4 or 5 hours.

This game has some shining moments with originality and re-imagined mechanics. It has potential, but needed more time in the oven. When the bosses are a weak point in a souls-like, I don't think there's any way to get a better rating than "mediocre". It had its fun moments, but this is very much a one-and-done game from my perspective. Between frustrating designs, poor hitboxes, obscure mechanics, and a very short experience, I would put this game at a 6/10.

Great combat, acceptable exploration, low enemy variety, and most bosses are great as well.
Game is short tho, but it's an overall very solid experience

is 1 year supposed to be a long time? did gaming change so much since 2022 that games that were good a year ago aren't good now?

Thymesia is quite fun but it is pretty short.

Just finished the game. It was a great distraction with fresh ideas. It only lasted for 6 hours. I think that when it goes to £10 again it will be a definite yes on recommending it.

Thymesia has one of the most underrated combat systems of all time. The depth of variety cannot be overstated. I like the mix-and-match approach to weapons that Lies of P offers, but Thymesia bosses feel like fighting game characters. Enemy variety is lacking, but boss move sets are actually super fleshed out.

You get 7-ish default moves to choose from when engaging combat:
Saber eats armor; Claws eat health; Parry deflects predictable damage; Feathers are for countering critical attacks, and keeping enemies from healing; Dodge keeps you mobile; Healing is HIGHLY customizable and self-explanatory as a mechanic; and your Plague Weapon delivers the switch ups, while greatly increasing the diversity and depth to combat.

The plague weapons all bring something different to the table. I personally used the scythe because it heals you- allowing for some seriously aggressive and risky plays. Shout out to the exploding javelin and the twin blades.

The only problem with this game is that there isn't more of it. The story elements feel unfinished and half baked, the reward for exploration is usually just more reading, and the whole game will take you like 10-15 hours to beat; ~20 hours to 100% if you're taking your time.

That's why it's dead. It's the kind of game you beat and move on from. Lies of P is also like this, but Lies of P is a bigger game that was designed with at least a little bit of replayability in mind.

But please, I'm begging everybody who might read this- don't sleep on Thymesia's combat. I want this level of depth to be standard in all soulslikes. Lies of P is the better, more finished game. But Thymesia is absolutely worth the play if you're looking to scratch the itch of 'walk around and hit things'.

Just make sure it's on sale for less than $15.

Originally posted by Krazy Wallet:

In case you're still interested, this was the review I posted today after beating the game and getting all endings.

TLDR - This game will will either send you back to play Dark Souls or Sekiro, but still a nice experience. 6/10

For all of the glaring flaws of this game, there are some very nice ideas that helps Thymesia stand apart from other souls-like games. I would say it's worth getting on a good sale, but don't expect the polish of a Fromsoft game.

The Good

Thymesia has a handful of mechanics brought in from prior souls-like games and Fromsoft titles. The way such ideas have been implemented was actually quite refreshing where you could play this game like Dark Souls with a dodge-focused build, you could play like Sekiro with a parry-focused build, or a hybrid. Enemies have two health bars that can be seen as recoverable armor and true health. Having the ability to focus your damage on exposed health with 6 different ways to dish out damage kept the game fresh. Despite having so many methods - primary sword, claws, one-time ability, mana-based ability, ranged, and parrying - the feel and flow worked very well. After an hour, I was able to seamlessly weave in the different attack types without issue or confusion.

The strength of this game falls into the regular world and replaying levels from my perspective. There were a few memorable boss fights, but I found most of the bosses janky, forgettable, gimmicky. I'll focus on that later. The regular world had several mini-bosses that posed decent threats with a rewarding challenge. Most enemy placement felt like a good challenge without being cheap or too reliant on ganks/ambushes.

Let's get to the real gem of this game. Your Reave abilities or plague weapons. Despite not being able to change your primary weapon, you have a good degree of versatility by having the ability to change your plague weapons at any resting point. Although their strength is tied loosely to specific level thresholds, every single one is viable regardless of where you invest your leveling points. Ideally, these should be changed and swapped out depending on the challenge of that map, mini-boss, or boss that you're facing. In reality, you can simply identify your favorite and use that through the game, but it could create more challenging hurdles than necessary. There is so much potential with these plague weapons and this game just scratches the surface. Even so, what they implemented feels great.

In terms of game difficulty, it falls on the easier side for a souls veteran. Mind you, there is only your own skill to rely on when facing the game's challenges. There are no player summons or NPC summons. It's you against the boss. If you're used to facing such challenges solo, you'll breeze through the game pretty quickly. If you are used to other things pulling the boss' aggro, you may be in for a greater challenge. From my experience, there wasn't a single boss that kept me stuck for more than 20 minutes.

The Bad

This is, again, a time when I wish Steam allowed for a mixed review. Forced with a binary choice of "yes" or "no" on a recommendation, I fall towards "yes. But this game has flaws that can become quite frustrating.

When bosses become difficult, it is more frustrating and annoying than challenging. Being a short game, there aren't many bosses to pull from as an example. However, having bosses as a weak point in a souls-like game is a tragedy. And bosses are a weak point in my opinion here. The first real boss you face, and the end boss for chapter 1 were the best and gave such hope for a great experience. Then it all went downhill. There are numerous hitboxes that are inaccurate to the visuals (problem in the regular world as well). The boss animation tends to be quite subtle for each move where it's hard to tell what is even happening. Specifically with Urd, so many of her attacks look the same but have different timings and combos. On top of that, there are effects that obscure your ability to see what's happened. Your parry creates massive sparks making quick follow-up attacks tricky to identify. Urd's attacks have this magical cone around her weapon obscuring her movements. Lastly, the character models seem quite small. I'm unsure if the FOV is too far out or this was just the intent but humanoid enemies (the majority of enemies) can be difficult to read as their models are small.

The graphics are weird. I don't mean performance; the game ran very smoothly for me. I mean the motion blur and bloom appeared to be dialed to 11. I didn't see an option to turn off motion blur sadly and it even made me a little nauseous at times - I almost always play with blur off and bloom low. These effects also contributed to my prior complaint about it being difficult to see what the enemy characters are doing.

The subtleties in this game were a little too subtle, and the story was too generic to care. Unless I'm missing something, the story was extremely bland. There's a plague, it creates monsters, but some also become superhumans. I don't mind a souls-like being bland in the story, but there are around 100 pieces of lore to find. Hidden within that lore, there are secrets to unlocking certain endings as well as identifying buffs for your character. I went the entire game without using or discovering recipes, which are quite powerful. The game intended for you to find pieces of paper that told/hinted at certain combinations that would create effects greater than the sum of the elements used. In finding these hints, they are not logged under "recipes". You need to discover the combination first and it will then be logged. In my checking from time to time to see if I picked up a recipe, I always found that page blank and didn't care enough to investigate. That is partially on me, I will admit. But the game could have encouraged the player to experiment and make these discoveries. Or they could have made an interesting story where I actually wanted to read all the lore I picked up. Similarly, if you didn't read, you won't know what combination of items to use at the end to unlock special endings.

There are no voice-overs. Everything is done in text. I don't particularly mind this, but the implementation of this is silly. We have a souls-like that have no audible voices where the boss says things to you in a boss fight. When you're supposed to be watching the subtleties of the boss' actions, I don't want to be distracted by a shadowed area appearing at the bottom of my screen with text. It's a small distraction but I found it annoying.

The last thing I will say is that this game is extremely short. I have 14.5 hours on record, got all 5 endings (you can do this in a single playthrough) and finished all missions. I also left my game on pause for a few hours. I anticipate that the real time is closer to 9-10 hours of actual gameplay. If you were to ignore the option sub-missions, I wouldn't be surprised if you could start a new game and see the credits within 4 or 5 hours.

Conclusion

This game has some shining moments with originality and re-imagined mechanics. It has potential, but needed more time in the oven. When the bosses are a weak point in a souls-like, I don't think there's any way to get a better rating than "mediocre". It had its fun moments, but this is very much a one-and-done game from my perspective. Between frustrating designs, poor hitboxes, obscure mechanics, and a very short experience, I would put this game at a 6/10.

most of the stuff you listed in bad seems a bit overstated

relative to something like sekiro, i'd give it a 7/10

relative to most of the dumpster fires being released over the years, i'd give it an 8.5/10

the combat really shines. it's just a shame that the game doesn't give you enough variety for it to shine against

Originally posted by tewi:

Originally posted by Krazy Wallet:

In case you're still interested, this was the review I posted today after beating the game and getting all endings.

TLDR - This game will will either send you back to play Dark Souls or Sekiro, but still a nice experience. 6/10

For all of the glaring flaws of this game, there are some very nice ideas that helps Thymesia stand apart from other souls-like games. I would say it's worth getting on a good sale, but don't expect the polish of a Fromsoft game.

The Good

Thymesia has a handful of mechanics brought in from prior souls-like games and Fromsoft titles. The way such ideas have been implemented was actually quite refreshing where you could play this game like Dark Souls with a dodge-focused build, you could play like Sekiro with a parry-focused build, or a hybrid. Enemies have two health bars that can be seen as recoverable armor and true health. Having the ability to focus your damage on exposed health with 6 different ways to dish out damage kept the game fresh. Despite having so many methods - primary sword, claws, one-time ability, mana-based ability, ranged, and parrying - the feel and flow worked very well. After an hour, I was able to seamlessly weave in the different attack types without issue or confusion.

The strength of this game falls into the regular world and replaying levels from my perspective. There were a few memorable boss fights, but I found most of the bosses janky, forgettable, gimmicky. I'll focus on that later. The regular world had several mini-bosses that posed decent threats with a rewarding challenge. Most enemy placement felt like a good challenge without being cheap or too reliant on ganks/ambushes.

Let's get to the real gem of this game. Your Reave abilities or plague weapons. Despite not being able to change your primary weapon, you have a good degree of versatility by having the ability to change your plague weapons at any resting point. Although their strength is tied loosely to specific level thresholds, every single one is viable regardless of where you invest your leveling points. Ideally, these should be changed and swapped out depending on the challenge of that map, mini-boss, or boss that you're facing. In reality, you can simply identify your favorite and use that through the game, but it could create more challenging hurdles than necessary. There is so much potential with these plague weapons and this game just scratches the surface. Even so, what they implemented feels great.

In terms of game difficulty, it falls on the easier side for a souls veteran. Mind you, there is only your own skill to rely on when facing the game's challenges. There are no player summons or NPC summons. It's you against the boss. If you're used to facing such challenges solo, you'll breeze through the game pretty quickly. If you are used to other things pulling the boss' aggro, you may be in for a greater challenge. From my experience, there wasn't a single boss that kept me stuck for more than 20 minutes.

The Bad

This is, again, a time when I wish Steam allowed for a mixed review. Forced with a binary choice of "yes" or "no" on a recommendation, I fall towards "yes. But this game has flaws that can become quite frustrating.

When bosses become difficult, it is more frustrating and annoying than challenging. Being a short game, there aren't many bosses to pull from as an example. However, having bosses as a weak point in a souls-like game is a tragedy. And bosses are a weak point in my opinion here. The first real boss you face, and the end boss for chapter 1 were the best and gave such hope for a great experience. Then it all went downhill. There are numerous hitboxes that are inaccurate to the visuals (problem in the regular world as well). The boss animation tends to be quite subtle for each move where it's hard to tell what is even happening. Specifically with Urd, so many of her attacks look the same but have different timings and combos. On top of that, there are effects that obscure your ability to see what's happened. Your parry creates massive sparks making quick follow-up attacks tricky to identify. Urd's attacks have this magical cone around her weapon obscuring her movements. Lastly, the character models seem quite small. I'm unsure if the FOV is too far out or this was just the intent but humanoid enemies (the majority of enemies) can be difficult to read as their models are small.

The graphics are weird. I don't mean performance; the game ran very smoothly for me. I mean the motion blur and bloom appeared to be dialed to 11. I didn't see an option to turn off motion blur sadly and it even made me a little nauseous at times - I almost always play with blur off and bloom low. These effects also contributed to my prior complaint about it being difficult to see what the enemy characters are doing.

The subtleties in this game were a little too subtle, and the story was too generic to care. Unless I'm missing something, the story was extremely bland. There's a plague, it creates monsters, but some also become superhumans. I don't mind a souls-like being bland in the story, but there are around 100 pieces of lore to find. Hidden within that lore, there are secrets to unlocking certain endings as well as identifying buffs for your character. I went the entire game without using or discovering recipes, which are quite powerful. The game intended for you to find pieces of paper that told/hinted at certain combinations that would create effects greater than the sum of the elements used. In finding these hints, they are not logged under "recipes". You need to discover the combination first and it will then be logged. In my checking from time to time to see if I picked up a recipe, I always found that page blank and didn't care enough to investigate. That is partially on me, I will admit. But the game could have encouraged the player to experiment and make these discoveries. Or they could have made an interesting story where I actually wanted to read all the lore I picked up. Similarly, if you didn't read, you won't know what combination of items to use at the end to unlock special endings.

There are no voice-overs. Everything is done in text. I don't particularly mind this, but the implementation of this is silly. We have a souls-like that have no audible voices where the boss says things to you in a boss fight. When you're supposed to be watching the subtleties of the boss' actions, I don't want to be distracted by a shadowed area appearing at the bottom of my screen with text. It's a small distraction but I found it annoying.

The last thing I will say is that this game is extremely short. I have 14.5 hours on record, got all 5 endings (you can do this in a single playthrough) and finished all missions. I also left my game on pause for a few hours. I anticipate that the real time is closer to 9-10 hours of actual gameplay. If you were to ignore the option sub-missions, I wouldn't be surprised if you could start a new game and see the credits within 4 or 5 hours.

Conclusion

This game has some shining moments with originality and re-imagined mechanics. It has potential, but needed more time in the oven. When the bosses are a weak point in a souls-like, I don't think there's any way to get a better rating than "mediocre". It had its fun moments, but this is very much a one-and-done game from my perspective. Between frustrating designs, poor hitboxes, obscure mechanics, and a very short experience, I would put this game at a 6/10.

most of the stuff you listed in bad seems a bit overstated

relative to something like sekiro, i'd give it a 7/10

relative to most of the dumpster fires being released over the years, i'd give it an 8.5/10

the combat really shines. it's just a shame that the game doesn't give you enough variety for it to shine against

why necro the thread? I have to say, a year later, I stand by everything I wrote, though you are welcome to your opinion. Also, try Lies of P if you want a souls-like done well that isn't from Fromsoft.

Originally posted by Krazy Wallet:

Originally posted by tewi:

most of the stuff you listed in bad seems a bit overstated

relative to something like sekiro, i'd give it a 7/10

relative to most of the dumpster fires being released over the years, i'd give it an 8.5/10

the combat really shines. it's just a shame that the game doesn't give you enough variety for it to shine against

why necro the thread? I have to say, a year later, I stand by everything I wrote, though you are welcome to your opinion. Also, try Lies of P if you want a souls-like done well that isn't from Fromsoft.

i've played lies of p several times. thymesia has a significantly better parry and moderately better combat flow imo, even if it's worse in literally every other way, and even those strengths are diminished by often boring and repetitive enemy encounters. lies of p is a great game and a 'better' game, but for their peak encounters i think i enjoy thymesia more. though i'm very biased because i don't really chase souls-likes anymore, i chase sekiro-likes, which thymesia excelled at more imo.

Personally, it's difficult for me to suggest this game because it's main core design is interesting but the more I come back to it I realize it's also fundamentally broken. The game is a Sekiro-like except it does two things which "break" that premise entirely:

1) The game has a system in which there is health and then a green "real" health bar. Attacks barely chip the green bar so you end up doing parries. The problem is parrying chips HP about as much as attacking where you then realize there is no "Staggering" there is no "deathblow", there isn't even front/backstab; you are expected to kill the bosses entirely with chip damage and they can murder you easily.

2) You have to choose between Parrying and Blocking. If you refuse blocking you get a parry that negates damage but has a visually abysmal window for you to learn. If you block you end up in race to the bottom fights based on who can do more damage which will *always* be the boss you are fighting.

These bosses end up being more like Ninja Gaiden-like rather than Sekiro-like as a result and you end up having to take up strategies that are more about cheese and how many times they beat your ass rather than well choreographed and visualized attacks that you outright learn as you fight.

The game is a "Sekiro-like" but it literally doesn't commit to core sekiro design choices I find it very hard to suggest on that premise.