While the demo’s timing was far worse, the full release’s timing isn’t much better. However, the timing is extremely tight and the rewards are microscopically low to the point where it’s not even worth learning. Instead of blocking, you have a parry functionality, which works as you would expect it to. Instead, combat can be compared slightly to that of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. There’s no stamina and no blocking, so don’t even think about using a shield of sorts. Where Thymesia actually presents something unique is in its approach to combat, and sure enough combat where that originality matters the most. A handful of secret and optional bosses are tucked away in these side missions, and are required to achieve the various different endings to the game. After clearing a main location, side quests open up but are unfortunately reshuffles of the main location with different areas closed off. One play through took me around ten hours but expect more if you’re a completionist. Thymesia isn’t a very lengthy game, featuring only three main locations. You play as Corvus, who has lost all of his memories, and must revisit various locations in order to remember what truly happened. Sounds quite similar to Bloodborne right? Some mysterious sickness has befallen the lands and everyone is either in hiding or out hunting infected. In most FromSoftware titles, the narrative takes a backseat compared to combat, and Thymesia is no different. I wouldn’t call it plagiarism but some originality in world design would be appreciated, especially in today’s gaming scene. The dark and dreary atmosphere of Thymesia is surely reminiscent of the Lovecraftian inspired themes of Bloodborne, not to mention a nameless plague that is present in both. The beloved “you died” screen is replaced with a hilarious “memory interrupted” screen instead. The classic formula used time and time again, nothing new here. You know the whole drill: rest at bonfire equivalents called beacons, collect souls equivalents called memories to level up, if you die you drop your souls, you have one chance to pick it up again otherwise it is lost forever. Thymesia sure doesn’t shy away from its inspiration from Bloodborne – in fact, it’s been compared to that since its initial announcement. Though the game still contains a considerable amount of jank, Thymesia introduces enough novelty into this oversaturated genre to stake a claim of its own. Fortunately, the developers took the constructive feedback from players during the demo to further polish and tweak the gameplay and I am glad to say that the game is now in a much better state than it was three months ago. Considering the condition the game was in during the May demo, I can’t bear to imagine how the game would have fared if it had been released during its initial date. What’s interesting is that Thymesia was actually slated to release back in December 2021 but got delayed into 2022 before the now scheduled August release date. So much emphasis was put on timing yet the rewards for good timing were little to none. You could hardly do any damage to enemies, but they can also one-shot you. The dodge mechanic was inconsistent, the enemy hit boxes were atrocious, and the parry system was useless. Thymesia’s demo was the very embodiment of a clone with terrible mechanics and fake difficulty. There needs to be a balance of risk and reward in order to make a great Soulsborne game. All the original games created by FromSoftware are intricately designed to be difficult, but fair. Developers think the meat and bones of creating a game of said genre is to just bump up the enemy difficulty and tune down the player’s power level. A major flaw that most Soulsborne games tend to have is the feeling of artificial difficulty. I initially had my hands on experience with Thymesia when I tried the demo for it back in May. Thymesia is a brutal third person action role playing game set in a plague ridden kingdom, where you play as an individual named Corvus, as he tries to piece together his forgotten memories. Instead of choosing to be a Dark Souls clone, which most other games are, it chooses to bask in the success of Bloodborne instead. OverBorder Studio, an indie development company from Taiwan, triumphantly succeeds in getting its foot in the door of the industry with their debut project Thymesia. The market is so oversaturated with copycat flavors of FromSoftware games that it is quite difficult for smaller developers to stand out. The word Soulsborne, a mesh of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, has been thrown around so much that virtually every difficult game nowadays is called that. FromSoftware has undoubtedly impacted the gaming industry so much that a new genre of gaming has been born.
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