Welcome to our review of Thymesia, the dark and twisted story of Corvus. A Dark Souls-style game with a really dark atmosphere.
Thymesia is a gruelling action-RPG with fast-paced combat and an intricate plague weapon system. In a kingdom where death spreads, play as a mysterious character known by the code name “Corvus”. Prey upon your enemies, wield the power of disease and find the truth in your own memories. The once thriving Kingdom of Hermes has fallen to an age of calamity.
Seen as the answer to all the kingdom’s ailments, alchemy became a widely used practice across the land, with denizens welcoming it into their homes, using it to enhance and heal as they saw fit. When the price of alchemy became too steep, attempts to halt its use were made, each as woefully unsuccessful as the last, with the catastrophic consequences felt across the realm. Within days, the kingdom fell to chaos, infected monsters prowling the blood-soaked streets, all hope of a cure lost.
Corvus is the kingdom’s final hope, the fate of Hermes resting in his feathered hands. The truth is buried deep in the memories Corvus left scattered throughout the punishing world, and only by collecting these lost memories can the kingdom be saved, but each time he dives back in, trying to piece together the truth, all he finds is more secrets.
As our loyal fans will know, I am not a real Dark Souls fan, I do enjoy most of them, especially when they are of the type to make you want to keep playing. While Thymesia falls under this moniker, I do have some added reservations in regards to the overall performance of the game. In general, the principle is easy as can be, survive at all costs, get that skill tree to the highest level with the least effort and just do your best with the means given to you at any given time.
As you progress, there is really a lot to do, sure, you can to a certain extent even keep your best grinding skills up to date, which I had to do, but more on that later on. I always picked a point where I was close to a resting place, so I could easily retreat (escape if you will) to top up on that delicious health and potions. Yes, potions do refill when resting and that is an amazing addition to the game mechanics as not all of the Dark Souls clones do this, one added point to consider Thymesia even in my humble opinion.
Now what does go wrong, at least at times, is my timing. The biggest sons of… get the most damage when you hit them with a counter, this is done by throwing a feather at them. This has messed up so often that it is usually not even the big bosses that give me issues, no, you’d expect those to be mean as heck and challenging as can be, but in all honesty, I found them to be more of an acceptable level compared to some of the “smaller fry”. With this, I do not mean the small guys with halberds or the crying women that suddenly attack you, not even the ax-handling guys that appear out of nowhere because they were hiding behind the wall…
No, these mini-bosses require the utmost attention and when you miss on the timing of your throw, prepare to receive some very unfair feeling damage. The first one I had issues with, at the time I still had my max potions, 4 to be precise. One of his hits took me down 150+ in health with 150 being a single potion at that time because they can also be upgraded. Unfair but in true Thymesia fashion, really.
Now I will say one thing, I felt like Thymesia was more possible to beat than say the original, but at the same time, I spent a lot of my time tweaking the skill tree. I instantly had the regeneration thingie for enemies, because yes, they need to be finished off or they really regain a ton of health. You can’t just do the hit and run, you are dragged into battle every single time and even your plague powers are more often than not insufficient to really take down an enemy. What a rush and what a nuisance at the same time.
In conclusion, I loved and hated this game at the same time. Thymesia was disturbingly addictive for a genre I truly dislike, beating that first big ass boss, that was a true feeling of Fck yeah. Also, the mindfuck the game throws at you with that first big boss, was hilarious in hindsight, not so much when it happened… Are you brave enough to find out?
