It’s a shame when a game manages to get some things right and others wrong. OverBorder Studios’ third-person fantasy RPG Thymesia is a prime example of this, with eye-catching combat, high energy, rewards for patience, and familiarity with a narrow progression system. Its admission immediately stands out as something special. At the same time, its revolving story of a plague-ravaged kingdom and the secret agents who can save it, as well as the inconsistent quality of the eerie locations it takes place, is largely half-hearted. wonderful and makes the whole adventure easy to forget.
Thymesia’s story follows Corvus, an ordinary but well-dressed royal agent, his brain as messed up as a breakfast egg. It could have been the result of his direct participation in a plague spreading across the country, a disease that imparts power to some creatures while killing, killing, or mutating the rest. With the help of an incredibly puzzling childish ally, you must climb into the dark, murky void that is your memory to recall how you got here in the hope that you can find a clue about how to solve this tragedy.
I really liked the way this story was set up from the start, but I couldn’t be more interested in Corvus’ mysterious purpose at the end of the roughly eight-hour journey. This is partly due to surprisingly little dialogue and very few NPCs to glean, with most of the plot conveyed through notes dropped on the map for you to spend time collecting and decryption. This kind of storytelling has lost a bit of its luster after being overly reliant on games like this for the past decade, and even ignoring that fatigue, Thymesia’s notes aren’t written in style. particularly attractive way. Also, the story itself is tried and true territory once you get past that prologue – the fact that it’s based on a plot centered around magical blood that turns humans into monsters doesn’t help Thymesia movable”Bloodbornealleged -clone ”.
Corvus’s memory takes place in three locations. Two of them, Sea of Trees and Hermes’ Fortress, are largely bland environments you’ve probably seen in other games before (and maybe better). The misty swamp of the former plague had so many rope bridges and treehouses that looked so much alike under the thick smoke that it was difficult to navigate. The latter is just a medieval fantasy fortress, crumbling and casting shadows over some of the sparsely wooded areas around it. The swampland at least has a hammer-wielding mutant, the occasional scary one to spice up the journey through it, but the fortress is full of common knights with various stripes, without any visuals. or any real topic.
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The mundaneity of these levels is much worse when compared to the third area, the Royal Garden, which is truly one of the most exciting environments I’ve seen in a game like this. It begins as a strange assemblage of greenhouses where large twisted flowers grow, and descends to an ankle-deep blood-soaked library. You can delve even further in subsequent visits through side quests, eventually into an entire blood cave, filled with a creepy element that stands out among a genre defined by it.
You can also revisit the two other locations during side quests, but their creative development is limited to simply changing the path you take through them and switching the doors that can enter. Okay. When you explore previously unexplored places, there’s nothing significantly different about them. Needless to say, doing these optional things in places other than the Royal Gardens is a bit of a pain.
Technically, these side quests are optional, but what you find when you complete them is essential to figuring out how to end the plague and fix the world. (You can completely defeat Thymesia by just completing the main quests, but the outcome of the story can be pretty lackluster.) There are several different endings you can end up with based on a few factors. elements that I won’t spoil, and I could have been motivated to watch all of them if you didn’t have to repeat the final boss fight every time to do so – especially when the only thing really The ending decision, besides having the right items and information, is how you choose to use them after the final battle. And in fact, even the “good” ending is a bit disappointing, as it plays out in a simple slide show of ink-colored images with some sparse text blocks.
Lost claws
Despite the story’s shortcomings, Thymesia’s battle is its main highlight. Corvus moves quickly, strangling his enemies in a barrage of blades and dashing out of range just before they can cleanly counterattack. There are no fitness bars to contend with here, meaning the limiting factor of your attacks is simply the length of the combo sequence, similar to a fighting game. By default, there is also no blocking, which means your defense options are suitable for fairly complex timing or a reliable dodge. Slowing an attack sends damage back to the attacker at a decent rate, causing each minor encounter to choose between passively waiting for a burst of enemy attacks and attacking in time. die, or actively, absorb damage with good items to soften them before it’s your turn to attack.
Combat is mostly back and forth like this, as there is no reliable way to stop the enemy. Surname maybe staggered, or of course, but how and when almost always feels like a piece of crap — an unpredictability that also applies to the moment the bad guys decide to counterattack friend. Obviously, there’s a limited number of attacks that you can freely land on enemies before they counterattack, but you never really say exactly how many that are, even though you can Access to skills can affect this hidden feature in a variety of ways. This is largely moot midway through the campaign, though, because most enemies outside of the bosses become pretty mediocre as you get stronger.
When cutting and slicing, you must be aware of the dual nature of the enemy’s life bar. Your regular sword attacks damage the white part, which reveals a green part underneath it. The white bar will fill up again unless you use your spectrum swipe attacks to damage the green part, permanently shorting the bar. Intentional sword and claw attacks are key to effectively killing your enemies, but since these attacks don’t link up directly in combos, the dance moves can feel clumsy at times. But for tougher enemies, racing to effectively “lock in” the sword damage inflicted with several well-placed claw attacks while dodging their massive blows is part of it. main of the unique tension of this combat system.
Bosses come in two forms: huge, ostentatious promoters and nimble stomps. Older designs have more creative designs but the way patterns are easier to learn and avoid, makes them more of an “experience” than a real challenge. Even one of these battles is one of Thymesia’s most memorable parts, as I run through a series of platforms to break plague cysts and clear the fog while a giant attacks. places around me. The second battle is more like your standard one-on-one encounter, where a boss has a huge list of possible ways to kill you quickly and you have to dive, dodge, and deflect. much to avoid being exposed. These things get easier over time as you get stronger, but especially that first card throw is like a big, thick, and nasty wall of skill.
Getting stronger involves normally collecting a currency from enemies and using it to boost stats like health and damage, but you’ll also collect and enhance plague weapons: Secondary attacks mimic the weapons the enemy will use against you. These weapons give you powerful abilities to change your attack behavior, such as large hammer blows or a quick and precise bow. The coolest thing is that you can steal a single-use version of the plague weapon from your enemies, giving you another layer of attack instantly. This is especially great against elite enemies and bosses, who often have powerful abilities at their disposal.
The Talent Tree can also tweak Corvus’ moves or change them entirely. There’s an upper limit to how many talent points you can have, meaning you can’t simply maximize everything, so making good choices is key to turning you into a killing machine. really. Options like expanding the deflector window or changing your counter to a block are fun, but I focus more on abilities that give me the ability to hit when I dodge attacks. at the last second or extend my normal attacks and attacks. Combining these with the dodge expansion and health boost options allows me to fine-tune my playstyle, but most options modify your gameplay with passive or utility enhancements complements rather than overhauls the way you interact with combat altogether. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it limits the scope of what can happen in combat, and lovers of power-focused builds, big weapons won’t want to be here.
