izigame.me

Perfected the game and had fun, so time to talk about it:
Hello perspective buyer- I figured I should write a review now that my journey through Thymesia is over. I like to preface that my review is going in blind; I've never touched an actual souls title at this time, so I cannot speak to how it compares. That said, I think this is a great title, that can be enjoyed regardless of whether you've played the genre before
So let’s start with the good:
Awesome combat system. Thymesia centers around fast paced combat using dodging and parrying to survive while dealing wounds to the opponent and then cleaving those wounds to deal lots of damage. It can be a bit tough to get the hang of at first, but once you got it, it's a lot of fun.
Lots of build choices that let you play in various ways. By leveling up, you can acquire talents to increase your combat ability. These talents vary from new effects to new attacks that further change up the combat. You will also acquire plague weapons for you to choose from and upgrade by re-battling certain opponents. Once again, your gameplay style can change depending on what you choose. You may need to change your talents or plague weapons before a boss to better compete with it.
Mostly fun boss fights. Not all the bosses are great, and you might hate them at first, but a lot of the fights grew on me.
Short but solid soundtrack.
Not AAA, but good visuals and neat maps.
Meaty sound effects. What can I say, I'm a sucker sounds that have impact, and the sound of most weapons and parrying is just great to me.

Now for the bad, and to address a common complaint you will see in negative reviews
The Parry System: I view this as a design flaw, as the problem with the parry is that out of the box it is terrible because it’s window is too tight. Subsequently, many users complain about parrying in Thymesia being unresponsive and terrible. For most people, you MUST spec points into "Reckless Deflect" for parrying to work. With this minor change, parrying overall works much better. But, because its doesn't work well out of the gate, if you only fight the tutorial boss or never upgrade it, it feels like a useless mechanic that doesn't work.
Low-budget and short: I want to make it clear, Thymesia is a wonderful game, but it seems like it could have been so much more with more money and developers working on it. I got 30 hrs out of it, but if you rush, some players report beating it in 10 hours. Its simply not very long with only around 12-14 levels, and if you don't give a crap about exploring the maps and finding/reading the lore like some players, then the game is sure to pass quickly. Thymesia also doesn't have animated cut-scenes, like the one in the trailer. Pregame and endgame lore is told to you view a screen with text on it. Likewise as I said earlier, the visuals do look good, but they could be better with a bigger budget. In short, with a bigger budget, I think this game could shine a lot brighter than it already does.
Uneven Boss Experience: Thyemsia has a bit of a boss issue I think, that makes for an uneven experience. The first boss after the tutorial (Odur) is a "you suck" boss with 2 phases. Subsequently, for many, the first boss and first sub-quest boss are much harder than the next 2 main bosses. It's not really an error per say, but quite a few people refund the game simply because they can't beat the first boss. That said, the first boss serves a purpose- and that is to teach you to dodge and parry. If you beat him, you will be a better play, and that is part of why the next 2 bosses are underwhelming.

And that is more or less everything. I really enjoyed this game, and hope one day it gets a sequel. It possibly may not hold up to a Souls game to you, but I think the developers successfully created the gameplay and atmosphere they were trying to, and the end product is wonderful, even if rather short. Give it a try- you might just like it.