Imagine Sekiro but with Dark Souls II hitboxes and every time you parry you're off by 2 seconds because the animations are so low budget, janky, slow and simply not fluid enough for the combat. That's basically the Thymesia experience summed up.

I could go on to explain more of the mechanics and intricacies of the combat, but what's the point when it's not even enjoyable? That opening statement alone describes the experience pretty well and despite there being some cool ideas here and there and great design aesthetic (Though the level design itself leaves a bit to be desired), the gameplay mechanics just don't feel good and if the game wasn't so short (I beat it in 10 hours) I would've just dropped it all together so that should tell you all you really need to know about whether it's worth playing or not. It certainly doesn't help that the world and lore is so generic and boring and just feels like every other Souls-style game. The OST and art design are easily the two best things about this game and both are pretty solid, but too bad everything else is just a mess.

There's simply nothing in this game that you probably haven't seen done before and most things are just done much better elsewhere, so there's nothing here worth suffering through the janky combat even if the game is super short.

At the beginning, this game felt extremely rough in its fundamental mechanics. It felt like it wasn't at all good enough for the ridiculous precision some enemies require you to have with your parry timing.

I've now beaten all the levels, bosses and did all the endings. Now I'm definitely more positive on it: about 3-4 of the 8 bosses are actually quite fun to fight. Once you get into the flow of things with those bosses and get used to the mechanics, it can feel as satisfying as Sekiro. For a debut game from an indie studio, that is impressive!

Otherwise this game is just meh. The art direction is great but the level design is mediocre. The plague weapons are a cool idea but I never felt compelled to use even half of them for some useless bonuses. Also the claw mechanic, where every enemy has two health bars - and you have to first wound them with regular attacks and then use claw attacks - is a neat idea but ends up being tedious.


For huge fans of Sekiro, who simply want anything remotely like it, this might scratch that itch - slightly at least.

On the surface level, Thymesia seems reliant on its obvious influences pulling in interested parties. But the game has enough interesting ideas, and executes the most important elements well enough, to make it a gratifying and worthwhile game to check out.

It is fundamentally in line with other Souls-likes, but the main twist is that enemies have two health bars overlapping with each other, and you need to deplete them both in order to kill them. You have regular sword attacks that will mainly deal damage against the main health bar, and claw attacks that will only deplete the secondary bar. There's also plague weapons, which are secondary weapons that has different damage properties depending on the weapon. This system is the very basis of the game's aggressive and ferocious feel, since the main health bar can regenerate according to the secondary bar if you don't damage the enemy for too long. Most of your moves are also not limited by a stamina/energy bar (only plague weapons), which only supports that feeling.

The game has limited character customization, in exchange for progression systems that feel closer to hack and slash games like Devil May Cry. There are skill trees that provide ways to tailor your abilities to your sensibilities. For example, widening your deflect/parry timing period in exchange for lower damage against enemies, or choosing to double down on your deflect damage instead. You have many plague weapons to choose from, like a scythe that can heal you when you hit enemies with it, or a whip that can help you close the gap against enemies. Even the Estus Flask equivalents here are customizable, being able to switch different potion types and add ingredients to introduce extra effects. In my experience, these systems are quite flexible in letting me play how I wanted to play, and making the game bend to my will is very satisfying. It helps that you can freely unlearn skills, which lets you experiment to find your favorite way to play the game.

Unfortunately the levels and environment designs are not as well done. The level design is just mediocre, nothing really sticks out in my mind right now. There's some atmospheric environments that are quite nice to look at, but most of the time it fits the bill of a "generic dark fantasy world on a low budget" world too well. Same goes for the enemy designs (although mechanically they're varied enough for a game of this length, about 10 hours for me, I got all the endings) and soundtrack. At least the bosses are pretty damn good overall, especially the optional bosses, with the exception of one terrible gimmick boss.

The story here is pretty decent, it definitely won't be the main driving force of your experience. It's mostly told through text logs without any voice acting, which isn't very exciting, but I do appreciate its relatively straightforward nature. Find enough of these logs and you should have a good grasp of the story, the game isn't very vague about this.

Overall, Thymesia delivers on its intent of an approachable and reasonably sized Souls clone, while still managing to provide a challenging and aggressive combat experience. But it is let down by visibly middling budget, low production values, and a general lack of memorablity.

BX#15
Gothic Action-RPG

- This game has one of the most satisfying combat system ever: it's extremely polished, fast and customizable. The skill tree reset has no cost: for example you can change from a parry focused combat (Sekiro) to a dodge one (Bloodborne) based on the boss you're facing;
- The unique mechanics are great: wound-health bar forces you to use "heavy attacks" and to make fast combat decisions, plague weapons are many and diversified;
- The optional missions let you explore the same area in different ways with different mini-bosses;
- The lore is rich and inspired: the multiple endings add replayability since the game is very short (you'll finish this in 8-12 hours);
- The human-sized bosses are incredibly fun to fight even if some of them are completely optional;

BUT

- The gimmick-y boss fights can be annoying;
- The camera is stiffy especially in closed/smaller areas;
- No NG+;
- Small enemy variety.

For starters, this a Sekiro-like. Do not come into this expecting Blooborne or Souls-like combat. That being said, this is a really great execution of that gameplay, and carries what would have been another failed "souls inspired" bargain bin game to something I recommend.

The combat focuses primarily on physical attacks and parrying to briefly expose an enemy's true health bar, which can then permanently be reduced using special attacks. It forces you to constantly switch between all your character's moves naturally over the course of an encounter, and definitely the game's strongest innovation and success. Standard enemies play well and while I wish there was more of them, ultimately there are enough to carry you through a complete play though. Non gimmick bosses are the highlight, which are all mostly challenging and unique.

The level design is the biggest let down. While it does mostly get the job done, you will rarely be surprised or impressed. They generally have very blocky and repetitive layouts, and do not use the limited enemy pool in interesting ways. The exception to this is the second level, which shows the true potential that this game had, and also the weakness of its level based structure. You are never really exploring in this game, you are mostly following a path while fighting (or running) through a gauntlet of enemies.

The game is not very long, probably around 6-10 hours to complete all the missions depending on how thoroughly you search the environment and your skill level. This also includes going through the same level multiple times for the side quest. That fact, along with the lack of build diversity, and lack of enemy diversity, really kill any replay value for this game. There is enough there to warrant a complete play though, but probably not much more.

If this was a 20 point scale I would have easily given it a 7.5. I wavered quite a bit between 3.5 and 4 stars here, but I do think the lack of variety that is felt by the end is enough to keep it down. I will reiterate however, if you are a fan of Sekiro combat and bosses, then I strongly recommend playing this game. You will really enjoy the combat and have a great time with the bosses.

If you are excited about this game don't play the demo.

Is one of those demos that are hard just because so people will talk about it on the internet.

Your damage is very low and the one for enemies very high and I don't know why the roll is like 2cm when you are against enemies.

Just wait for the full release on august.

Even though I fairly enjoyed Sekiro, one thing Sekiro getting GOTY 2019 made me concerned the most is that a lot of future dev will think of it as the pinnacle of action game design method and will make a bunch of copycats.
To put my perspective, Sekiro's parry-oriented reaction-based combat system had its own limits. The fast movement options exist, but with the lack of long I-frames and uber-tracking enemies, the crowd controlling in group fights always felt atrocious and it always led me to play defensively. And in 1 vs 1 combat, the positioning options were borderline non-existent as the blocking and jab can deal almost all patterns in one single place while the dodging and zooming always felt risky as hell unless the patterns are deliberately designed to be dodged. There were some neat bosses that tried to shake things off in the game flow, but overall, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that it wasn’t as dynamic as I expected it to be. And the current red ocean of stagnating Souls-like trend tells me that this formula won’t likely be implemented and improved by other devs that easily unless that dev is already experienced like Team Ninja or Deck 13 (And Deck 13 took two atrocious projects to finally make The Surge 2).

I talked about Sekiro for a moment because Thymesia is seemingly a blatantly Sekiro-like game, and it is not possible to not compare it to that when you watch the gameplay footage. Enemies have a twin health system. The Player’s parry move can deal damage to enemies while negating the incoming dangers. Enemies track you like a teacup on a slippery coaster. Almost all enemies have off-beat attacks to make it hard to parry… and so on. However, I couldn’t resist playing it because the plague mask looks cool as hell, and the setting looked cool in the trailer. It had a flying zombie bat monstrosity and a fancy circus master that has some cool grab moves. Surely this game would be an unhinged theme park of Tim Burton-ish nightmare, right….?

Well, I got a completely different experience from what I expected. It showed me a promising twist of the Sekiro-combat system but a lackluster theming and content that couldn’t reach the hype that the trailer induced.

The baseline is similar, but as you learn the game, you will realize that the player’s arsenals are more varied than you initially saw and each of them has its own role in a combat cycle. The normal slash attacks deal heavy damage to the “first layer” of the health bar while the claw attacks deal heavy damage to the “second layer” of the health bar. The plague weapons have different damage values depending on your weapon choice. The interesting thing about the enemy health system is that if you deal damage to them and wait, the first layer of health will automatically regenerate to the amount of the second layer, and the first layer must be deflated to deal damage to the second layer. Unlike Sekiro where if you deflate the health a bit, the posture bar becomes no issue at all, you need to try your best to juggle your methods to deflate both bars and I really liked that idea. The swappable plague weapons are also the best contributors to the combat cycle as you can hold them up to three (one by stealing from the enemies) and quickly initiate them. And most plague weapons are designed to be combo-supplement rather than one-method to one-problem skills like Sekiro’s prosthetic tools, so there were enjoyments to find by pushing the enemies with consecutive plague weapon combos. By juggling the tools available, your combat cycle becomes like a mad doctor’s surgical procedure – skinning them with a saber, then slamming the cursed plague combination inside their body, and then brutally slashing them to finish off, which is pretty fitting to the main character of this game.

There’s a little bit of "but…" in the player arsenals though. And that is the plume throw attack. It’s like a magical dart that is specialized to neutralize the “special” attacks from the enemy, but if you learn the “mikiri counter” of this game, there’s seemingly no reason to use this tool to use as a counter maneuver at all. There’s an upgrade where you can auto-zoom-teleport to the opponent with the plume, but it felt like tacked on since gap-closing to an enemy is not a big issue in this game, but more on that later.

Another thing I liked about the game is that the “upgrade” system is really liberating and works satisfyingly in the early-mid game section. By making the upgrade points retractable, the game directly encourages you to try out different skill trees anytime. There are different types of dodges, blocking, saber attacks, claw attacks, and passive buffs that can be easily experimented with this liberty. However, the upgrade points aren’t available that many early on, so there’s also a trade-off you have to think about. The vanilla character setting can be clumsy, so you need to decide which tools to adapt with your sheer will and skill, and which tools to supplement. But as I said before, that doesn’t take away the chance to try out different tools. I was stuck at Odur boss fight for some time because he has some tricky melee patterns that cannot be “intuitively” parried and for an early boss, he clearly has some tricks in his sleeves. To supplement the “skill issue” I had, I swapped the skill trees that can pull out the big damage output while tanking some hits, and I enjoyed the procedure of finding the balance that suits my combat style. But as the game goes on, you will realize that once you reach the end of the skill trees, things go messy.

Now we are on the negative side - the contents.
The low-hanging fruit is that Thymesia is really short, and the enemy variety is lacking, even worse than Sekiro or Nioh 1. There were some interesting enemies with distinguishable features like a small jester miniboss, fat hammer wielder, and sword and shield guy, but most of them felt interchangeable with small timing and positioning differences. This is utterly disappointing because there’s an entire laboratory level that is themed around grotesque animal experiments, and what they could have done is to add more experimented-animal-type of enemies that don’t work like other humanoid enemies, and then mix them up in every level’s corner with the lore that “they escaped from the lab lol”. At the near end of the game, the only dynamic encounters left in the field are the handful of boss fights.

This feels sad because the moderately-upgraded Corvus can initiate the crowd control and positioning more liberally than Sekiro. At the late stage, I intentionally aggroed multiple enemies in one combat zone so that I can try out some multi-enemy fights as an experiment. By utilizing plague weapons (I used Katar and Scythe in that scenario), upgraded dash movement, claw attacks, and “mikiri counter”, dash movement could negate the tracking attack because the movement distance was wide enough, charged claw attacks were great as a gap closer, and the two Plague Weapons I wielded were so effective at managing Corvus’s health and positioning. I had an enjoyable crowd fight that felt FAIR, and it was way more dynamic than 70% of the normal encounters in the game. This also means that even if the enemy variety is lacking, just by adding more aggressive enemies in the combat situation, things could have been more interesting in the late game, but they didn’t. Most of the enemies are initially spawned as a passive “sitting” state so that unless you intentionally get near them, there’s no direct engagement you’ll face. Enemy sight detection is mind-numbingly dumb that it’s always easy to attack first when they are showing their back. Champion enemies ALWAYS initiate the fight as 1 vs 1 and I don’t know why the devs decide to go safe with the multi-hard-enemy idea, considering that the same “type” of champion enemies appears more than several times per the whole playthrough, and they are all spawned isolated.

The question of “Why didn’t they go more than this?” doesn’t end at the enemy encounters. It also spreads on the theming and the presentation that supports them.
- Why aren’t there any other survivors or any interesting NPC that can tell the lore or build up the stake for the main character who is a doctor/alchemist saving the world? Why are there only papers?
- Why the idol boss looks like the most boring-looking tree giant creature considering that they could have add the circus elements to give the consistency that it is an Odur’s creation.
- If this is all about memories, Couldn’t they add more surreal scenes or presentations that could establish the other-worldly elements? Arguably only the final boss stage has that element.
- Overall, how is this world distinguishable from other souls-like dark fantasy games that contain plague elements and crumbling down medieval fortress?
Even with some downfalls, I liked Sekiro’s experience because even if the message and the narrative is vanilla as hell, at least they were unhinged about the presentation, (especially with the Guardian Ape and the Divine Dragon), and thematically everything worked together to present a bloodshed-epic-journey of a-nobody-shinobi. I had fun with this game, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were holding back too many things that it led to a quite underwhelming experience. At least there’s a silver lining that they are eager to innovate and refine the game system that most other studios stagnate to dust, so I hope they make even more extreme works next time with that mindset. Maybe escaping from the FROM’s mold is one of the methods. I don’t know.

And where the hack are the voice actors? There aren’t many dialogues in the game, and freelancers are affordable for most studios. I just don’t get it…

Pretty amazed with how this game turned out. Went into it purely with the expectation of this being a small scale, indie Bloodborne (which I still would've liked) and ended up finding something that had a ton of unique, creative ideas added to the mix to truly make it stand out in a number of ways. You've got your standard Souls feel all over the place of course, with how the combat roughly feels along with its narrative presentation mostly being kept in the background and explained through notes strewn about etc. but it still feels clear that the people involved were massive fans who wanted to put a real spin on things. This is mainly showcased through the variety of distinct combat systems that work together to inform the gameplay in a very nuanced, effective manner that makes for something that feels incredible once you get the basics down.

A significant way in which this is explored is through the way enemy health is handled, with the combination of wounds and proper damage making for a very dynamic and engaging experience. Rather than dealing straight damage to an enemy, hitting them with a basic attack will deplete one bar a certain amount with a 2nd bar underneath it being revealed in the process that can only be reduced with certain other attacks. This needs to be done within a few seconds otherwise the first bar will begin to fill and cover the 2nd one again, functionally causing you to have dealt no damage. This ultimately encourages an experience where the player is forced to carefully pick their moments in order to succeed, with an entirely offensive playstyle being required to actually get any damage in, but a defensive mindset also needing to be constantly considered to make sure you properly pick your moments and create openings to be able to actually succeed at doing this without taking hits in the process. The game also feels insanely fast paced for the most part, making a lot of these decisions increasingly intense considering you won't really have much time to properly consider things in the moment and just need to learn how to more intuitively alter your playstyle on the fly.

This is all further aided by the talent system in the game and the way it manages to be one of the only times where a skill tree has actually been interesting to mess around with. A huge reason for this is the way it affects so many fundamental aspects of the combat system to the point where even a couple of slight retoolings could completely change your optimal playstyle in the situation, but you're actually able to re-allocate these points at any time. This circumvents my biggest issue with a lot of of similar systems where it feels largely arbitrary to make the player have to commit to unlocking only part of their gear without really being able to properly contextualise what they could do with it, and instead it adds some nice extra depth to the game as you're now able to pick your compromises at almost any point while actually being informed about what you need (and if you end up being wrong it's no problem either because you can just move things around again and try out something entirely different). This also helps encourage the player to properly explore their entire moveset and just immediately fall into a reliance towards only an aspect or two of it, since they can mess around and test out these options at a high power to understand the potential they have rather than attempt to start using a new tool from absolute base level and inevitably dropping it.

This sense of versatility also carries over to the awesome plague weapon mechanic where players are able to steal weapons from the enemy and use it as a one-time effect, and eventually being able to have it as a permanent ability on your character, adding a sense of additional power and spontaneity to a lot of encounters. This wonderfully robust customisation allows the encounters to also be more specialised around specific playstyles without feeling downright unbalanced towards a certain crows, as players are given the option to essentially adapt their character to better fit the situation. This makes for a lot of situations that feel very focused as a result, since they don't all strictly have to cater for every possibility of the player. This especially plays a role in the varied and consistently excellent boss fights, where certain mobility options or methods of attack feel prioritised against certain other attackers, some being far more effective to parry, but some others having attacks that are much more suited to being dodged, as an example. There's some pretty great variety to the boss fights as well, some being your typical, fast paced humanoid encounters, but there also being enough more unconventional ones to keep things interesting, with almost all of them being really engaging fights in one way or another, especially with the final 3 being outright incredible.

The game's not all perfect of course, and there are definitely a few issues that stop it from being even more incredible in my eyes. The biggest complain of these is the enemy variety being pretty lacking even for a game as short as this, with the 3rd area having no enemy types that weren't just direct reskins of previous ones. This isn't as massive a deal as you might expect thanks to the short runtime of the game lessening grievances related to repetition and most enemy types still being great to fight, but it definitely hurts things nonetheless and makes it all feel a bit more homogenous than I'd like. Certain mechanics just didn't feel like they reliably worked, the feather counters being especially rough to the point of feeling more like a liability to use them due to inconsistent functionality and ended up taking me out of things a bit even though they ended up getting circumvented by just using one of the other many options at my disposal. I feel like the number of sidequests that just made you go back through the levels were also really lame, and while the atmosphere of them tended to be pretty spot on, it still felt pretty tedious and a bit pointless too.

A lot of other little issues such as the stiff camera controls, the lack of voice acting relegating every cutscene to having to read subtitles even during combat itself, the bit of a drop in quality of the 2nd main area and some janky animation work all made the experience feel a bit less polished in ways that it would've benefited from as well. That said, this game still feels remarkably impressive for something developed by such a small indie team, with it having so much going on that I'd usually only expect to see in a far bigger game with the budget to match. In the end, despite some shortcomings, Thymesia is a deeply engaging, short Souls-like that far exceeded my expectations and gives me incredibly high hopes for what Overborder studio will be able to do next.

Going in I absolutely had 0 expectations, wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I was expecting to hate it given how much of a cheap bloodborne knock off the game looked at first glance but the game proved me wrong with its combat system, which is far closer to Sekiro (if you don't play like a braindead idiot, that is) than BB with a spin of their own on the posture system which is the green health bar, it adds a well needed layer of depth to the overall combat, keeping the player constantly switching between different attacks to dwindle down the enemy's health, while also demanding an aggressive playstyle since the enemies tend to regenerate if they aren't being pushed with the green health remaining. Basically it's the almost the exact same thing as the posture meter but it works on vitality damage as well since this game isn't streamlined for parrying which is a missed opportunity since I believe it'd have been better off if it discouraged dodging and focused more on parrying since the combat clearly built around the idea of parrying, the bosses make it obvious. The RPG elements were totally redundant and only exists for the sake of following age old souls tradition, that's also something the game would be better off without.

Thymesia is quite lacking in the level design and visuals department but the combat kept me hooked throughout its measly playtime of 6 hours with some very well-designed humanoid bosses, the non-humanoid ones are just tedium incarnate though

My experience with Thymesia was not up and down, but down-up-down.
When I first started it I thought it felt maybe a bit off, as these non-FromSoft souls games often do. But after playing it for a bit I got used to the mechanics and started being able to customize the playstyle a little bit, which I thought was great. I thoroughly enjoyed the intro section and the first area. Considering it's a very vertical area, it doesn't feel cumbersome. The level design is good and shortcuts back to the chairs (bonfires) are well-placed and feel like they come just frequently enough. Unfortunately, when I got to the first boss, the cracks really started to show. The low- and mid-tier enemies I could adapt to, but the boss clearly showed the game's flaws. If a game is going to have a boss that kills you in 2 hits, it needs to have extremely precise controls so that you can face that challenge with as much fairness as possible and overcome it through your skill, without the controls getting in the way.

I think that they had some great ideas, pulling all the good mechanics from multiple FromSoft games. It's a Seikiro-like more than anything. Combat requires parries, dodges, and dealing with certain undodgeable attacks which can be dealt with by throwing a feather dart (kind of a combo of Seikiro's undodgeable attacks and Bloodborne's gun counter. All these actions (except the dodge) inflict "wounds" which knock off a white bar which sits on top of their actual green HP bar. In other words, in order to actually hurt the enemy you have to cause wounds to reveal their HP and then actually damage the HP. If you leave the enemy without taking damage for a time, their wounds will heal up to their current HP again. So it is a two-part process of causing wounds and then solidifying that progress with HP damage.

Wounds are dealt through any of the above methods plus just regular attacks. Regular attacks to a small amount of HP damage but the primary method of HP damage is the claw. This is one of the parts I really liked in theory but not in practice. I feel like it should have been the opposite. That regular attacks do minimal wound damage but high HP damage, so you have to do parries, counters, and heavy attacks to inflict wounds and then use regular attacks to knock out their HP. Having to use the claw for a good chunk of the HP damage felt very restrictive.

I really loved the skill tree system that was surprisingly robust and really allowed you to customize your playstyle in a lot of ways. Some skills added more regular attacks to your standard combo, some changed your claw from a slow, lumbering attack to a quick, weaker one instead. Another skill made counters easier, and another one gave you the ability to do a spear-step counter to the unblockable attacks if you really want to pretend you're playing Seikiro, or you could get a skill that allows you to hold the button down to guard if you want to pretend you're playing Dark Souls.

Lastly, the game just felt unfinished. The music and sound effects are very minimalistic but don't feel like they're a stylistic choice so much as they just didn't get around to them. The cutscene for the first boss has no sound effects and there is subtitled dialogue but no voice acting. This isn't enough to ruin it for me, but it does threaten to knock the rating down. That being said, I'm keeping the rating at 2.5 because I really wanted to like this game. So sad.

Overall, I feel like Thymesia has a lot of really cool ideas and level design could have been top-notch

Played on Amazon Luna streaming service (November monthly free access to this game for Prime members)

thymesia, um irmão perdido de bloodborne (ou talvez só da eileen), que trouxe uma proposta muito interessante aos olhos do pessoal que curte jogos soulsbornelike.

a questão é, ele é muito divertido e traz o melhor das mecânicas dos souls para dentro do jogo e ainda inova com algumas mecânicas novas, que transformam completamente o combate. porém, ele é muito curto e as suas "fases" são meio genéricas...

ainda assim, é possível se divertir por algumas horinhas dentro desse mundo. e a platina não é nível souls de dificuldade (talvez só um troféu... aí realmente, boa sorte).

A very short and not very pleasant soulslike game, that has an atmosphere, but not much else.

The combat system is flashy, but not very good, the bosses are cheap, and the hitboxes, yet again, are not very good.

A meh experience.

Da quando Myazaki ha assemblato la formula dei soulslike sono stati in tanti a cavalcare l'onda del successo proponendo un proprio esponente. "As a souls veteran" (meme) ne ho provati diversi ma non c'era un singolo soulslike non from che mi avesse appagato e che non avessi reputato un noioso compitino.

Thymesia stravolge le cose proponendosi come l'unico titolo degno, almeno di quelli che ho giocato, di essere paragonato ai lavori from software ma ha un problema abnorme: dura uno sputo. Ora non voglio mettermi a valutare la longevità come parametro fondamentale, molto spesso ho droppato o non tenuto in considerazione titoli che erano fin troppo lunghi e asfissianti. Il problema è che appena si inizia a prendere la mano con lo splendido e tecnicissimo combat system, il gioco...finisce, dopo solo 3 stage e un boss finale.

Considerando il ben di dio messo a disposizione è davvero triste e svilente. Il combat system da molti è paragonato a Bloodborne, in parte a ragione ma più che Bloodborne lo definirei un ibrido riuscitissimo tra Bloodborne e Sekiro. È possibile sia deflettere sia schivare, il tutto necessita di una precisione chirurgica ed è compensato da nemici che fanno un sacco di tracking, ma in questo caso tracking più che corretto viste le molteplici possibilità di evasione.

Si hanno due armi: la sciabola con cui drenare la corazza e l'artiglio con cui drenare la vita; a ogni nemico andrà prima sottratta la corazza e poi la vita, se non ci si sbriga però si ha il regen della corazza e questo spinge ad essere molto aggressivi.

A queste due armi si affiancano le armi pestilenziali, delle armi speciali che ricordano un pò gli strumenti protesici di Sekiro ma che sono decisamente più utili e cambiano totalmente l'approccio al gameplay. Le armi pestilenziali si usano con una barra dell'energia, non la classica stamina convenzionale ma più una barra del mana che inizialmente non si ricarica ma che fin da subito sarà possibile rendere ricaricabile grazie ai talenti.
I talenti sono rami di una serie di una serie di skill tree che si ottengono spendendo un punto, un punto si ottiene progredendo di livello tramite le "anime" richieste. La progressione di livello oltre a dare un punto talento consente anche di migliorare uno tra tre parametri: vita, forza ed energia. I talenti così come le armi pestilenziali cambiano radicalmente l'approccio al gameplay e la combinazione perfetta renderà gli scontri molto più semplici ma in ogni caso diversi.

Bellissime le boss fight. Bellissimo il comparto estetico e la colonna sonora al netto di un comparto tecnico deludente. C'è anche tutta una lore che sinceramente non ho approfondito in prima run ma che pare interessante.

Thymesia poteva essere molto di più, il suo combat system tecnico, dinamico e riuscitissimo poteva elevarlo allo stesso livello delle opere di from software se non addirittura sopra ma purtroppo la durata estremamente scarna condanna un progetto che evidentemente non aveva fondi a sufficienza per brillare. Spero vivamente in un seguito all'altezza perché il gioco merita tanto ma allo stato attuale non posso promuoverlo a pieni voti.