Imma be real, I don't care about the story here at all. Not even because it's bad, I couldn't even tell you if it was, I just wasn't gonna do all that reading. And while there's strong art design and level design here, the game still has that vibe of an indie studio's first attempt at something at this scale.
But none of that matters because this is one of my favorite souls-likes of all time. The combat here is the exact style of melee I prefer from games like this. I enjoyed my 40ish hours of Elden Ring, and I like the little I've played of Bloodborne and Dark Souls. But I grew up on Platinum games, like Bayonetta and Nier Automata. These titles NEVER make you wait for an animation to play out. The animations are the point of many Souls-likes, but after falling in love with The Surge 2 way back when I was made aware that this does not have to be the case. This is the first souls-like I've ever played that is similarly satisfying to play.
The combat is a mix of Sekiro's parrying and the perfect dodges of something like Bayonetta. And enemies have two health bars to deplete, or really one with a layer of armor on it. Your main dagger does damage to the white bar, which reveals a green bar underneath that can only be damaged with your secondary claw attack. Instead of fights feeling stretched out due to this, the balancing of bars forces you to keep the pressure up, because the while bar will cover back up the green if you don't keep applying damage. However, perfectly dodging or parrying can also keep the white bar from returning as well.
There are also a number of plague weapons/abilities you can use as well. You have a separate meter that allows the use of a giant axe swipe, scythe swing, hammer smash, arrow throw, life leech, or other abilities ever so often. Think of these as ultimate abilities that you need to earn the right to use with successful hits, parries, and dodges.
Also, there are a BUNCH or upgrades. You can bump up your core attributes like health, and you can even upgrade the number of healing charges you have, as well as how much they heal and what additional bonuses they can give you. They even give you multiple types of healing charges to equip, so you can spec for faster, smaller heals or longer, bigger heals. A lot of this game shines due to its customizability. The skill trees let you spec out towards a slower combat pace or a faster one, and when you hit the end of some of these trees, you truly feel powerful.
Now as for why this game rules so much. This game is all about animation canceling, especially after you amass later upgrades. There's not even a stamina bar, so you can really just go ham on your actions. Every time an enemy got a hit on me, it ALWAYS feels like my fault because I'm paying for a mistake I made milliseconds ago rather than several seconds ago. It makes the call and response of combat feel much more immediate, and frankly, more friendly towards spamming. Because you can parry and dodge so fast, I often was able to avoid entire attach strings just by keeping my parries and dodges going constantly. And thank god for it, because just standing back to avoid damage will put you out of melee range and make it harder to keep that necessary pressure up.
But the combat itself couldn't hold the game up alone without great enemy design. Every single fight is worth engaging with, especially after you level up and gain some perks. Once you do, fodder enemies could refill some of your health on execution. And there are a regular amount of more intimidating mini-bosses that all test your skills in new and intense ways. And the bosses, the bosses! All of them are incredibly fun and even the hardest ones were difficult for fair reasons. I never felt like the game was cheap, I could always immediately tell the ways in which I messed up, and it made me even more excited to jump back in to try again.
I just really dig this game. I do feel like it is very gamey, in a way that might be off-putting to people who crave the immersion of Fromsoft worlds. Unlike many of their games, there's less of a sense that upgrades are optional to the experience. You could, in theory, beat the game with just the base character. But many of the unlockable abilities, like counterattacks and new melee moves, feel vital to the experience. In a game like Dark Souls, the core of combat stays the same, but your stats increase and the variety of ways to respond to strikes increases. Thymesia is, on paper, the same, but it doesn't always feel that way. But this is one of my favorite things about the game, as that's an approach more common to the character-action games that I love.
It took me many months to finally beat this one, despite reaching the end in less than 10 hours. It really is challenging, and I took many breaks and backtracked into remixed versions of previous levels to farm more memory shards and upgrade materials. But even when I was away from it, I found myself craving its combat. I really can't wait to see what these devs do next, because this game shows that they are really cooking something special.
But none of that matters because this is one of my favorite souls-likes of all time. The combat here is the exact style of melee I prefer from games like this. I enjoyed my 40ish hours of Elden Ring, and I like the little I've played of Bloodborne and Dark Souls. But I grew up on Platinum games, like Bayonetta and Nier Automata. These titles NEVER make you wait for an animation to play out. The animations are the point of many Souls-likes, but after falling in love with The Surge 2 way back when I was made aware that this does not have to be the case. This is the first souls-like I've ever played that is similarly satisfying to play.
The combat is a mix of Sekiro's parrying and the perfect dodges of something like Bayonetta. And enemies have two health bars to deplete, or really one with a layer of armor on it. Your main dagger does damage to the white bar, which reveals a green bar underneath that can only be damaged with your secondary claw attack. Instead of fights feeling stretched out due to this, the balancing of bars forces you to keep the pressure up, because the while bar will cover back up the green if you don't keep applying damage. However, perfectly dodging or parrying can also keep the white bar from returning as well.
There are also a number of plague weapons/abilities you can use as well. You have a separate meter that allows the use of a giant axe swipe, scythe swing, hammer smash, arrow throw, life leech, or other abilities ever so often. Think of these as ultimate abilities that you need to earn the right to use with successful hits, parries, and dodges.
Also, there are a BUNCH or upgrades. You can bump up your core attributes like health, and you can even upgrade the number of healing charges you have, as well as how much they heal and what additional bonuses they can give you. They even give you multiple types of healing charges to equip, so you can spec for faster, smaller heals or longer, bigger heals. A lot of this game shines due to its customizability. The skill trees let you spec out towards a slower combat pace or a faster one, and when you hit the end of some of these trees, you truly feel powerful.
Now as for why this game rules so much. This game is all about animation canceling, especially after you amass later upgrades. There's not even a stamina bar, so you can really just go ham on your actions. Every time an enemy got a hit on me, it ALWAYS feels like my fault because I'm paying for a mistake I made milliseconds ago rather than several seconds ago. It makes the call and response of combat feel much more immediate, and frankly, more friendly towards spamming. Because you can parry and dodge so fast, I often was able to avoid entire attach strings just by keeping my parries and dodges going constantly. And thank god for it, because just standing back to avoid damage will put you out of melee range and make it harder to keep that necessary pressure up.
But the combat itself couldn't hold the game up alone without great enemy design. Every single fight is worth engaging with, especially after you level up and gain some perks. Once you do, fodder enemies could refill some of your health on execution. And there are a regular amount of more intimidating mini-bosses that all test your skills in new and intense ways. And the bosses, the bosses! All of them are incredibly fun and even the hardest ones were difficult for fair reasons. I never felt like the game was cheap, I could always immediately tell the ways in which I messed up, and it made me even more excited to jump back in to try again.
I just really dig this game. I do feel like it is very gamey, in a way that might be off-putting to people who crave the immersion of Fromsoft worlds. Unlike many of their games, there's less of a sense that upgrades are optional to the experience. You could, in theory, beat the game with just the base character. But many of the unlockable abilities, like counterattacks and new melee moves, feel vital to the experience. In a game like Dark Souls, the core of combat stays the same, but your stats increase and the variety of ways to respond to strikes increases. Thymesia is, on paper, the same, but it doesn't always feel that way. But this is one of my favorite things about the game, as that's an approach more common to the character-action games that I love.
It took me many months to finally beat this one, despite reaching the end in less than 10 hours. It really is challenging, and I took many breaks and backtracked into remixed versions of previous levels to farm more memory shards and upgrade materials. But even when I was away from it, I found myself craving its combat. I really can't wait to see what these devs do next, because this game shows that they are really cooking something special.