Thymesia - Review. New Souls-like Action Rpg
It's Endemion, and for the past week, I've been playing through the latest souls like to hit the market and really diving deep into its many systems. I'm still missing some and I can't for the life of me find them, but anyway, you're here because you want to know if Taimesia is worth jumping into.
Let's get started and thanks to team 17 and Over Border Studio for the early review code. I played the PlayStation 5 version as well. Don't worry about spoilers. Now let's begin. Tamiesia has you playing as Corvus, who's this plague doctor on a quest to save the Hermes kingdom from ruin. The entire game takes place within corvus memories, as you dive into these and try to piece together what happened and why the plague exists in the first place.
If Timesia had a tagline, it would be "quality over quantity." In my opinion, the game has 13 memories to dive into, some of these being full levels, while other memories are singular boss fights. The easiest comparison would be that Timesia feels like a blend between Bloodborne and Sekiro. The game's world feels like Bloodborne's, with crazy villagers and ruined warriors stalking the world.
It also feels like Sekiro in that Taimia's gameplay is very fast and has quite a high skill ceiling. So, whereas in Sekiro you could block moves and build up posture damage, in Timesia the pyring is more punishing but you can spend points to create very specific styles of play, which helps fix this.
Let's talk about talents and how they influence your playstyle. Your talents are separated into various categories. Each skill path allows you to customize Corvus into very specific builds, but the trade-off is that you can only specialize in one path per skill type. A good example of this would be the deflect talent tree.
You can see here on the left that after selecting deflect level 2, it splits into two paths, so you can only pick one of these. However, don't worry because timesia allows you to respec at any time from the same menu. It doesn't even cost anything. You simply hit square on PS5, and boom, you can reset just that single tree, so trying things out and seeing what works for you and what doesn't is really flexible, which is great.
The other talent trees are pretty vast too, ranging from saber deflect to dodge claw feathers and finally strategies. In addition, you have 25 talent skills to spend on whatever you want. After level 25, you can only increase one of your three core stats, but in my experience, 25 talent points was more than enough to make my corvus into an absolute monster.
The combat of Timesia is where the game excels, as like in Sekiro or Bloodborne, you have to make split-second decisions that could mean the difference between life and death. While you can't change your main melee weapon, the saber, the saber You can customize your secondary tool with plague weapons, and these are badass, so let's talk about them.
The plague weapons vary wildly, and honestly, this is where Taimsia's combat separates itself from other souls. Think of each of these plague weapons kind of like Sekiro's shinobi tools, except you can use them way more often. You have plague weapons ranging from spears to death scythes, dual blades, axes, greatswords, shields, and even weird stuff like coating your weapon in blood by sacrificing your own HP to increase damage.
There are 21 plague weapons in total, and quite a few are exclusively obtained by killing bosses and weaponizing. The unique plagues within them do not only that, but when you kill enemies that use certain weapon types, you'll gain skill shards, and once you have enough, you can upgrade these plague weapons down a singular path that adds a new combo to their attacks as well as other effects.
For example, the spear stabs enemies three times when you use it. You can even see here on the right how much damage percent wise it'll do. But once you upgrade it, the spear can now do a spinning attack, which effectively makes it into a crowd control weapon. Another amazing plague weapon is the great sword, which I found to be the perfect counter to the stronger enemies in the game.
You can just send the yukin dudes into the air with an uppercut, sending their asses flying. This opens them up to being sliced and diced, and once upgraded, you can do a shorter horizontal slash that does 420 percent of attack damage. The new plague weapons are where it's at, and if you specialize yourself in your talent trees, You gain energy when you attack or kill enemies.
You can effectively use plague weapons constantly, which is super fun and really dynamic. Also, while we're on the topic of combat, you may notice that the enemy's health turns white and then green. White health is reduced by attacking, but the green health is called wounding, and this will disappear if you don't bring that meter down so enemies can regenerate.
But that's where your badass alex mercer prototype like clawhand comes in, and when you use this heavy attack you can slash the wounds of an enemy and permanently reduce their maximum HP. It's really cool. Yeah right, I forgot that there are also bosses in the game. Surprisingly, there are quite a few bosses here that are really good.
Of course, I won't show you the majority of them, but there are eight in total. Odily enough, the first true boss you fight is Odure, a circus ringleader psycho, who is weirdly tough for a first boss, and to be honest, outside of some later fights, none of them really compare to Odure in terms of difficulty.
But then again, maybe I was just struggling because I suck sometimes, so your experience may vary. Ody is really a standout boss in this game, and he feels like he would fit right in with games like Bloodborne or Sekira with how he attacks and operates. Some bosses even have secondary phases as well as ultimate attacks that can turn a fight from going well to you being dead pretty fast.
Another boss I want to quickly talk about is the hanged queen. She's the second main boss. This fight, while easy, was really fun as well. Her mechanics are simple, and to be honest, the difference between a boss like her and one like her in terms of difficulty is light years apart. That being said, I dug how many of the bosses feel like they could be in a Soulsborne game and I wouldn't really question it.
My favorite boss I can't show you due to spoilers, but all I'll say is they're not only extremely difficult, but extremely fun to fight too. They are optional, though, so I'll leave that discovery for you to experience. On the flip side, I do have problems with Taimesia, so let's go over those as well.
