Thymesia PS5 Review – Thymesia is a souls-like game that see’s you play as Corvus, a reincarnated warrior with amnesia. Though unsure of your standing in the world, you are guided by a spectral visage that tasks you with uncovering the secrets of “Vile Blood” and “Pure Blood”. It will certainly appeal to those of you that like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
Thymesia PS5 Review – Story
Times were dark, the plague and copious other diseases swept through the world. Countries exhausted method after method to try and rid their land of disease, but to no avail. One kingdom, however, found success in wielding the power of alchemy to produce antibodies. The kingdom used the antibodies to strengthen their soldiers by making them immune to disease and enhancing their natural abilities. It wasn’t before long that the kingdom became known as the most powerful in the world.
Decades later, an attempt was made to try and neutralise the use of alchemy in the kingdom, but it had detrimental consequences and all the kingdoms’ soldiers mutated into horrifying monsters. The kingdom was in chaos and monsters roamed the kingdom destroying anything in their path.
It’s now up to Corvus to find out what happened, but he has lost his memory. The truth can only be pieced together from his memories which he’ll have to recover while trying to hack and slash his way through a world infested with monsters
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Thymesia PS5 Review – Soul Taker
The feelings of Souls titles are aplenty here, with things like lanterns serving as bonfires, a spectral home base where you can upgrade your character, and labyrinthine level design littered with shortcuts. The four levels are pretty small, and each successive one gets smaller. Each area has side quests that add a bit of additional content, however heres not much.
Visually, the environments greatly differ from one another, but do borrow heavily from the FromSoftware playbook; a poisonous forest, blood-soaked caverns, and an abandoned village. The levels add their own visual twists: the forest features a travelling circus, and you reach the bloody caverns through a series of arboretums, but nothing feels wholly original.
The problem I found is that these games have now been done to death and unfortunately a lot better than Thymesia.
Gameplay offers the usual mix of Hack and Slash combat with the same attack and dodge controls that you would expect from Dark Souls but that is where one of the major issues with this game screams at you. Thymesia feels like it hasn’t been done with the polish that Dark Souls pulled off. It just feels rather unrefined at the best of times.
It doesn’t help that during boss fights when you really need that precision it lets you down. I really felt this with the first boss, however if you manage to get past that boss, levelling up your character makes the game easier, and the later levels aren’t as big a struggle as the start of the game. The difficulty doesn’t ramp up in line with your levelling up.
Thymesia PS5 Review – The Lore of the Land
Now, in my 4 decades of gaming I do realise that it is hard to find any ‘new’ genres of game, it is even harded to find many that have any real staying power.
Thymesia is a low to mid budget title that has thrown its cap in the ring of numerous other souls-like games. The issue with that is that it must be bigger and better than other games and not just try to cash in on the fans of the genre. It falls very short of the mark.
The cast is incredibly slim, there is no voice-acting or narration, and the Kingdom of Hermes feels somewhat compact when compared to the huge labyrinths that genre fans will be used to. The tale is conceptually interesting but ultimately accounts for little more than picking up a hell of a lot of notes. These clues form a tale of conspiracy, classism, and the alchemic arts, but without the necessary tools to dramatically deliver upon ideas. The game does however offer multiple endings depending on how much of Corvus’ memory is restored, so 100%’ers will be in their element here.
Yes, it is a poor man’s Dark Souls, that is obvious, but a lot of people are trying their hands at these games now. It’s impossible not to compare games in the same genre. For those of you that are looking to get into souls-like games then this is a good place to start as your enjoyment will go up and up from this title.
Thymesia PS5 Review – The Final Verdict
Personally during all my time at AIR Entertainment I haven’t been a fan of writing negative reviews even if it does mean that people will come and read them. There are a lot of negatives from Thymesia but there are positives as well. The main problem is that the developers have tried to take on all other Souls-like titles and it is obvious that it isn’t up to the task of competing with them on a level playing field. There are positives if you are new to the genre, but I don’t see this selling much for those true die-hard fans
