Thymesia Early Hands On Impressions

Developer: OverBorder Studio

Publisher: Team17

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

Genres: Action Role-Playing Fighting Adventure

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows

Thymesia is a action role-laying game in the spirit of games such as Bloodborne and Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. I made it up to the first main boss fairly quickly which is what my impressions are based in this article.

As a guy who beaten every recent FromSoftware game Thymesia’s DNA resonates strongly with Bloodborne and Sekiro. I mastered the latter games hence me pretty much not struggling in Thymesia. Not to say Thymesia is easy the difficulty is locked and their have been challenging mob/enemies. Experience plays out in these type of games gameplay-wise.

Corvus (the protagonist) is a mysterious being who’s goal is to remember his memories by playing through Thymesia’s levels. You start out in Hermes Fortress which serves as the opening and tutorial for Thymesia. Combat was easy to learn for me due to my past experience with these style of games. The only parts I had to practice were the feather attack counter’s timing. Corvus has two basic attacks being his saber and claw attack which both serve different purposes in combat. Plague weapons can be stolen and used against enemies by using reaved claw.

Thymesia offers the player his or her choice in playstyle through unlocking abilities. Upgrading Corvus you can unlock block ability for instance. You can also unlock an ability to counter attack by jumping on the enemy like Sekiro. I’ve been mostly using double dodge saber then claw.

You can upgrade base stats and attributes depending on how you play. Gameplay is the core in Thymesia and it’s best attribute so far in my opinion. Visuals, sound, cutscenes all pale in comparison with the combat gameplay which is a good thing since Thymesia at it’s core is a combat action RPG game first.

After losing to the tutorial “suppose to die” bossfight involving Knight Varg Corvus wakes up in Philosopher’s Hill which is the main HUB area. You can talk to a woman named Aisemy and collect documents scattered about. Not much else you can do there at first.

Bonfires I MEAN beacons are chairs in the gameworld where you can rest, upgrade and reset the map much like bonfires *cough*. The chapter I am currently on is called Sea of Trees which reminds me of every thick fog poison swamp area in Souls games. As for map design I can’t complain at all. I know Thymesia has a poor man’s budget compared to Elden Ring. But that doesn’t stop it from having good maps so far.

As I alluded to earlier the visuals and artstyle aren’t the best running on the Playstation 5. The game does feel like 60 frames per second thank god. I have no clue as for it’s resolution sorry. The weird thing that stands out the most with Thymesia is the music choices. I don’t know man the music is just odd and weird for this type of game.

The current Sea of Trees has a subtle story involving a circus (I know) so maybe that’s why the music seems weird. Overall, so far gameplay is good with decent maps. Like I said the latter is the core for this type of game and Thymesia delivers so far. Stay tuned for the full written review later. Thanks for reading – Jason