I really am a lover of the Soulsborne genre. Possibly one of the newest and most definitive game genres around, the style mixes intense challenge with rewarding gameplay, cryptic and dense plot and lore, and larger-than-life themes. Many games, both indie and big budget, have stepped up to the plate to challenge the big dogs (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Nioh to name a few) and failed. Some have succeded to carve out a niche audience for themselves, such as The Surge and recently Stranger of Paradise. Then there are others that come and go, not particularly terrible but not at all brilliant, and are a flash-in-the-pan experience that you’ll probably forget in another month’s time. I believe Thymesia, the latest Soulsborne entrant to the scene, fits in this camp.

Thymesia offers up many of the ingredients that fans of the genre are familiar with. A once great city has succumbed to a plague, and it is up to you, the player, to figure out what has happened and defeat the grotesque beasties that now inhabit the land. Familiar? I thought so.

The game has everything: a world built upon Colossal Trees, a plague, a blessed flame, alchemical healing, and ‘beacons’ used to respawn. At times, it certainly felt derivative, but also somewhat comforting to know that there are some staple elements at play to lay the foundation for some hopefully satisfying gameplay.

In Thymesia, you play as Corvus, a blade and claw-wielding witch-doctor-esque warrior with a knack for the elegant dispatching of foes. Enemy variety is solid, with enough different combinations to keep players on their toes, as well as the occasional environmental hazard to test your wits. By utilising a fairly diverse range of combat elements at your disposal, you will guide Corvus through each of the game’s stages and take down the boss of the area. The bosses are all varied, well designed, and brutally challenging. Luckily, the game provides you with many options and strategies to fight these enemies.

The game is smooth as butter and the animations are fluid and well executed. Graphically, the game shines, and is a sterling example of a modern “indie-ish” title that really commits to visual and mechanical excellence. Thymesia truly presents as a game with a high-end budget.

The aforementioned Plague Weapons is one of the coolest and more innovative mechanics introduced in Thymesia. By holding down the right trigger, Corvus charges up his plague claws and thrusts them into the enemy, ripping out a Plague Weapon from within them. Initially, these are single-use attacks; a thrusting spear attack, or a fanning projectile attack using throwing knives. However, later in the game, you are able to equip these permanent side-arms to deploy in combat. There is a large variety to discover throughout the game, as well as some unique ones available from the game’s bosses, providing an excuse for replayability and experimentation. For me, I stuck with the spear – getting range on enemies and being able to stagger them from a medium distance sat very well in my play style.

Where I can heap praise upon Thymesia for interesting combat and creative systems, I can also heap criticism on the fact that none of this feels like a leap forward or true innovation for the genre. While the cliche use of adjectives and certain pronouns to set up the world and environment is comforting on one hand, it is also a symptom of a genre that is failing to move past its, admittedly immense and impressive, roots. Instead, like so many before it, by the end of Thymesia I really felt like I just played through yet another imitation, albeit one that flew fairly close to potential greatness.

It feels like a game that was intended to be much longer and deeper than the final product. There are seeds planted early in the game that never really come to fruition and leave me wondering if something occurred during development that halted fleshing out more of the game’s hanging threads. I would have loved to have seen more of the world, more of the lore, and more degradation of the world to witness the vile and grotesque results.

Finally, there is a certain awkwardness to Thymesia that is somewhat difficult to define, but after many hours in the game, I believe it to be a lack of voice acting, sense of purpose, and character depth. Sure, Soulslike games are not big narrative blockbusters, but there is often enough context and character injected into the game to give it a certain personality or identity.