THYSIASTERY

Thysiastery is such a treat, for a lot of reasons, but in particular the buildcrafting. The game features the traditional "character has a skill tree from their class, buy skills from the tree with skill points you get on lvl up" pattern, but adds two HUGE ideas i haven't encountered before. 1) a character can spend their skill points to "Develop" a new, unknown skill from a known one. the new skill is always related to the original in some way (maybe both pertain to critical chance, maybe both buff teammate defenses, maybe both are light-elemental attacks) so you can do some steering. Develop lets you expand the potential of a class beyond its original shape in order to suit your changing team and items etc. I've had a ton of fun synergies come to me through develop and it's always fun to find out what i'm about to stumble into. 2) a character in your party can teach any of their known skills to another character in your party. I often have my healer teach everybody some basic healing, or spread the priceless knowledge when one of my team discovers a powerful defensive passive. the teaching system lets you splice builds together and create splendid amalgams, and lets bench characters spend their time improving the active party. these two options combined with everything else in thysiastery make putting my team together throughout a run DELICIOUS and i can't recommend it enough. praying for more thysiastery content, as i seem to have already zoomed through what was available, but i intend to replay more anyway.

Thysiastery turned out to be an unexpected gem that I recently picked up here, and I would gladly recommend it to anyone with the time and inclination to play. It is a dark setting that draws the player into a world that feels void of all hope. Cast into the labyrinth, one must traverse the stratum to reach a final confrontation with a sinister overlord. The music is ominous and leaves one with a haunted feeling as they make their descent into the bottom of evil's lair. The tone of this game really stood out to me as a hook that drew me into play run after run. The game is a turn-based system in which combat and movement can be planned for. There are a variety of interesting items and randomized loot which keeps me coming back in search of new combinations of skills and equipment. The skill system is set up so that characters in a 4 person party can learn a variety of techniques that grow as they advance. Furthermore, the characters that join your party can teach each other different skill trees so that you can mix and match classes. This gives your adventure a great deal of customization. The learning curve of this game takes a bit of time to master but is well worth the effort. There is a wide range of damage types, tech points for special abilities, and focus to pay attention to. Furthermore, it takes a bit of time to get used to some of the various monsters that you will encounter in the labyrinth and what types of weapons might be most effective. Once you get the hang of how it is done, the game will get more fun, and you can increase the amount of challenges added to each run. I learned by trial and error, and I think it is a great way to start playing. There are no real quests or puzzles. Just good old fashion dungeon crawling, looting, and slaying of evil beasts to keep the experience entertaining. That is how I like it! I highly recommend playing this game, as I find myself spending loads of time in the labyrinth, always looking to improve my game.

Incredibly punishing dungeon crawler that isn't afraid to punish the player. My deaths never feel like they were a result of poor balancing or RNG screwing me over, but instead they feel like something I could have predicted and overcame if I knew more and prepared better. Remember that "error" is a big part of "trial and error".

Cannot recommend in its current state, due to unbalance. I started a new game, easy battles, found a couple more party members, we get great luck with loot... *spoilers below* until then the game was very easy, enemies had no time to fight back as they were killed very quickly. Then this boss, a pile of bodies, is the polar opposite. After some 10 turns or more of my entire party attacking, using the strongest spells we have, healing back up, etc, it seems like the boss got fed up and attacked EIGHT TIMEs in a row, killing my entire party without any chance of reaction. Yeah that's an easy refund.

Lost my whole party of 4 to a three-headed robot boss without doing much, cried and remembered I had one guy left at the campfire. Geared him up with the best I had and revenged every died member alone. Found some more party members after that, survived few floors and lost the run completely. Happy that I didn't just restart. As many others say, it's very hard and will gladly punish mistakes you make down the road. Team members that I have done my best to develop die when the wrong enemy comes across. Knowledge of the enemies is extremely valuable, but it requires you to fight, observe and remember. Old school dungeon crawler and RPG fans enjoy this for sure, but I'm on the fence with the mechanics. Anyways, thumbs up for creating such an immersive experience.

Ok i'm not sure if there have been balance patches since all these negative reviews or what, but I have played exactly one run of this game, and beat the final boss first try (without any party members dying too which was an achievement apparently). Granted I have lots of experience with the genre, but I was completely blind, having never even seen the game before today. Basically: If you're put off by all the reviews saying the game is far too punishing, I would take them with a grain of salt. There's every chance I just got an insanely lucky first run, and I'll not be able to beat the game again for a long time, but there were a lot of close calls and challenging sections, I just always felt like I had the tools to win. Even in the one circumstance where I quite literally didn't have the tools to win (I was being hunted down by 3 enemies that were immune to all the types of damage my party could inflict) I used a teleport scroll to head back to the previous floor, taught myself an elemental spell by killing some enemies, and came back able to win. Difficulty aside, the game has been very fun so far, can recommend.

I felt like it was appropriate to write a review of the game after beating it, so that I could ensure I was engaging with the entire experience and it felt doable. I find this game charming and fun. I have had many laughs playing this game and find the mechanics of it all engaging and interesting. I have not played many games in this genre, but I really enjoy the wacky monsters, the awesome abilities, the funny team mates, and the snappy gameplay. The randomness of the game really makes a whole run exciting to excel in. And of course, getting the dog is always a huge win. This is one of the best games I've played this year!

This ain't for me, but this is high quality stuff. For a project like this, it has a surprising amount of polish and a great atmosphere to boot.