Thea: The Awakening Review

It’d be criminal to say that Thea has a lot to do with The Witcher. However, The Witcher is, by now, popular enough to be a referent for Slavic mythology. And Thea is brimming with creatures and myths that reminisce of the side quests in any of the games by CD Projekt Red, from rusalkas to dragons; although perhaps not as in-detail as the former is. Thea tries to imbue some personality to the game, pay homage to its inspirations, but it ends up being a caricature of Slavic folklore, with a strange mix of tones and irritating characters that desperately attempt to have some sort of charisma.

The land of Thea has just awakened (pretty self-explanatory so far) from the Age of Darkness, and in doing so, all evil creatures that lurked within it are now visible and threaten your people’s safety. And when I say your people, I refer to a bunch of unlucky peasants that you usually refer to as ‘the rabble’. You are a god, chosen among the ones you have unlocked so far. These gods differ in motivations and design, to the point that some of them feel too different to belong to the same mythology. The boosts and themes that each one provides to the gameplay are barely noticeable, so it feels odd to see such a disparate cast of gods that isn’t reflected in the mechanics.

In a similar fashion to Civilization V, the mechanics are centred around taking turns in a hexagonal grid, in which your metropolis — I mean, village —, and the subsequent expeditions that you send off — usually only one — are the only thing you have any control over. Fundamentally, this one expedition is the only thing you actually care about, to the point that assigning all your citizens into this one party can potentially have very good results. However, the big issue regarding the management of resources and people is that it’s as simple as ABC, as there are very few dilemmas to deal with. In the eventuality that you actually deal with big problems, what to do is pretty unambiguous, so it never feels you have to pull an original strategy out of your sleeve. Go to the marked tile on the map, fight a group of enemies and get loot, talk with a weird guy, rinse, and repeat.

This game’s structured as a roguelike system, in which there is an endgame, achievable by taking any of the different story routes. In theory, that idea is great, but it doesn’t work very well in practice. The different objectives are scattered throughout the map, and it’s likely you’ll end up doing the one you first come across, not very sure of what the difference is in the outcome of your choices, or in the way you execute them. In fact, there’s barely any, as all encounters are resolved in the exact same way: a conversation with multiple outcomes, and all these outcome being a fight in which you’ll have a certain advantage — or not — depending on the characters involved.

One of the two main problems that this game has is its combat system, as it’s repeatedly used to sort out any encounter. Fortunately, the maps are quite densely populated with random events, enemy patrols and side quests, which means that you’ll never get bored in your travels — you will, but you know what I mean. Sadly, all these potentially interesting events turn into meaningless chores. The issue with each fight is that it’s a card game. Each villager in your expedition is represented through a card, with different abilities and whatnot. The problem is not the fact that it’s a card game itself, but that it’s incredibly dull and unoriginal. It also doesn’t match with any of the other mechanics — aside from selecting your party members — so it doesn’t feel cohesive with the rest of the game at any point. Oh, and it’s got an ‘auto-resolve’ button, which allows you to eschew that particular fight, and gives you the best possible outcome by default. It’s as if movies had a ‘skip scene’ option, because it’s probably unimportant and likely that you won’t like it. We’ll also give you a lollipop if you do decide against watching it.

The second problem, which I also talked about in my review of Legends of Eisenwald, is the way the stories and fables are told in the game. An incredibly stodgy text box pops out and only sometimes a voice will accompany it, relating the tale in a very tiresome way. The tone of these texts, in particular, is awkward at best of times, as it mixes a ‘couldn’t-care-less’ sort of comedy with an existential and horror one for some of the NPCs. It just seems as if the format of the dialogue options had been phoned in, with little forethought to it. Fortunately, the decisions that you can take make sense, generally, so if your expedition is primarily composed by hunters, you may want to hunt an enemy, rather than fight it. The same goes for witches and charming enemies, or sneaking around enemy patrols. Again, this generally works better in theory than in practice, as you’ll end up playing cards anyway, no matter the option.

All in all, Thea is a game that has interesting ideas, but none of them play out in a fun or interesting way. The most attractive aspect is probably its lore, which still feels bland and shallow. No story is thought-provoking; no character is memorable, and if it is, it’s due to how obnoxious they can be. I can’t recommend Thea, and given the particular aversion towards card videogames that our editor has, that may even be an understatement. If there’s something to note, it’s the fact that it runs pretty smoothly and without crashes. Like you should. Away from this game.