Thea: The Awakening - Review @ IGR

Thea: The Awakening – What We Think:

Thea: The Awakening from indie developer MuHa Games sets out to meld the concepts behind RPGs, Roguelikes and 4X gameplay into an entirely new kind of game whilst remaining comfortably familiar to anyone who has sat behind the controls of a turn-based strategy. It’s always exciting when developers step outside the usual conventions of established genres and give us something new to explore. Treading new ground can be risky, but it’s fair to say Thea does so with grace.

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Wide Awake

Thea: The Awakening is an excellent experiment in combining genres that pays off in its unique, if often meandering, gameplay. Fans of roguelikes, RPGs and 4X games are likely to find something to enjoy here, and even if one of these genres is not normally your cup of tea you’ll likely find enough of the others to keep you entertained. Thea manages to be both familiar and innovative at the same time whilst providing a dynamic, nonlinear and engrossing adventure.

Score: 4/5

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ChienAboyeur said:

Since its release, this game has been going to the gutter.

A repeated pattern is the elementary brick of any gameplay. The counterweight is to associate a stake to the any repeated action.

At release, they had that but for some reason, decide to remove stakes so the gameplay could be turned dull.

As it is not possible to guarantee a stake for any repeated pattern, the use of a hand off/on resolution is usually a mandatory feature in this kind of games.

Repetition gives predictable trends and the hand off method at release works well to relieve the player from spending time on stake less resolutions.

They managed to mess up that as well, the hand off resolution system is now fairly predictable for forcing the player into resolutions that he should no longer handle.

Through repetition, the player grows confident this party can handle this type of encounter at the price of a few scratches? The hand off resolution engine is here to force him playing that kind of encounters as the hand off resolution means a wiped out party.

Press the hand off resolution button: get your party wiped out. Press the hand on resolution button: play the dull as dull encounter.

The double penalty.

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Pladio said:

As per usual, I would love to understand what you mean, but instead of getting to a point you grind around it.

What are you actually saying ?

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Pladio said:

As per usual, I would love to understand what you mean, but instead of getting to a point you grind around it.

What are you actually saying ?

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ChienAboyeur said:

What point? The point is made in the first sentence: since the initial release, the game has been going to the gutter, the quality of the gameplay has been deteriorating.
How is it grinding around when it is stated in the first sentence?

As to the rest, what is there to be understood? Players with an interest in gameplay observe the same, they do not need to read the post to experience it, just play the game and experience.
Those with no interest in gameplay might wonder what it is all about. Why should they care as the comment is about gameplay and they have no interest in gameplay?

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BoboTheMighty said:

Tried hitting "translate to English" on Chien here, but it caused my Google Chrome to crash.

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