Thea: The Awakening Reviews

Nice game.

Great game

Addictive? Definitely. Fun? Addictive. I see why people like it. The setting is very cool a lot like a show that rhymes with "pitcher". There are lots of stats to fiddle with and lots of undocumented rules to uncover. And it was cheap on sale! But.. you know. You have to spend hours grinding every run. Walk all he way over the map to get food, walk all the way somewhere else, stand around "gathering" forever, walk back again, etc. And there are no saves. death is permanent. Stuff you need is random. And every so often (not immediately, after you've invested the long tedious hours) events just happen to that kill everyone or destroy all your stuff. Sometimes the story progresses.

Enjoying the game and all the random encounters. Quite difficult to advance because of many tough foe and random events like storms and poisonings etc. Unlike Thea 2 where you can save many save points in case things go amok. This game saves only one save and overwrites every save. Still fun because of all the random events, so no two games are the same. I do not fight the card battles, only auto resolve battles. So you have your choice how you want to play. If you do not like card games, just play auto resolve. Lots of collecting and crafting to do. If you buy both games ,can buy a package deal and save a little bit too.

Maybe it's the blend of Slavic folklore with the gritty dark fantasy art or the choose-your-own-adventure style encounter format, but something about Thea keeps me coming back to play all these years later. Here's the best parts of what this game has to offer: 1. Gritty, dark fantasy-style artwork drawing from Slavic folklore 2. Narrated gameplay similar to having a game master or DM narrate your ttrpg choices 3. Replayability using different strategies, tech-tree choices, resources & deity perks 4. Unique dialogue / encounter options depending on group composition, deity choice, previous encounters 5. Interesting combat / conflict resolution via card game where the cards represent your characters The downsides of this game: 1. Fairly limited for village simulation / management options, limited to one village 2. Combat / conflict encounters can be difficult at first, but can become trivial when using certain strategies 3. The music is fantastic, but limited tracks so the music repeats a lot 4. There are some encounters where the text is not narrated (or the game fails to play the narrators lines) All in all, Thea: The Awakening is a reasonably solid game considering its age. Worth giving a try if you enjoy hybrid strategy / simulation games with a dash of rpg-style mechanics and dark fantasy overtones.