Game Overview: Thea 1 & 2

Game Title: Thea: The Awakening & Thea 2: The Shattering
Released: November 20, 2015 & May 13, 2019

Development

Information: Considering that I just played Triangle Strategy, I wanted to try and find some more tile-based games. Unfortunately, several sources online were trying to get me to play any of the 16 Fire Emblem games, where the best one had you replaying the game four times to experience all the content. So lately, I've been using a program called Steampeek to try and find different types of games on Steam. I'm not exactly sure how I came across the game Thea 2, but the idea of a 4x RPG Rogue-like Card Game seemed quite appealing. After playing it, it becomes very clear from the number of customized portraits that it was originally a kickstarter project. The DLCs Wrath of the Sea from 2020 and Rat Tales that was released a couple weeks ago are both free. There is a demo if you wish to try out the game more and a weird Pizza DLC if you wish to simply donate more money to the developers. The first game followed the same pattern with multiplayer, story, and donation DLCs.

Randomization

Setup: It is very hard for me to properly review these games when my experience was so terrible with both of them. While Thea is a more robust system, the core aspects of the game were still carried over to Thea 2 with a few alterations in the formula. So for example, the very first thing you will be hit with happens before the game starts. Every person will have two gods available to them that are randomly selected upon installing the game. You can unlock more perks the more points you accumulate in a round but Thea requires you to reach the third tier to unlock another god while Thea 2 allows you to spend those points on any god, character, or bonus. The first game automatically sets you up with a village, two or three random resources to gather from, and a number of characters with their own set of equipment and bonuses. If your only food source ends up being meat, you'll find yourself being unable to build some of the more basic buildings. On the contrary, Thea 2 allows you to build your village and advances your gathering range to two tiles. In addition to letting you choose some of your characters (within the bounds of your god), the sequel will also provide you opportunities to decide which skills or stats to upgrade on your characters.

Difficulty: The second aspect that troubled me was figuring out why the game becomes so challenging so quickly. Unfortunately, that is built inside the system. I once found a statement that read: Every 10 turns world difficulty raises by 1 to maximum of 10 after 100 turn – when dragons appear on the map. Decreasing the difficulty to Novice (or customizing to snail pace) will give you more time. Things get even more confusing when the skull system is based on the designated tier and not how difficult the encounter will be. Killing nests will only cause stronger ones to spawn. Your team might be awesome when it comes to fighting four skulls physically but fail miserably when fighting two skulls non-physically. The game allows you to check your party before making a choice and can automatically give you a calculated resolution without participating in the battle system. However, Thea 2 gives lenience on your decision by providing you more opportunities to refuse a confrontational fight or manually fight a battle after seeing what sort or results the auto-resolve feature might provide you (even though my encounters normally ended up being worse when trying on my own). Of course, you can always choose to save your game before an event and reload it. While Thea only allowed a single game file, the sequel provides you with a series of save slots (and automatically saves the game on occasion or upon exiting the game).

Events: The biggest detriment to my playthroughs would have to be how unfair the encounters were. Let me give you two examples: (1) I once observed a peculiar woman at the gate of my village. Despite seeing through her facade and successfully winning the battle, her rats managed to sneak in and kill three of my children. (2) I once assigned a couple of gatherers one square outside my village to gather more resources. They were there, never moving, for a total of twenty rounds until a hole collapsed under them. Because they didn't have any strength, the vipers down below bit them with heavy poison. Without a way to cure them, they went to the witch hut but soon realized she wouldn't remove the poison without more food. With very little time left, the witch offered another physical challenge to clean out her garden that proved too much for them. They quickly died thereafter. Events may be random but can happen at any time with increasing difficulty. I found my village constantly plagued by mysterious beings and lost children. There are around 100 events in the first game alone.

Game Systems

Choices: Since the developers expect you to replay their games several times over, they have put in place methods to keep things fresh. For starters, the tutorial will always be a part of the game. While the first game does a way better job teaching you the ropes with a more personal touch from your guide, both games provide you a skip option (sometimes with sarcastic undertones). The game will present alternative choices depending on the attributes available. You may find someone more apt to do something if a character is marked as attractive or creepy, there are options if you want to follow what your god would deem fit, you can choose smarter approaches to puzzles if your intellect is high enough, or you'll find rare opportunities if you happen to have a child in your group. All these things will help diversify your experience. The main campaign will generally offer two completely separate branches to advance the central story.

Battle System: Nestled within all the complaints of the sequel is how much the battle system changed. The original game had a straightforward system. There are three offensive cards and three tactical cards chosen at random (to which you can reshuffle once) before the match begins. You are generally given two action points that can be used for placing a character in battle or using an ability. Tactical members can join the match but are unable to do anything within the first of two turns. There was a wide-range of abilities that would stall/remove enemies or reinforce your characters. Thea 2 expands into a battle grid without limiting your characters to a role. You can now choose beyond just six members, have them perform multiple abilities earned from equipment or traits, spend an extra action point to have them perform again, and set characters up in both the front or back rows. The irony of the situation is that I found myself choosing to auto-resolve most battles.

Gathering: The gap between success and failure largely depends on how well your characters are equipped. This means three things: gathering resources, research, and crafting. In both games, you'll need to send out parties with wood for fuel and food to eat. Thea 2 gives you the option to turn on or off which items gets used during the process. Each resource is assigned a gathering number that needs to be completed before you can retrieve it. The number will reset if you leave the camp. Thea allows you to assign more people to gather each resource but has diminishing returns. It also adds the difficulty of needing an additional movement point to even create the camp. Thea 2 added more options to gain research points and perform rituals. While basic resources were available from the start, any and all additional land sources require one research point and their appropriate previous tier unlocked before even attempting to gather. This goes for crafting any particular type of object or building too. Once you have the specific item unlocked, you'll need multiple types of material to begin the crafting process and assign people to it. In Thea 2, you can further combine or break down material of a specific tier.

Miscellaneous

Changes: The sequel definitely includes a lot of new things that the original didn't have. You can now traverse different islands using a boat but it slows down to a crawl's pace of one or two movement slots when there is a restricting 2,000 weight limit. The islands have their own set of supplies and difficulty but that doesn't prevent you from being bombarded from higher challenges on the core island. There are a range of factions and villages you can visit. Only one action can be taken at a village per action point and they include things from trading, buying a dog, visiting the food stalls, gambling, or taking on the whole camp. Seasons can drastically change your experience with several bonuses and problems that can occur like a hurricane hitting your supply at the village or snow that restricts your movement points down to two. Most buildings for your village aren't generally worth constructing when counting up all the costs it takes to build. Trying to get one of your kids to become a certain class can be rather difficult. My heart skipped a beat when I read "The traumatic events of the last few days made it clear your child is child no more" before realizing that was the default text for the conversion. While the UI of the original was pretty decent, you are able to do so much more with queues and adding favorites in the sequel. I wasn't too thrilled about having to press the middle mouse button to move the screen but later adapted to the technique. Still not thrilled how you can't undo a party move.

Story: I will admit that the story is pretty good for both games. I found myself laughing when learning how the people behind the disasters acted like a bunch of bureaucrats trying to escape fault. The locations of the story will generally spawn near your party group. So watch yourself if you are far away from your village or on another island. They can also happen in rapid succession. At one point in Thea 2, I noticed a total of 5 events: (1) a witch hut appeared and asked to remove the curse in exchange for twenty food, (2) a notice saying that the land I just reached is much harder than anything else, (3) the fairies are at it again with another event, (4) the smithing dwarf appeared, and (5) a very deadly man with 7 skull difficulty appeared that I promptly left alone to his murder spree.

Summary

Review: Thea 1 & 2 are not real expensive and have some interesting content. There are a lot of systems to overcome and a bunch of campaign-style events that can be extremely punishing. There is an expectation to play through the game several times with the amount of changing variables from your setup to the story branches. Difficulty ranks up pretty quickly even on the lowest setting and there is an expectation to be efficient with the options available to you. It is generally not kind to base-building methods and favors gathering resources through exploration. Perhaps if my beginning experience ran smoother without having to learn what techniques work best, I would be more favorable to recommending the game. Unfortunately, my time has officially come to a close for these games as the amount of cheap tactics did not have me wanting more.