Thalassa Edge of the Abyss Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published September 4, 2024 · Updated September 6, 2024

Thalassa Edge of the Abyss Review is a single-player, first-person psychological drama set in 1905. You play as Cam, a deep sea diver in a crew of adventurers and pioneers aboard Thalassa. As you prepare to raise a long-forgotten Spanish galleon from the ocean, what should be a great day for history takes a turn for the worst.

Thalassa Edge of the Abyss Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
24.78GB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Full keyboard support.
Graphics settings – full screen, resolution, resolution scale, v-sync, frame rate limit, gamma scale slider, and graphics preset including custom.
Gameplay settings – field of view slider, helmet mode (immersive/static/hidden), difficulty, nondecorative, and motion blur.
Two difficulties – assisted and standard.
You can remap the controls for the keyboard.
Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, deadzone threshold slider, and swap left and right sticks.
In-game cutscenes and still art character interactions.
Full voice work.
First-person view in a 3D game world.
You have a moa and as you get objectives and points of interest the map fills in.
Pop-ups for when you have added info to your journal, objective, or map.
Seamless transitions between cutscenes and gameplay.
Mysteries can be triggered when playing, as you investigate it you find items and clues and then place them into the prompts on the Web of Mystery in your menu. It highlights wrong answers.
They make the mystery item/clue adding somewhat easier by letting you click an empty entry and it opens up the menu with only acceptable items/clues.
Once you get down to the ship it’s a beautiful place to investigate and explore.
Unlock lore and story as you explore the ship.
When I got to the ship I found the pacing a lot better than when I was above ground.

Thalassa Edge of the Abyss Review Cons:

You cannot remap the controls for the controller.
No way to see the controller’s layout.
Performance was up and down for me no matter what I changed I would get stuttering, pop-up, and washed-out visuals.
You are a nonspeaking character and it’s quite immersion-breaking in conversations.
Slow starter with an ongoing slow pace to it all.
Doesn’t do the best job of guiding you along.
The game has no real feel of exploration about it, it’s all very safe and well-choreographed.
Navigating the menus is not great at all.
Robotic character animations do that thing where interacting with a character will have them automatically move over to be in the right place.
You cannot fast-forward or skip interactions.
I didn’t start enjoying the game until I got down to the actual ship.
No replay value.

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