Tharsis Reviews
Check out Tharsis Review Scores from trusted Critics below. With 17 reviews on CriticDB, Tharsis has a score of:
This game has elements that make people like me smile and rage at the same time, but being objective, I can see how people may not be too enthused by that concept. This game is great for people who can stand praying to the RNG more than usual.
Tharsis is a good yet difficult strategy game that takes a lot of time to master.
Tharsis is a turn-based space survival game where you are in control of humanity's first manned mission to Mars just as it's struck by a mighty meteor storm.
For those looking for something unique and original, Tharsis definitely offers that up in spades. It’s not a game that can be played for hours on end, but you’ll certainly return to it time and again should you fall for its clever blend of roguelike and strategy board games.
Tharsis is a game for those who love tabletop gaming and a challenging experience. At its heart Tharsis is as unforgiving as it is entertaining, but it offers very little variety in terms of the overall game. There's one ship and a limited selection of crew members to unlock, and players will bear witness to the same cutscenes game after game, which after the first playthrough are likely going to be skipped forever. Tharsis has a surprisingly addictive quality, and tabletop fans who want to roll the dice on it should find it well-worth the launching sale price of $9 - but be warned, a voyage on the Iktomi isn't for the faint of heart.
Tharsis is a single player turn-based survival game that involves some strategy, dice throws, and a lot of luck. As each step requires you to plan ahead a little bit, the only thing stopping you from succeeding is bad luck – everything that happens during your mission is up to chance, and your job is to be flexible and plan around it. Difficult to win even if you think you’re doing well, the intriguing and sophisticated concept of Tharsis is somewhat lost due to the frustrating outcomes and unbelievably unlucky dice rolls. Am I playing Tharsis, or is Tharsis playing me?
Tharsis is a good way to spend 10-30 minutes to see what happens on the next journey. It’s a very harsh battle against the unknown, and can be utterly soul-crushing. Perhaps too soul-crushing, actually. Players will, at times, feel so defeated and useless that playing again seems pointless. And maybe that’s the point, considering the circumstances. I wouldn’t recommend to marathon Tharsis in an attempt to complete its journey, but instead to boot it up every once in a while and hope for the best.
Tharsis is a strategic nightmare where the survival of your crew, and the completion of your very important mission, relies heavily on luck and a dash of
Tharsis would be a game I would enjoy playing on a tabletop with some buddies, while drinking some beers, and enjoying our repeated failures. However, as a single-player video game, with only a few extra missions to take you out of the basic gameplay loop that is consistently frustrating, the overall experience has all the right parts but just leaves too much up to chance to be enjoyable.
Jokes aside, Tharsis is an incredibly meaningful game that has picked a woefully inadequate format to express an innately intelligent idea. If this was a narrative game, in the vein of Telltale Games’ work or Life is Strange, then we really would have had something special on our hands. As it is, we have a board game that goes out of its way to be unfair so it can make players make decisions that should have great emotional impact, but in practice become a quite pragmatic stepping stone towards victory.
Tharsis is a mission-to-Mars game. You need to direct the actions of four crew members aboard your spacecraft so you can land at least one person alive on Mars. I would say “safely” on Mars, but this voyage isn’t exactly OSHA approved.Read More
Tharsis can never stop reminding you that you don't have control over its interstellar disaster, just the illusion of it. Every time I watched my ship fall apart, and every time I watched new events propagate across the ship that were completely impossible to stop, I felt like, win-or-lose, Tharsis was having all the fun.
Tharsis is well made, but not well designed—an attractive, interesting board game idea, but only the first draft.
Though the mechanics of Tharsis are often exciting and suspenseful, the game ultimately falls short of expectations due to irredeemably punishing dice rolls.
The thin storyline around it is entirely superfluous, I'll admit to tiring of the spaceship looking identical every single time I play and it's fair to say there's less motivation to keep on going back once you finally beat it, but even if you only get a few days out of it, right now the price is right.