The Thaumaturge Reviews

Excellent graphic and intriguing story. I enjoy this game

Great atmosphere. I loved it from the beginning. Whole game (except prologue) takes place in 1905 Warsaw under occupation of Russians. Poland did not existed during this time period. Mechanics are pretty simple - you look for clues using your powers. Talk a lot. Many of dialogue options have some consequences. Some quick, some will kick you much later. Turn based battles are satisfying. You can play a lot with your build. Changing abilities is free and available before each fight. If you're looking for a lot of action - skip this one. If you're looking for captivating plot, credible characters, and atmospheric world - jackpot!

So far I'm disappointed - the game doesn't seem to do anything demanding graphically but seems to run incredibly slowly. I suspect it takes a good desktop PC to make this game playable. I'll update this review if I change my mind, but I'm not optimistic.

I really struggled to cross the finish line on this game. There are things I love, and things I don't. Do not take this review as an out-and-out rejection of it. If there was a "recommend under specific circumstances", I'd choose that. As it stands, I imagine more possible customers will leave dissatisfied than satisfied, which is a shame, as with a bit more polish and better design The Thaumaturge could've been an RPG I play every year. Conceptually, this game should be a slam-dunk. It's about an early 20th century wizard solving mysteries in Poland before the fall of the Romanovs. The design team, Fool's Theory, will be working on the Witcher remake, and Witcher vibes are pretty strong here. Technically speaking, the detective parts of the Witcher and its sober grounded slavic drama is what makes that game series so beloved, so producing a condensed version of that formula that focuses on quests and dialogue is very clever and forward thinking. But Fool's Theory, true to their name, fumble the ball in a few areas. The biggest problem is the game is terribly optimized. This is to be expected of a AA title I suppose, but it's shocking how much the game struggles to not leak memory. From afar, the levels look very nice, particularly the mud, water reflections, and clothing textures, but hair and faces are very poorly done. Some characters have wide disturbing mouths, particularly the protagonist when he smiles. The lighting also fights against the character models in certain places. The game is very muddy and simple, despite how taxing it can be on your system. Next is the story which feels like it moves at lightspeed but is slow as molasses at the same time. I'm somewhat surprised I beat it in 32 hours. Mechanically, the story plays like your standard Witcher game. You're presented with a number of side-quests that each toe the line between the natural and supernatural, where the world of man and spirits blurs, all pivoting around a central storyline the consequences of which don't fully reveal themselves until much later. Perhaps it's the localization, but it doesn't all flow together neatly. Characters all deliver sobering and sarcastic lines, which feels true to the source, but not every joke comes across. In some instances it's clear the developers wrote a cultural joke that the translation team didn't even bother to translate. For a game that's mostly about dialogue choices, it's very hard to speak with intention when those intentions aren't always clear. Next, the actual gameplay mechanics are frustratingly stiff and shallow. Every area presents you with a number of "clues" you can unveil with your witcher-sight button. Story progression is gated by finding a certain number of clues until you unveil a deduction, after which you can talk to a sign-posted NPC and open a dialogue that moves the story forward. You are also limited by your salutors, the "spirits" that the main character collects like Pokemon. On more than one occasion I encountered quests I couldn't complete because I needed a certain salutor at a certain level. Oh, also side quests are limited by the act you're in, and some can be missed entirely. If you don't play with a guide, it's very possible that you'll soft-lock your way out of certain storylines, and not for trying. Combat also is interesting, on paper, but vaguely flat. It runs on a Persona-style turn-based combat system with all sorts of stacking debuffs and buffs that don't work well together and don't really matter. The key to victory should be using the right salutor on the right target, but again, if you don't happen to have the right salutor you can still just faceroll enemies away. The long attack animations that play over and over again also drags the gameplay to a crawl. On top of it all everyone in Warsaw is weirdly keen to kick your ass in an early 90s video game sort of way that doesn't always make sense. It was so hard for me to finish the game because I dreaded getting into another alleyway fight when all I want to do is buy a box of goddamn donuts. The voice actors are a mixed bag of average, and no one can decide what sort of accent, if any, the characters should have. You will hear british, french, american, russian, and hispanic accents thrown in haphazardly, and they will all slur pronunciations of Polish nouns full of chaotic consonants. It's bad, but the entertaining kind. So I don't count that as a flaw. The music, is pretty good actually. There aren't many tracks, but they do the job well. The last thing I can say, and the last good thing, is that the monster designs are very interesting and unique. This is going for Witcher vibes, so expect a veritable grab-bag of Eurasian beasties you can corral into your roster. --- Look, if the game is on sale, I recommend a buy. If Fool's Theory puts out another game (not necessarily the Witcher remake), I'd give it a look. Even if it's only a demo or trial run.

I gave this game a try because of the setting and unfortunately it couldn't really capture me for longer. The combat looks interesting at first but quickly turns a bit stale later. I wouldn't say the story so far was bad but it also didn't make me keep engaged personally. All in all I wouldn't say it's a bad game but try it at least out for 2h! It's enough time to see if the game clicks for you.

The more I think about it the more mixed my feelings get. I loved the atmosphere, the story was intriguing and I appreciate rpgs where the role of combat isn't a major factor. However the game felt restricted in its scope and gameplay. Finding Salutors wasn't organic, like it is shown how many there are to find and Wicktor finds them by walking in the same room with them. Midway through act 2 there stops being anything else to do and relationships I built up didn't have that much payoff. The more flaws that are collected should have more of an impact than only being stat boosts. Pride options come up in dialogue but other should as well and feeding the pride flaw should have more consequence then it takes the wheel sometimes.

At its best, it's a decent RPG, with lively characters, dialogues, and situations. Locations look amazing, full of love for old Warsaw architecture. I never imagined that mud on the cobblestones can look so alive and diverse, you can almost feel it squelching and slipping under your feet. It's not always at its best though. Combat is an unbearable chore that doesn't bring neither fun nor tension, just a mindless repetition of the same actions vs identical opponents, that can't be sped up, nor bypassed. Whatever mechanics there are outside of combat, they fail to impress just as well. You just tolerate it as much as you can. Overall, the game is a bit iffy and mediocre, but if you're in the mood for some authentic Polish stuff, it's well worth it.

Pretty decent game. The story is engaging and gameplay is good enough. Battles mostly not challenging (at least on medium difficulty), but that's not a con IMO And the most appealing part of the game is it's setting. There are not many other games which sets somewhere in early XX century Eastern Europe and are not strategy games. Oh and as a side not I would mention, that setups to some fights that happens during exploration or some side quests reminded me porn movies. Like a few slightly random lines of dialogue and BAM! straight to the action

Can we all agree that this is the kind of game we want? Deep story, meaningful choices, an incredible atmosphere—plus, I get to summon spooky Slavic demons to settle my problems. What’s not to love? As a Polish person, seeing 1905 Warsaw like this is magical. The city feels alive, full of history, grime, and people who all have their own agendas. The characters? Phenomenal. Every conversation feels like a high-stakes mind game, and the voice acting is top-tier. Combat is a mix of strategy and mystical smackdowns, and the moral choices hit just as hard. The Thaumaturge feels like The Witcher met Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines at a dark alley dance battle. 10/10, would haunt Warsaw again.

[strike]Pokémon[/strike] The Thaumaturge is a story-driven game where you [strike]capture creatures[/strike] bind demons and make them fight for you against [strike]other trainers[/strike] a bunch of drunk people. It's definitely a bit weird, but it's got a lot of heart, and a very unique and interesting setting. The setting is pretty much what saves this game, really. It's set in Warsaw in 1905, and it just feels really authentic. Granted, I've never been to Warsaw, and I'm not Polish, so I can't tell how authentic it is, but it feels like it was made by people who understand this period in Poland's history, the culture, the politics, the population, etc. It really felt like a glimpse into the past, albeit with magic and demons. I also really enjoyed the inclusion of the Jewish community, which gets quite a bit of the spotlight, with "Kabbalah" being branded as their own secret school of Thaumaturgy. Not something you see in many games. Unfortunately, other than the setting, the story is kind of lacking. It starts off pretty promising, and some of the side quests were interesting, but I found it didn't really ever grip me. The characters were fine, but the writing and voice acting were a little iffy and made it harder to connect with them than it should have been. The story doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere, and this was mostly evident in act 3 when I'm supposed to make a big choice between 2 options, that will decide how the climax will play out, and I found I don't really care either way. If there was a 3rd option, to just walk away from this conflict, I'd have 100% chosen that. It just doesn't do enough to make it [i]personal[/i], you know? I was just kind of wondering why I am even involved in any of this. To make matters worse, this game does what I consider a very big no-no in RPGs. It sometimes take control of your character away from you. Basically, the idea is, you have a Flaw (as all Thaumaturges do) that kinda pushes you to act a certain way. Choose the option connected with it, and you feed the Flaw, making it stronger. In the lead characters' case, this Flaw is Pride. Now, I didn't really make a conscious choice at any point between giving in to my pride or avoiding it, I just chose whichever dialogue option felt right to me at the time. I did often choose myself above others, because... like I said, it was kinda hard to connect with the characters, so I mostly cared about growing my own power. This resulted in choosing the "Pride" dialogue option more often than not. As the game progressed and my pride grew, dialogue options started being locked out - with the caption "Your pride is too high to choose this option". That's fair. I don't really [b]like [/b]it, but I get it, and I typically had other options, not just the Proud one, so I could manage to say or do the thing I wanted to. This changed in act 3. Suddenly, things just happened. I wasn't given a choice. The game just said something like "Your pride chose for you" and made me do things I didn't actually wanna do. Suddenly my character was acting in ways I didn't agree with, and it didn't feel like my character anymore. I was now just going through the motions, playing with the mechanics - performing combat, interacting with objects, etc - but I was not really role playing anymore. I did not appreciate that at all. I think one of the biggest examples of where this really harms the narrative is one scene where a character died because of a selfish choice I made earlier in the game. I was there, watching him die, and... there wasn't even an option to apologize. My pride was too high for that. I could only basically mock him and say something like "well that's what you get". That's not what I wanted at all. That was the first time in the game, maybe even the only time, where I saw serious consequences to my actions. It kinda made me rethink things. It made me want to do better and make up for my mistakes... but the game wouldn't let me. You were a proud a**hole at the start, so you're a proud a**hole till the end. Why? Have they not heard of character development? In contrast, one of my fondest memories of any game, ever, is from my first playthrough of Mass Effect 3. I was playing full Renegade, until a scene where a former crewmate stands up to me and basically says "I'm not letting you do this, you're gonna have to shoot me". I decided not to. The first time in the whole trilogy where I didn't choose the renegade option, because the scene and the character just got to me. It felt right, it was a moment of growth, and I let it change how I played the rest of the playthrough. Meanwhile, the Thaumaturge puts you in a similar position, but doesn't give you the option of growth. You've chosen who your character is, now sit back and watch. One other issue I've got is with the combat. Not the system itself - it's fine. It's not great but it's serviceable, and building an arsenal of demons to choose from was kinda nice. The issue is rather with... who you fight. It's like the developers made this combat system and then thought - "wait, we don't really have any reason for combat to be in this game". The result is... you fight drunks. That's almost exclusively it, at least in acts 1 and 2. You walk into a bar as part of an investigation - a bunch of drunks show up and say "we don't like outsiders here" and a fight starts. You try and get onto a carriage to travel to another part of the city - a bunch of drunks show up and say "that's [b]our[/b] carriage!" and a fight starts. You question a kid about a murder he was a witness to - a bunch of drunks show and say "why are you talking to this child? are you a pedophile?" and a fight starts. F*cking hell. You can't go anywhere in this city without a bunch of drunks showing up and starting a fight. Why was this necessary? At first I thought it was just because I'm starting out, these are the low level fights and the combat system is just being introduced with easy enemies - but no, like 95% of combat in this game is against drunks who start a fight for stupid reasons. It just feels like a complete waste of time. To end this review on a high note, I'll mention some other things I [i]did [/i]like, other than the setting which I already stated is the best part. I enjoyed the soundtrack, I enjoyed some of the ideas and themes in the story very much, I enjoyed the diversity of demons who come from a variety of different folklore, I liked the fact your actions do have consequences that feel significant (I would have even considered doing another playthrough with different choices if I could be bothered to beat up every single drunk in the city again), and I thought it did a good job of building up a mystery and slowly unfolding it (though, sadly, the mystery is solved quite a while before the ending, and then the game just... keeps going). It's a decent game, it feels like it was someone's passion project, and I definitely appreciate it for what it is. However, it's flaws are quite significant and do often impact the experience negatively. In the end, I do recommend it, but it's certainly not for everyone. And if you think the Pokémon comparison I opened with was kinda silly? Well, the game itself acknowledges it - There is a point where you're asked to make a wish, and one of the dialogue options is "to be the very best, like no one ever was". Thaumaturges are just Pokémon trainers. I said what I said.