The Thaumaturge Review

A dark, boring, and long winded story.

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Platform: PC (PS5 Xbox X|S later)

Reviewed on: PC

Developer: Fool’s Theory

Publisher: 11 bit studios

Release: March 4^th, 2024

Time Played: 12 Hours

Genre: RPG Action-Adventure

ESRB: N/A

Intro:

The Thaumaturge is an interesting game following Wictor, a Thaumaturge, as he explores his hometown, Warsaw. Taking place in 1905, a turbulent time for the city still under Russian control, Wiktor uses his powers how you see fit, making new friends or enemies everywhere you go. I’ve finished the game and want to give you a run down on what you can expect if you played, and rating the game for the shelves behind me, so, let’s hop to it!

Where it starts

Years ago Wiktor had some bad luck and lost his powers, effecting him like a sickness he was slowly dying. After years of searching, he finds a healer in a backwoods village, able to help him overcome his problems Wiktor get’s better, soon after he receives terrible news from his sister, forcing him back home to Warsaw where he will meet old acquaintances, make new ones, deal with issues he may have left behind, and find a whole slew of problems waiting for him to get involved in.

Can the kids watch

There was an option in the settings to turn off nudity, I turned it off but didn’t find anywhere that it would have seemed to fit in, perhaps it’s a single scene in a side quest I missed, other than that possibility the graphics didn’t seem too overboard. Most of the mature content would be from the characters talking to each other. It seemed everyone in Warsaw had colorful language they wanted to throw at you. Plenty of f-bombs and other strong words around every corner.

What’s a Thaumaturge

A Thaumaturge is described as a magician, or someone who can perform miracles. In this game you, a thaumaturge have the ability to extract strong feelings someone may have left behind on an object, allowing them to conclude how a crime was committed or why someone did something. They can also sense a strong flaw within a person and see demons known as Salutors. It is a miracle, or a curse, that someone is born with, you can’t learn Thaumaturgy.

Investigating things

Using your abilities as a Thaumaturge you can sense strong feelings left behind on random objects. After snapping your fingers to focus on the area around you, small red petals will start to appear closing you in on an appropriate object. Some items are found on the streets, leading to various side quests, while others are for the quest you’re currently working on. After finding enough clues you can put it all together, concluding who’s involved or what a particular character might be trying to hide from you. There may be a point where you can’t decipher the emotions behind an object until you get to the proper level within a specific dimension.

Your story

This game is very heavy on dialogue and story, you will have a lot of conversations with any number of people. In these conversations you’ll get different options on how to respond. Depending on how much you may have investigated before the conversation, you may have more options. The game will tell you if you are unable to select an option due to lack of investigation, or a choice you made earlier and how it affects who you’re talking to. It was interesting knowing an option was unavailable and why, but kind of annoying not knowing what that option may have been. The choices you make will change how people treat you, and your overall story to the end.

Turn Based fighting

The game isn’t all investigations and talking, there will be plenty of times Wiktor may have ticked someone off or someone just wanted to hurt him. In those cases you will be forced into turn based combat. Thankfully you won’t be alone, because Wiktor is often outnumbered. Always at his side will be his trusty Salutors. Otherworldly demons lending their abilities to aid Wiktor and his Thaumaturgy. In combat you get to choose an action for Wiktor, and one Salutor. Depending on the enemies’ strengths and weaknesses some Salutors are much more effective than others.

Taming Salutors

There were a few Salutors roaming around Warsaw for Wiktor to hunt down and tame. Salutors are attracted to specific flaws a person is prone to, so after Wiktor catches a quick glimpse of a Salutor, he must track down who is attracting it with their flaw and remove that persons flaw so he can bring the Salutor to his side. After obtained a Salutor will open more of Wiktors skill tree, allowing him to gain new skills for combat and dimension levels for investigations.

Wiktor’s Flaw

Wiktor Szulski, as a Thaumaturge with a Salutor under his control, suffers a flaw, the flaw of pride. While playing the game you will do a lot of talking and will be given different choices of how you would like to respond. Quite often you are given the option to feed Wiktors pride flaw by selecting a prideful answer, usually causing a sarcastic or rude remark. If you choose to feed his pride too much it will eventually take over in conversations, causing some brash actions you have no control over.

Gaining Skills

Wiktor’s skill tree is built up with the four dimension powers, Heart, Mind, Deed, and Word. Each dimension is connected to specific Salutors and are used to learn new skills. The new skills are either new attacks in combat or a buff that can be attached to the attacks, greatly increasing your side’s effectiveness in combat. You will also gain more hit points or levels in a given dimension, allowing you to give better answers in conversations or decipher tougher emotions on objects.

Outro:

I personally had a hard time trying to enjoy this game. I know it’s a good game for those into it, but I never really clicked with it in my playthrough. The graphics weren’t great and I experienced a lot of stuttering during my gameplay, mostly during loading screens oddly enough. The characters had emotion behind the voices, but were very stiff otherwise, no facial movements and often blankly staring off in the distance during important conversations.

There was one main story with dozens of smaller stories within side quests. The story was long winded and it was very hard for me to stay engaged, I ended up not listening to a lot of it. Because of this I did very few side quests, I kind of rushed the main story along. I thought thaumaturgy was cool, and the salutors were awesome, but the packaging was to dull.

The combat was the most exciting part, at the start anyway. I eventually came to a point where I started doing the same thing in every fight and I only lost a couple times doing it, and combat wasn’t a major part of the game. Most of it was spent walking back and forth through Warsaw, picking up trash on the ground to extracts some feelings on it and experience points, getting into boring conversations.

I do like the idea of multiple endings depending on the choices you make, and this game feels like your making choices that matter throughout the whole thing. I picked a prideful route and stuck with it all the way through, and I could see how it was effecting everyone’s perception of me. I’m slightly curious about how subsequent playthroughs would go, I just don’t want to dredge my way through again.

There have been a lot of great things said about this game, I just failed to see much of it. It was a push to get through the story at least once, I managed to beat the game around twelve hours and for the last few I wasn’t paying much attention to anything going on, I was more skimming conversations, but I still feel like I had a good understanding of the story. Have you had a chance to play The Thaumaturge yet? Were you able to enjoy what I couldn’t? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Rating:

And here we are to the rating of The Thaumaturge

Visuals came out with a two.

The story wasn’t gripping, I had a hard time seeing why anyone was doing anything, I’m giving it another two.

The gameplay was far to slow for me, and there were times the game got a little janky and did not listen to what I wanted to do, another two

Replayability is there, but the drab gameplay severely lowers that for me, going with a one.

Total amount of fun, by the end, is down to a one.

Giving The Thaumaturge an overall rating of 1.6 out of 5.

Because of that I’m placing it on my bottom shelf.

It’s really too bad, I wanted to like this game, but like I said we never clicked after hours of playing. I know this is a good game for some, but I can’t recommend it, given my personal tastes and experience with this game.