The first quarter of 2024 has been an absolutely stacked time for gaming. Within the first two months we’ve had Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Persona 3,  and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as three absolutely massive JRPGs, alongside gems like Helldivers 2, Last Epoch, and Palworld that have also been dominating the charts. It can be easy for games to slip through the cracks, especially with so many good releases all coming out at once. The Thaumaturge, developed by Polish studio Fool’s Theory, is one that I’ve kept an eye on since its announcement. While I’m happy to say that this is well worth your time, I also have to admit that it’s not perfect.

The Thaumaturge is set in 1905 Warsaw; a complicated time in Poland’s history where the country was divided and on the cusp of a revolution. You play as Wiktor Sulski, a Thaumaturge that arrives back in Warsaw after his farther passed away. Thrown into a political landscape, Wiktor begins to investigate the truth of what happened to his farther and a journey to decide the fate of Warsaw.

As a Thaurmaturge, Wiktor will investigate Salutors; demons that latch onto a host through their flaws. This means that a person’s key trait is defined through prior traumatic experiences. Wiktor possess the flaw of Pride, and through that he creates a pact with the Salutor, known as Upyr. As you journey through Warsaw to find the truth behind your father’s death, you will encounter various individuals and help free them from their demons, sometimes taking their flaws, while in other cases taking control over the Salutors that feed on the individuals. Although, other times you can let them keep their inherent flaw.

The Thaurmaturge sets the stage nicely with a location and time in history that we never really see in gaming, with a fun supernatural twist. There’s plenty of story to delve into as you uncover the flaws of Warsaw’s residents, the demons they hide, and freeing them from that burden. By doing so, you will feed the flaw of Pride. You can also delve into this with some dialogue choices that can not only impact how certain characters view you, but also affect how the story plays out. Different dialogue options can feed into the various flaws and affect the outcomes, so choose carefully.

It’s certainly an interesting idea that sits at the very core of the story, and is surprisingly at its best when it gives you choices to make. The Thaumaturge doesn’t outright tell you what’s right or wrong, but instead gives you morally ambiguous choices. This can dictate not only how certain characters will look at you, but also lock different dialogue choices or even upgrades for Wiktor, depending on how you respond.

Exploring Warsaw is a genuinely interesting, even if the world itself feels a little static with very little happening in the environment. There are tons of quests to complete, although, they often revolve around running around and interacting with objects hidden properties. Gather enough clues in the environment and Wiktor will create a conclusion that allows you to progress the quest and make decisions.

It’s a decent enough structure that creates a sense of detective work, but it’s also too easy to run around spamming your Thaurmaturge sixth sense. This is the obligatory pulse vision mode that highlights objects of interest in the environment. It’s all very automated, and a more interactive element like we saw in Alan Wake 2’s case board would create a much more immersive element. As it stands, the detective work is fairly undercooked.

However, despite this I would recommend delving into as many as you can. Not only for the gameplay benefits, but the stories that you find are interesting, and you get to see the culture of the city. My initial playthrough took me roughly thirty hours, and that was with the vast majority of side content completed.

As you explore the world, interact with other characters and complete quests you will encounter various enemies in turn-based combat. However, much like the solid Star Renegades, a timeline combat system is in place here. At the top of your screen a timeline will showcase when enemy turns take place as well as how long your own actions take. This allows you to plan out your moves to counter the opponent. As a Thaurmaturge, you can draw onto you powers to summon Salutors into the fight as well. Each round you can queue up two attacks, one from Wiktor himself and another from one of your Salutors.

Combat as a whole starts off simple, with only a few skills but as you progress and capture more salutors the more your combat options open up. Wiktor himself will gain new abilities alongside whatever the Salutor brings to the table. Different attacks will flow into each other one after another and within your grimoir you can even modify all of Wiktors abilities with various buffs. This can range from delaying enemy attacks, reducing their focus, adding some healing and even more. It looks simple on the surface but as you progress into tougher fights some interesting mechanics are in place.

Bringing down an enemy’s focus is a key part of winning battles. Completely break an enemy’s focus and you can unleash some more devastating attacks. Morana is one of my favourite Salutors, as one of her key abilities is to deal devastating amounts of damage the more focus that has been lost. Combine that with support Salutors, like Lelek, whose primary focus is to remove debuffs whilst draining enemy focus bars, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

It’s a genuinely interesting combat system that had me considering my builds in every fight. Initially, I was a little disappointed with how simple every looked, however, after a few hours the combat started to reveal itself. Every single buff and modifier can be felt in the gameplay, and isn’t just a simple stat increase. The healing skills in particular aren’t as simple as giving you health back. Instead, they increase the effectiveness if you instead take time to inflict suffering on enemies. If there is one main level of criticism I have, is that I would like a few more skills to open up the game’s combat even more. The progression is fairly linear on this one, and you can’t really do things that far out of order.

Paying attention to your build is essential, especially on the harder difficulty. Hell, even on the default normal difficulty The Thaumaturge isn’t afraid to challenge the player with some fairly significant difficulty spikes. Regardless, it is manageable, but a big thing to note that it can be easy to get stuck in encounters, stumbling into higher level encounters might have you loading to a previous save if you are struggling since there is no way to escape a fight. For those looking to enjoy the story there is a story mode.

Built in Unreal Engine 5, there is a beautiful game hidden away with the rough edges around the place. However, there’s an impeccable art direction here. The gritty realistic streets work wonders with the dark cosmic horrors that await; Salutor designs are all excellent. Not only that, the cinematic direction in combat is excellent. Unfortunately, some lacklustre character models, weaker animations, and glitches can let the game’s visual style down. Rain in particular can look incredibly bad in certain locations. All these little things add up to a visual design that is a touch inconsistent.

For those playing on PC, we have ultrawide support for gameplay, which is always nice to see. However, this does not apply to cutscenes which are rendered in 16:9 with black bars at the side. I also encountered the occasional bug; a few quests ended on a black screen unable to do anything. After a few restarts, I figured to do a quick save and quick load, which allowed me to get through it. It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve gotten stuck on the environment a few times, and have also gotten soft-locked out of a quest.

As for the sound design, this is also pretty damn good. Most of the cast does solid enough voice work. Wiktor in particular is a likable character, thanks to a mostly convincing performance. The soundtrack does an excellent job setting the mood through its variety of settings.

The Thaumaturge is a weird and unique game. It’s engaging from beginning to end, thanks to its great story and timeline based combat system that makes every fight exciting. It’s not perfect, and some pacing issues do slow the game down, especially in the side content, however, it is still well worth your time.

 

Graphics: 6.0 The dark and damp streets of 1905 Warsaw looks magnificent, however, animations and character models do often lack in polish.	Gameplay: 7.5 Excellent timeline focused, turn-based strategy that has a lot more depth than is on the surface. Although, the quests could do with a bit more variety.
Sound: 8.0 Solid performances alongside a great soundtrack.	Fun Factor: 7.5 A uniquely engaging RPG, combining excellent gameplay with a surprisingly engaging story.
Final Verdict: 7.5

The Thaumaturge is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070.

A copy of The Thaumaturge was provided by the publisher.