In a video game industry that often feels like it’s bloating into a monolithic, unsustainable beast propped up by annual staples and once every generation blockbusters, a small silver lining is that it’s still big enough for games like The Thaumaturge to exist. This mid-size RPG may not match the jaw-dropping scale of a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, but it’s still packed with atmosphere and good ideas that are mostly well executed. Aside from some buggy movement and odd voices, the turn-based combat is full of interesting strategic choices, and its great writing and story manage to punch up tried and true point-and-click clue finding and lore gathering.
You play as the eponymous Thaumaturge, a sort of Witcher/John Constantine mash up of a supernaturally gifted human and an extraplanar detective named Wiktor. His journey to uncover the circumstances of his father’s death often finds him plying his esoteric trade both in service of this goal, and as a distraction from it. The various intertwining stories of a Poland at the brink of revolution, as well as Wiktor discovering all the ways things have changed at home in his fifteen year absence, tie a compelling narrative knot across its 20 hour run time.
Though I found a lot of its main and side stories to be interesting, the slow pace does mean you’ll spend long stretches of time reading and listening before being given a chance to act. When you do, usually through dialogue options that can vary based on past choices or your own abilities, sometimes The Thaumaturge asked me to make assumptions about Wiktor’s life and old relationships that I had no context for. For instance, it regularly asks you to either be nice or a jerk to people who apparently know him, but doesn’t give you adequate reason to decide one way or the other. The voice acting can also be a bit shaky, with accents that are all over the place – more than one person that is supposed to be a native to the region sounded like I could have met them in a Wawa here in the great state of New Jersey.
That said, I did like that dialogue options regularly felt risky, and limitations imposed by previous encounters or Wiktor’s current stats made chatting people up feel like a challenge. I can’t speak to how differently any of these exchanges would go if I chose some other option, or how long it would take to reach the consequences of those choices, but The Thaumaturge at least puts on a convincing show of giving you meaningful control over its events.
The good writing that accompanies clues adds some heightened drama.Quests involve a lot of snooping around, investigating objects both mundane and magical in private and in public, all to earn “observations,” which are clues you can draw about the people who interacted with them based on any lingering emotional residue. The lingering lust on bedsheets or wily chaos on a stray bullet stuck in a wall can help you draw conclusions about the people who were involved with these things. Even though this largely means using your perception to investigate glowing objects in a more mystical version of Batman’s detective mode, the particularly good writing that accompanies the clues does add some heightened drama as you work to put all the pieces together in your head before The Thaumaturge puts a giant neon sign on the right answers for you.
Turn of the 20th century Europe is a comfortable setting for all this political drama and magical intrigue. The Russian imperial expansion into Poland, and the latter’s revolution against the intruders, is thick with the kind of tension only a ghost skeleton with a Cavalry saber can cut. The constant push and pull between the occupiers and the increasingly more disgruntled citizens is something Wiktor’s supernatural adventure is constantly butting up against, and it really helps keep this story grounded and relatable even when things get dense with lore and macguffins, which is a hallmark of good science fiction.
I’m not an expert in the period, so when I say everything looks the part – from the hairstyles to the clothing to the architecture – just know it’s coming from a guy who’s seen Doctor Zhivago once and thought it was fine. It’s not groundbreaking in its fidelity, but colors, textures, and lighting are pretty good looking at their best. Moving around Poland is sometimes a little glitchy , but it’s a city that is dense with people to speak to and stuff to find that I was excited to explore.
Warsaw is filled to the brim with folk who’d rather you and your brethren be dead or maimed than in their business, and luckily when combat does break out, you aren’t alone. Salutors, the spiritual beings that haunt the people and places of the world, can be tamed to assist you. Each has their own strengths and types, which can be used against certain kinds of enemy weaknesses, Pokemon-style. Among my go-tos were Bukavac, a snarling beast who is great at applying negative states to enemies, or Lelek, a chaotic bird demon who can drive enemies mad.
Combat is never boring, but it’s not particularly challenging, either.Weaving Wiktor and your chosen salutor’s attacks together to most optimally synergize your offense never felt boring, though it’s not particularly challenging, either – even on the highest difficulty, it wasn’t until the very end of my adventure that the fights truly tested my brain. This is partially because all of your currently captured Salutors are available at any time to switch back and forth between, so you always have access to your enemy’s vulnerabilities, but also because you get so much information about the goings on of every turn. You’ll be able to plan around who’s up next, what kind of attack they are going to use, and how close to death everyone is when queuing up your attacks, and while getting near perfect information in battle is a great thing, the enemies don’t seem to have the same ability to make good decisions with it that I did.
Enemies are 90% regular guys reskinned in different clothing or uniforms, wielding knives, clubs, guns, or even their fists. They may not be visually compelling, but most of their attacks do things more than straight damage, like adding detrimental status effects or draining your focus to open you up to big damage. Wiktor, combined with all of the potential spirits he can wrestle under his control, have quite a menu of offensive options themselves. Though many fights with these random goons seem to happen out of nowhere and for what should be easily avoidable reasons, it doesn’t hurt to gain as many opportunities as possible to practice all of your potential options, as well as gain points to level up your thaumaturgy skills, which boost your stats, give you access to even more attacks, and potentially unlocks new discovery and dialogue opportunities.
The other 10% of the enemies are salutors or other thaumaturges. Besides usually being more visually striking fights, with the added twist of having an untargetable character afflicting the battle in some way, they play out largely the same as other encounters. They do tend to be more challenging and provide satisfying punctuations to some of the campaign’s more interesting side missions, but I also wish they got a little spicier, tactically, considering the enemies you get to face off against.
