The Thaumaturge

It's rare that I take the time to review games--but I have to, in this case! The Ambient and rich story is absolutely captivating and rich in depth--unlike so many games these days with shallow stories!

It's not AAA and it shows, but it really does not matter. The actual decision-making and narrative are stellar. The world-building and the historic dive into the 1905 revolution-era Warsaw are fantastic.

The Thaumaturge is a gorgeous game with beautiful effects, realistic environments, and tactical turn-based fighting. I find the story being woven to be thoroughly intruiging, and even the sidestories pull me in.

I think whether you will enjoy this game depends mainly on whether you like the story or not. The gameplay is unlikely to convince anyone, as the battles quickly become repetitive and the role-playing system doesn't have that much impact on the narrative. This game is more about your dialog choices. It's not like Disco Elysium, where the dialog options are largely dependent on character stats, and so far only pride seems to play a major role in that regard. Maybe there will be more later on, but I gave up halfway through the story. It just didn't grab me, even though I find the setting very appealing. The art design and music are great, but here are a few points why I'll probably never finish the game: - Poor performance, frequent stutters, texture pop ins - If you start a conversation while roaming the streets, it will probably lead to a brawl (possibly historically accurate, but ridiculous at some point) - Hints are often too vague, you don't miss that much if you don't read them - Conclusions are drawn automatically, no player agency here - when you're not fighting or talking, you're mainly running around snapping your fingers to find clues; the constant right-clicking to examine a small area is a main gameplay element and quickly becomes tedious - the English dubbing was realized with both polish and native speakers, which is why the result is very uneven; Polish dub is much better and spares you the constant F-bombs, which for me don't fit the setting (I'm not against swearing, but at times it felt like I was on the Steam forums) I think the game could have been a lot better if they had taken a little inspiration from Frogware's Sherlock Holmes games. If you had to come to (possibly wrong) conclusions on your own, the story would be much more engaging for me. It also takes far too long to get going. Only from chapter 2 there is something like a common thread, while the events from the prologue don't seem to be too relevant later on.

I'm loving the game, has a great script, exploration is amazing!