A realistic portrayal of Warsaw
Everyone is rude, miserable, swears like a sailor, drinks vodka, and hates Russians. It's also very easy - usually unavoidable - to get punched in the face by the locals. I never felt so cozy in a computer game. The feeling is exponentially increased by largely accurate local period slang, which sadly doesn't translate to the English voice over. I may be partial, but it's nice to have an RPG with a realistic and very unique setting. You'll meet Poles, Cossacks, Jews, and of course the Russian occupiers. The portrayal is pretty fair, though: while the Poles generally despise the Russians, especially the police, they are not portrayed as universally (or even particularly) evil: there are many positive, if somewhat tragic characters among them, and of course Rasputin (a minor spoiler) is based. The only exception is Ochrana, but who likes the secret police? Generally, characters other than mooks thrown at you without a warning, are not single dimensional and tend to be morally ambiguous. If you didn't gather it yet, be prepared for a doze of an East European Pain Simulator, if not devoid of some humour. Quests often have multiple possible outcomes, none of which are all that great at times.
And it's good that characters and the story carry the game, because the mechanics wouldn't on their own. The combat is a quite unique take on JPRG turn-based with a heavy emphasis on initiative pushing and resistances which must be broken to make the opponents vulnerable. Unfortunately, even on hard, it plays mostly on autopilot, and while it didn't get tedious, it's definitely not something worth seeking out for itself. I may be biased, though, as I am not a fan of JRPGs in the first place.
The main issue is that the game is a collect-a-ton, not only in many sights and experiences you may find and which add nothing to the gameplay save perhaps for a tiny amount of XPs, this is elevated to an actual main mechanic. As a thaumaturge, you can recollect the thoughts and feelings of people who held the objects you touch, and progress in all quests is gated by finding all relevant objects to automatically draw a conclusion, which pushes the narrative forward. Which could be good, perhaps, if there was some mini game to it, but it boils down simply to following 'in universe' quest markers and clicking on stuff. There is much too much of that.
The levelling is trivialized, as there isn't even a choice of how to build your character. There are four 'dimensions', levelling which allow you to unlock hidden thoughts, influence people, and similar, but you'll need to level up all of them in a fairly even manner, and you get enough levelling points for it to very rarely being an issue. The only real decision you make is which of the unlocked effects to attach to which attacks, and there is certainly some synergy and combo possibilities here, the combat wasn't interesting enough n the first place for me to really care.
There is also one factor that may be a deal breaker for some: swearing. I suspect the English translation is toned down as a cultural adjustment, but people here do not mince words. You meet a lot of of 'salt of the earth' people and mingle with the underworld in a place and point in time where many factions are boiling with anger, and it is adequately reflected in the language used.
If you play RPGs to live for a bit in a different world, make story decisions (you know, role play), than this game is a gem you'll likely love. In a way, those story decisions are even elevated to a mechanic, with some dialogue options feeding your pride, which in turns unlocks prideful answers later, and those can affect quest outcomes. If you play them for the crunchy, deep and rules heavy combat, an ability to build your character the way you want, and a challenge, it will not be your cup of tea. It doesn't even have proper dungeons.
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