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The Thaumaturge is an RPG with a high emphasis on detective work and choice and consequence mechanics. It's the first major project from Fool's Theory, a studio best known for developing the upcoming Witcher Remake.
The Thaumaturge is only Fool's Theory's second title, albeit, the studio has plenty of experience working on games like Seven: The Days Long Gone and supporting Larian on Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. With The Thaumaturge, Fool's Theory took a leap of faith, trying to create a pretty big RPG with a large cast of characters, a branching narrative and a very interesting theme and setting.
It's one of those ambitious-on-paper video games that really tries its best to deliver a coherent and unique experience by offering various gameplay mechanics but unfortunately, doesn't quite hit the nail on the head on any one of them.
What initially kicked off as a very intriguing video game, piquing my interest with a strong start resembling titles like The Witcher with investigative quests and demonic fantasy elements, ended up being an exhausting 12 hours, which is how long it took me to reach one of the endings.
In The Thaumaturge, you play as a thaumaturge called Viktor, who is just one of the people with special abilities and demon pets, which allows him to manipulate people, follow traces of emotions on various objects to learn more about the characters and surroundings, and have a significant edge in combat.
These abilities are key features of the core gameplay loop. You'll talk to people, investigate their personal belongings or items they've interacted with to learn more about them and their secrets and eventually use those findings to get key information needed to progress in the story or quest. It's a system that gets repetitive fairly quickly, feeling more like a chore than something engaging that will keep you wanting more.
Investigating around will reward you with experience points that you can spend in one of the four skill trees - Heart, Mind, Deed and Word. This will unlock skills that you use in combat and new dialogue options that can be used to solve specific situations more easily and without spilling any blood.
On paper, this sounds like your standard RPG stuff and that's because it is something that you'll find in various other titles. The Thaumaturge tries to mix things up by adding demons called Salutors, which you can catch in Pokemon style, both throughout the main story and also by doing some side content. One thing I liked about these Salutors is that they are not exclusive to Polish folklore, instead, you'll find entities from various regions including Djinn from Islamic culture and religion.
Each Salutor comes with a unique skill set allowing you to unleash their powers in combat, which didn't quite deliver the satisfying and strategic experience I was looking for. Once the battle starts, you can select from several attacks, both light and fast but also heavy and slow. In addition, you select the attack of your demons and there are some good combinations here like making your enemies suffer and then using a demon that deals double damage to those affected by the skill.
But despite these combinations, the combat gets old fairly quickly especially when you discover the best possible combos. I've found myself using the most powerful ones for the rest of the game and didn't have much problem against regular enemies or Salutors who act as bosses.
The combat in The Thaumaturge is only serviceable and you can tell it wasn't the main focus of the dev team, who obviously put more effort into building the world, the story and the characters.
When it comes to the story, it starts very slowly. Basically, five hours into my playthrough, I was still waiting for that key moment to happen so I could actually know what the hell is the main plot here. The Thaumaturge spends a lot of time introducing you to various key characters early on, which is fine, but it does that in a very underwhelming way through basic quests, lacking that one mysterious and big moment that invites you to keep digging deeper until the very end.
The story kicks off when the main character Wiktor travels to Warsav after receiving news about his father's death. Viktor and his father had a very complicated past and haven't seen each other for 15 years and things only get more complex when Viktor discovers that there's more to his father's life and death than meets the eye.
While trying to unravel the mystery behind your father's death will lead you to some interesting characters and solid plot twists, the story never really delivers that spark that one is looking for in an investigative RPG.
Once it finally starts to get a bit more interesting by asking you to make tough choices, making you face the consequences of your actions and introducing new ways to tackle specific things, it simply reaches a conclusion and a very disappointing one. Simply put, I was bored by The Thaumaturge's story and stopped caring about it long before it started becoming not so dull.
While some of the characters are interesting, the overall sense I got is that Fool's Theory tried too hard to make them compelling. The main protagonist is an odd bloke who looks like he's mad at everything and everyone all the time, while his voice actor sounds like he'll fall asleep every time he mumbles a sentence.
You won't care much about the characters in The Thaumaturge nor their fates, no matter how hard the game tries to evoke emotions inside you. Another thing to note is the fact that The Thaumaturge won't be a game for you if you don't like reading.
There's a lot, and I really mean a lot of written content here - pretty much every single item you can interact with in the game comes with a text box, describing the emotions of the person who touched that object earlier. In almost every quest, you'll have to find several of these key items to form a conclusion and if you decide to skip the reading part you won't have a clue about what is going on or why you are doing what you're doing.
One aspect of The Thaumaturge that delivers is the visual quality but even that is not without a few drawbacks. Generally, the game looks excellent - the environments are detailed and well crafted, delivering a very authentic atmosphere of 1905 Warsaw in all its beauty but also repulsiveness.
The design of the demons and the arenas in which you fight them is also excellent and probably the best part of the game. Both are dripping with style, giving off a very strong horror vibe.
On the other hand, the human characters look a bit outdated and in some scenarios pretty goofy. Regardless of the character's importance to the story, the fidelity lacks that true next-gen detail that we've seen in the games so far. It's not a game-breaker but I wish we got a little bit more as the game clearly has a big focus on the characters and dialogue.
In terms of performance, I did not encounter any major issues as the game ran smoothly at a high frame rate and without any major bugs that would prevent me from progressing, finishing quests or anything like that.
CONCLUSION
The Thaumaturge was one of the games that I was really looking forward to but ultimately, it failed to meet my expectations. Despite an interesting demon-taming concept, nice-looking visuals and an atmospheric setting, I found the story to be lacking with a very slow and dull presentation that made the game feel more like a chore than something enjoyable.
I do think that there is a good game in here somewhere if you have enough patience to keep up with the story and play on higher difficulty which could make the combat a bit more strategic and fun.
But if you're looking for a focused and coherent RPG, you won't find that in The Thaumaturge.
The Good
Environments look detailed and atmopheric- Somewhat interesting characters
- Salutors and the places you fight them look great
The Bad
Story pacing makes the game a very dull experience- The actual narrative is all over the place
- Combat is too simple and not particularly interesting
