TL;DR - The setting alone makes the game worth it, but there are a few areas where it underdelivers. Because of this I consider it to be a flawed gem.
The depiction of an early 20th century alternative Warsaw under Russian control caught my attention when I first heard about the game. Historical elements and fiction blended nicely, and I loved the whole idea of thaumaturges, flaws and salutors.
This was clearly the big selling point of The Thaumaturge and it showed. I hope more devs follow the tracks of Fool's Theory and bring us more original, personal even, takes on fantasy.
Gameplay mechanics (exploration with a bit of detective work + turn-based combat) were fun in principle, and I was engaged with the plot and characters. All the ingredients seemed to be there for a new RPG favourite after Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3.
Unfortunately, as the game went on I found that it failed to dive deep into most of these areas. Investigation mechanics became repetitive and posed no real deduction work. Likewise, the combat system features some really interesting elements, but I didn't need to (or felt compelled to) explore its possibilities and I ended up resorting to the same strategy most of the time. In normal difficulty I didn't really feel a challenge that made me adapt except for a couple of fights.
The character cast was varied and interesting, matching the game world, but once again, their treatment ended up being a bit shallow sometimes.
Dialogue sequences at times gave me the impression they weren't following a consistent order. Not sure if this could be due to localization issues (I played in Spanish or English and noticed this in both cases), scripting issues or oversights that didn't get caught by QA. Spanish localization was better than I expected, but I still noticed some mistranslations between text and voiced dialogue.
As for technical stuff, I played about half of the game on a high tier gaming laptop and the other half on a Steam Deck. I experienced no issues in the laptop but the fans were working overtime.
On the Deck it played reasonably well but there were occasional glitches in animations and a fair amount of crashes moving between locations. The game works on that platform without a lot of tinkering beyond manually selecting a Proton version, BUT the graphical settings are unnecessarily locked by default. Because of this it is currently flagged as Unsupported. Still, the graphical options can be easily unlocked using command line options.
And well, in both devices characters' facial expressions and animations in cutscenes or battle scenes sometimes fell into uncanny valley.
This review may have come up a bit harsh. It could be my frustration speaking because The Thaumaturge came really close to become a personal favourite but ultimately fell short. Despite that, I had a great time playing and I certainly recommend it.
I won't be replaying the game soon because of three B's (BG3, Balatro, Backlog) but I'm still curious about how differently you can shape Wiktor and what the other endings are. And I would definitely play a sequel or spinoff with the same setting.
The depiction of an early 20th century alternative Warsaw under Russian control caught my attention when I first heard about the game. Historical elements and fiction blended nicely, and I loved the whole idea of thaumaturges, flaws and salutors.
This was clearly the big selling point of The Thaumaturge and it showed. I hope more devs follow the tracks of Fool's Theory and bring us more original, personal even, takes on fantasy.
Gameplay mechanics (exploration with a bit of detective work + turn-based combat) were fun in principle, and I was engaged with the plot and characters. All the ingredients seemed to be there for a new RPG favourite after Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3.
Unfortunately, as the game went on I found that it failed to dive deep into most of these areas. Investigation mechanics became repetitive and posed no real deduction work. Likewise, the combat system features some really interesting elements, but I didn't need to (or felt compelled to) explore its possibilities and I ended up resorting to the same strategy most of the time. In normal difficulty I didn't really feel a challenge that made me adapt except for a couple of fights.
The character cast was varied and interesting, matching the game world, but once again, their treatment ended up being a bit shallow sometimes.
Dialogue sequences at times gave me the impression they weren't following a consistent order. Not sure if this could be due to localization issues (I played in Spanish or English and noticed this in both cases), scripting issues or oversights that didn't get caught by QA. Spanish localization was better than I expected, but I still noticed some mistranslations between text and voiced dialogue.
As for technical stuff, I played about half of the game on a high tier gaming laptop and the other half on a Steam Deck. I experienced no issues in the laptop but the fans were working overtime.
On the Deck it played reasonably well but there were occasional glitches in animations and a fair amount of crashes moving between locations. The game works on that platform without a lot of tinkering beyond manually selecting a Proton version, BUT the graphical settings are unnecessarily locked by default. Because of this it is currently flagged as Unsupported. Still, the graphical options can be easily unlocked using command line options.
And well, in both devices characters' facial expressions and animations in cutscenes or battle scenes sometimes fell into uncanny valley.
This review may have come up a bit harsh. It could be my frustration speaking because The Thaumaturge came really close to become a personal favourite but ultimately fell short. Despite that, I had a great time playing and I certainly recommend it.
I won't be replaying the game soon because of three B's (BG3, Balatro, Backlog) but I'm still curious about how differently you can shape Wiktor and what the other endings are. And I would definitely play a sequel or spinoff with the same setting.