The Thaumaturge Review – Almost a Miracle

I was intrigued when I first saw The Thaumaturge on the show floor at PAX West last year. Coming from publisher 11bit Studios, it was definitely unlike any of their most famous titles in form (being a top-down, choice-driven adventure RPG). Still, it carried the personality that saturates many other titles that come to us out of Poland. The setting – Warsaw, a decade before World War 1 and during Russian annexation – was politically fascinating, mainly when mixed with an urban fantasy detective story. Of course, all I got there was a brief taste, but it left me excited to see where the story would eventually go.

Having played it, I can confidently say that The Thaumaturge is a title with many good ideas and lives up to most of them.

Meet Wiktor Szulski: A Thaumaturge’s Journey

The game follows Wiktor Szulski, a Warsaw-born traveler, as he tracks down a mysterious man who may be able to help him heal his connection with a supernatural being. Wiktor is a Thaumaturge, a mystic born with the ability to see hidden realities. While the complicated powers of Thaumaturgy are not well-known by the public at large, they are all explained very well to the player using Wiktor’s early interactions with one Grigori Rasputin. Put a pin in him.

Despite its compelling setting and mechanics, The Thaumaturge’s uneven pacing and some localization issues mar an otherwise immersive experience.

Thaumaturges can effectively sense an additional layer of reality, seeing meaning left in objects or remains by the people who owned or inflicted them and tracing those feelings to the person they belonged to. They can also see Flaws (capital F), supernatural negative traits that can attract Salutors, which are the true nature of demons in European folklore. Salutors latch onto people with Flaws, including Wiktor himself, who suffers from the flaw of Pride. Each Salutor corresponds to one of four values: Heart, Word, Deed, or Dimension.

Upon finding a Trace for a person, a Thaumaturge can use the conclusion the Trace leads to manipulate them, Jedi-mind-trick-style, into behaving abnormally. This, of course, has led to a backlash against the “magicians,” whose powers are essentially not properly understood by the public.

Exploring the Depths of Thaumaturgy

It’s a lot to take in, but the game makes a splendid first impression that pulls the player into Wiktor’s world by giving him a Watson-esque audience surrogate with whom he can organically teach the concepts I’ve outlined. That surrogate is Grigori Rasputin, whom Wiktor seeks out to repair his bond with his own Salutor, Upyr, as his supernatural senses are degrading, and he hopes the mystic man can heal him with his strange power. The two team up to solve a mystery in a small village in the prologue, and this allows the player to see the humble beginning of the rise of Russia’s greatest love machine.

Rasputin is a historical figure with a lot of mystery and lore surrounding him, and making him Wiktor’s first ally instantly communicates a lot to the player. The powers of Thaumaturgy could go a long way to explaining Rasputin’s miraculous powers, for which real-life historians have yet to find a conclusive explanation. The man himself is such a prominent figure in the downfall of the Russian empire that the game essentially promises that Wiktor (and, by extension, the player) will have a hand in shaping a massive moment in history.

Once the low-stakes murder mystery is solved, Wiktor learns distressing news that sends him back to his home turf for the first time in over a decade, and the game opens up massively once the player reaches Warsaw. One of the first things that jumped out to me about the game’s world is that the player earns experience for investigating their surroundings, reading newspapers, and finding accidental Traces, an excellent way to incentivize the player to become invested in the setting and its goings-on.

The other thing that jumped out at me is that all of the prose of the Traces is top-tier. Each Trace you find comes with a one-paragraph story explaining how it got there from the perspective of the person who left it, and I stopped to read all of them. Investigating and putting the pieces together yourself before Wiktor does is exciting when each clue gives you an evocative little peek into the mind of its owner.

Investigation and Combat: A Mixed Bag

The flip side of this was my first real issue with The Thaumaturge – the game is incredibly hand-holdy throughout every investigation process. There are quality-of-life features like using Wiktor’s Thaumaturge Perception to find your way to the next point of interest I like. Still, it became frustrating that seeing all of the clues would always automatically lead Wiktor to draw the correct conclusion. Even if it just resulted in Wiktor reconsidering things, it would have drawn me in much more if I had the potential to get something wrong, like identifying the wrong owner of a Trace or totally misunderstanding my target’s thought process. It feels like the answers are always handed to me once I’ve found every piece of evidence, which is usually necessary to progress a quest anyway.

Most of the quests also feature combat, a once-in-a-while gameplay feature that steadily becomes increasingly frequent as the state of the city degrades. Combat generally features Wiktor and his expanding roster of Salutors against a group of enemies, with a small selection of available attacks and combos that take some time to activate. The order of actions is displayed in a bar at the top of the screen, making it easy to tell which enemies are going first and when your attacks will go off once you initiate them.

Wiktor’s attacks don’t directly do more damage as he gets more robust, but rather, as the player progresses along the skill tree, they will gain options to customize each move with additional effects. An early one, for example, has a sixty percent chance of doubling the damage of the move it’s attached to. Still, you’ll also be able to use them strategically to inflict status ailments or deplete the enemy’s Focus, a secondary trait that leaves Wiktor or his foes vulnerable to extra-powerful strikes should it be fully depleted.

The Salutors can be used one at a time but switched out as many times as the players wish with no additional consequences, so early on, their options may seem limited, but by the end of the game, there can be dozens of actions available to the player, and their uses are even more diverse. Foes can also carry their Traits that can be circumvented by attacking them with a specific partner and have effects such as massively reducing incoming damage or preventing them from being hit with status ailments.

Combat in The Thaumaturge evolves from a chore to a strategic delight, showcasing the game’s deep mechanics and character development.

Combat started as a chore, but once I had Wiktor built up and had a larger stable of partners, I began to actively seek it out. Having a probability-based attack go off never became any less satisfying, and even in the game’s Challenge mode, by the end, I was starting to feel properly invincible, which suited where Wiktor’s character arc was going. Thaumaturges don’t usually become as powerful as he does, so the feeling of striking foes down through powerful attacks and hidden demons made me feel like a boss monster against an under-leveled adventuring party.

As the story continued, I noticed some issues with the game’s localization. Where I found all of the prose to be excellent, some of the dialogue felt somewhat lacking, some dialogue options had unexpected results regarding what Wiktor said, and frequently, the subtitles did not precisely match the spoken words. The game is fully voice-acted, which is impressive given that it’s a choice-driven RPG with a lot of dialogue, but some of the actors were not given excellent material.

I also began to realize that there was an element of Thaumaturgy that wasn’t explained particularly well, as by the end of the game, I didn’t have an excellent grasp of the differences between the four Values. At the very last moment, I also realized that my character-building decisions had locked me out of a possible ending, even though every significant decision I’d made leading up to the ending had been in service of that.

The Thaumaturge sets itself apart with its intricate detective story and rich urban fantasy setting, capturing the essence of pre-war Warsaw like no game before it.

The ending has other issues, as well. I felt that a particular character’s arc had been left offscreen too long, so their pivotal decisions in the endgame felt like they were escalating too quickly. While I found most of the major cast to be solidly characterized (with my favorite dynamic in the game being the very believable dynamic between Wiktor and his twin sister), this turn came out of nowhere in-universe despite it being predictable with the historical context I have as the player.

Many endgame elements feel rushed this way, with one particular ending feeling very unsatisfying with how quickly the credits roll. I don’t want to go into specific spoilers, but the subplot leading there is subtly woven throughout much of the game, and its resolution is not given the same effort.

The Thaumaturge’s unique blend of historical intrigue and supernatural elements makes it a must-play, though it doesn’t always deliver a seamless experience.

That feeling of slight unevenness sat with me through much of my time with The Thaumaturge. My love for the late-game combat doesn’t erase how boring it is initially. The evocative prose of the clues clashes with the very dry dialogue, and the best features of the investigation system are tempered by the game, not giving the players a chance to figure much out for themselves. It sets itself apart as an RPG with its battle system and narrative decision-making, but not all elements are entirely created equal as a narrative.