Summary

• The Thaumaturge's unique setting offers interesting narrative potential and character designs.
• Technical issues and uninspiring combat hold the game back, however.
• Narrative coherence and mechanical consistency need improvement before this game feels complete enough to shine the way it could.

There are precious few games set in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, and it’s one of several aspects with which The Thaumaturge distinguishes itself from the pack. This historical dark fantasy RPG is the sophomore release from Polish studio Fool’s Theory, whose 2017 cyberpunk action-RPG Seven echoes the almost irresponsibly bold design decisions and ambitious intentions of their newest project. The Thaumaturge is a meaty, detailed exploration of Polish history and Western political progress, crafted around a worthy concept that is ultimately more interesting than just “Slavic Persona.”

Polish-based 11 Bit Studios manage publishing duties for The Thaumaturge, and has been at the forefront of contemporary experimental game development in the nation. Notable releases include the reverse-tower-defense Anomaly series, the intimate strategy wartime sim This War of Mine, and relentlessly bleak hit citybuilder Frostpunk. The Thaumaturge’s idiosyncratic design and fascinating setting fits the publisher’s ethos perfectly, applying unique approaches to interactive concepts while engaging a familiar genre; in this case, it’s a choice-driven, turn-based RPG.

Where The Thaumaturge struggles is in its narrative coherence and mechanical consistency throughout the 20 or so hours of a playthrough, most of which amounts to repeated clicking and exploration. It’s not completely bereft of player agency, but most of its mechanics are cryptic and confusing, and the dialogue-driven forked paths of the story are often corralled by yet other systems that never sensibly connect, even five or ten hours into the adventure.

A Turn-of-the-Century Magical Melting Pot

The scene is Warsaw, 1905, in what is now the capital of Poland, though it once stood as the third-most populous city in the Russian Empire. Enter budding thaumaturge Wiktor Szulski, following in the footsteps of his emotionally distant father, off on a lone journey to hone his talents in the craft before finally returning to his busy hometown for a funeral.

The Thaumaturge’s titular role describes a way of life, an outcast occupation that leverages a magical understanding of the human psyche. Thaumaturges are attuned to a dark plane of existence hidden underneath the standard living world where “salutors” dwell, monstrous entities which feed on deep-set personality flaws like pride and envy. These beings conduct and manipulate their unwitting hosts to criminal ends, but thaumaturges can absorb these flaws into themselves, which allows them to seduce and safely bind these creatures before more harm is done.

It's a heady, oddball idea which combines elements of Persona and Pokémon with spiritualism, psychiatry, and pop psychology. Wiktor’s own inbuilt flaw is pride, which binds his longtime salutor Upyr, a kind of skeletal senior apparition who essentially stands in as his well-worn Pikachu. Upyr never speaks outright, serving as a silent conversational system for the mostly-solitary Wiktor, and he – like the other obtainable salutors in the game – becomes effective during The Thaumaturge’s turn-based combat sequences.

Horrific Slavic Folklore Creatures - Gotta Catch 'Em All

Prior to The Thaumaturge’s release, the Persona/Pokémon aspect of the game seemed quite prominent. Unfortunately, this component is more often relegated to subtle narrative texture than proven vital in how the game plays out. Drawing salutors into Wiktor's collection primarily occurs in tandem with the main story and – though we ittedly didn’t vigorously test this notion – does not even seem to be something that can be sabotaged or optimized once engaged. In other words: don't expect any tricky Persona conversational elements or Pokémon dice rolls.

Yes, there are specific circumstances where having a salutor and their related flaw will force a conversation in a certain direction (similar to a jedi mind trick), but it’s rarely if ever more interesting than that. They lie in striking distance under the bedrock of the plot, but thinking about salutors for more than a moment risks tumbling the entire conceit. Is the implication that no one shoulders any actual personal responsibility for their violent actions? What about the hundreds or thousands of people who are all subject to lust or envy in the city, pursuing malicious ends? Are those crimes legitimate, but these select few are more easily forgivable or understandable, with the perpetrators mere victims of demonic control?

Regardless, it's easy enough to dismiss any such contradictions and just let the story breathe on its own, were it not for the additional issues – some mechanical, some script-related – that get in The Thaumaturge’s way. Suffice to say, the salutors themselves are beautifully designed monstrosities straight out of an adults-only horror game mood board, and present as creative riffs on Slavic folklore, like the Bukavac or the goddess Marzanna.

Side Quests In Search of a Good Payoff

One of many missed opportunities in The Thaumaturge is how salutors are never directly invoked in the main portion of the gameplay: exploration. Once in Warsaw, players will find the city divided into multiple real-life districts which are slowly unlocked, all of which offer large explorable environments with different activity buzzing during morning, noon, and night.

Going from an early-game village to the properly bustling city in a time of political unrest is an exciting prospect, navigating streets filled with people mumbling, carousing, dining at cafes, and drunkenly urinating on the cobblestones. However, players will quickly notice that city areas are mostly noninteractive, with occasional hotspots to click on, casual conversation to engage, and a lot of random one-off items/events to collect, like stereoscopic photograph booths, newspapers, food vendors, etc.

At first, one might find a few note scraps which speak of an underground bare-knuckle boxing circuit; an exciting prospect. Track down enough of these key items and Wiktor will automatically determine the time and location of the event, but pursuing it eventually leads to a nicely sketched image and a silent film-like title card describing how Wiktor spent his evening. Then, it’s back on the street, in what might be the epitome of a pitifully meager video game payoff.

Of course, there are more genuinely interactive encounters in the game, but it’s disappointing how The Thaumaturge features so many mute stand-in NPCs and trivial side quest events as these. If the bulk of this content couldn’t be threaded into the main story effectively, they should be simply dispensed with or, at the very least, divorced from the incessant busywork required.

Point and Never Stop Clicking

As a thaumaturge, Wiktor has an ability called “perception,” and right-clicking the mouse summons a magical red route to the next objective while highlighting any special items in the immediate environment. Thaumaturges can intuit the energy left behind on these relics by others, like a note written in jealous anger or a cup of tea left for a sick loved one. Wiktor can then read these items and eventually connect them into “conclusions,” which are leveraged for preferable outcomes in specific instances of dialogue.

The recent procession of games which conjure default conclusions for the player disguised as true problem-solving agency – see Alan Wake 2 and Deathloop for some prominent recent AAA examples, though there are several others – is a vexing but overlooked developmental trend. So it is with The Thaumaturge, which offers such a delectable setting for intrigue and experimentation (and mistakes), but all of its mysteries boil down to: “click on everything until the main character magically surmises the truth.”

This isn’t to say that The Thaumaturge doesn’t have its own forked paths, with plenty of dialogue options that seemingly alter the plot significantly. But the primary point-and-click gameplay is unsatisfying on its own and packed with confusing mechanical elements; for instance, if a player stat is not high enough to effectively “read” an item in a room, it will usually just disappear outright, even if they return to it later on and leveled-up, completely cutting them off from some preferred conversational options.

This results in the worst of all outcomes: if a player is enjoying the story and identifying with the character, they may find that they cannot steer them in the right direction, through absolutely no fault of their own. Alternately, if they feel checked out of the plot, they may stumble into some unusual and interesting dialogue, simply based on an item description or conclusion they quickly skipped past and didn’t even read.

A Worthy Plot Encumbered By An Inconsistent Script

Speaking of those item descriptions, The Thaumaturge has an even more serious problem with consistency in its writing. Most items and incidental text are ittedly decent, like newspaper stories, wanted posters, and personal letters, but the dialogue in the game offers a swinging pendulum of quality. Wiktor’s gay childhood chum-turned-gang-leader Abaurycy is a fascinating example, where his backstory and role mixes the Yakuza series’ Goro Majima with Tomik and Bellgarde, the goofy Family Guy duo who are almost fluent in conversational English. It’s hard to figure out whether the voice actor, casting director, or writers are most to blame for some of his sloppier delivery and tonally incorrect phrases and anachronisms.

Even from the game’s first hour, with an uncomfortably clunky conversation with a telegrapher, down to some whiplash-level familial resolution in its final moments, The Thaumaturge has frequent trouble nailing down the attitudes, tones, and behaviors of its characters, leading to a lot of unintentionally funny conversations. Developer Fool’s Theory is based out of Poland, but the game was dubbed with English dialogue only, and it’s hard to imagine that the verisimilitude of the setting (and vocal inflections of the characters) could not have been largely improved with a Polish language dub to start.

Despite an unsteady script and some questionable performances, it’s to the game’s ultimate credit that the plot is compelling enough that the push to see it through overcomes these faults in the end. Even though a few plot arcs are discarded in such a way as to imply cut content, The Thaumaturge’s narrative has some genuinely enjoyable events and unexpected scenarios. In one memorable example, Wiktor finagles his way into a séance to secretly match wits against an enemy thaumaturge, all while the stressful backdrop of a formal dinner party of elites surrounds them. Cunning Kabbalists, cruel Cossack soldiers, and a notable Russian mystic infuse the story with weight and dynamic color, emphasizing The Thaumaturge’s greatest asset: its darkly beautiful and culturally-rich historical setting.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

All this explanation with nary a mention of the turn-based combat. Relegating the topic to this one paragraph is analogous to its presence in the game: minimally effective, somewhat wedged-in. The combat isn't terrible, by any means, but it’s mostly incoherent and dismissively easy, and its inconsistent presence barely affects the game as a whole. We rarely encountered a game over screen at any turn and, while combat difficulty can be tweaked in settings, it appears so randomly as to come off more as a last-minute structural inclusion meant to give The Thaumaturge more mechanical heft.

This speaks to an insecurity in the game’s design, a fear that the setting and adventure game elements were not enough to carry it over the finish line. Contrarily, the game would have been much more interesting as a purely conversation-driven RPG, if the random clicking was tuned down and the forked pathing and player agency was tuned up...and maybe with another on the script.

As it stands, though, The Thaumaturge remains quite special overall. Hanging out with Rasputin, shmoozing with turn-of-the-century elites, and exploring some unexpected golem developments with beset Rabbis make for compelling content, even when a few lines in the script fail to land. Anyone taken in by this setting will genuinely want to play The Thaumaturge, and it s several other recent experimental Slavic fantasy adventures that prove the countless avenues video games have yet to fully explore.

A digital PC code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.