The Thaumaturge Review- You didn't know this word even existed

It is a rare occurrence when I need to use google to understand a games title. This is one of those times. 11Bit and Fool's Theory come at us with an interesting concept of wizards that can "feel" other people's personalities and intentions imprinted on objects.
At first glance you might brush this game off as just another isometric RPG in a post-baldurian age (reference to Baldur's Gate 3, just in case I was too adventurous), but that is not quite how things shape up.

While this game shares the visual identifiers of that previously-mentioned Larian game, in actuality I consider it a tiny bit more akin to something like Sherlock Holmes. Granted, there is a lot more supernatural involved here, but the basic snarky detective vibe (music included!) is very much here.

Story

The premise presented is interesting, and as far as my research took me, at least partly original. It focuses on a 1905 Warsaw as the main setting and flourishes on top of that with various ideas from local and global culture. The design of the in-game companions (from now on referred to as Salutors) is also quite varied, detailed and horror-inducing in a brilliant way.

Despite the strong premise however, the narrative itself ultimately did not have a lasting impact on me, and left me feeling like it did not use its building blocks to their fullest potential in order to create an ambitious story.

The beginning hours of the game are the most intriguing in my opinion, as you start getting to grips with the world, your powers and the game mechanics. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off as the game goes on, and it begins to increasingly drag on, finishing in an unenthusiastic manner. I feel like the main combat and exploration loop was not necessarily a good fit for such a lengthy experience, and is only compounded by the fact all quests take the same shape. Had the game contained more quiet moments or more dialogue-decided quests, things might have felt different.

Gameplay

The gameplay is an interesting take on the turn-based strategy combat genre. It's simple in concept as people generally have two health bars, with one enabling higher damage in the other. The system is suitable for the start of the game, but it starts being tedious later on, especially as more and more enemies start engaging in senseless combat encounters for the sake of keeping the tempo high.

On the matter of combat, the system uses a diverse rule set of buff-debuff combinations that you must play along to. Some enemies have 80% damage reduction unless you first hit them with a specific attack. Others just have super high resistance to one type of attack so you must focus all your power with the other damage type. It's a pretty robust system that works well, if only I didn't have to engage in so many damn needless fights.

The story itself is also rather unremarkable. It folds in some interesting concepts such as Polish-Russian political conundrums and the idea that our flaws actually define our personality. By the end though, it sort of boils down to a false-prophet kind of idea that really fell flat for me.

My decision to not ally with Rasputin seems to have been considered as non-cannon by the devs, because its development feels a tiny bit unfinished to me. I never got an explanation as to why Rasputin seemingly cured me, nor for what his plans were for the country or his motivations for seeking greatness. The game pitted me against him at the end, in a sort of "you're with me or against me" motif and then quickly rolled credits.

Furthermore, For the last 5-7h I was left in a state of being underpowered compared to what the game expected me to have, with an entire level of salutors being locked out of my reach. I am unsure if this is a result of my choices or me undertaking relatively few side quests but the end result is that I felt I played the game wrong.

Conclusion

Overall there is not much wrong with this game. It is an entirely fair and honest single player RPG, but unfortunately it is also one that does not stand out in any meaningful way, thus making it hard to justify the roughly 15-20h it would take you to get through this.