The Thaumaturge Review (PS5) – Celebrations And Salutors

The Thaumaturge created quite the impression for fellow Finger Gunner Miles when he reviewed the game at launch. It seemed like another hit under the belt of 2024 – or maybe it could have been the protagonist Wiktor Szulski’s ability of Thaumaturgy that influenced him. Either way, that was nine months ago and in a packed year of releases, the isometric RPG of 1905’s Warsaw has retained its influence.

I’ve been excited to check it out and now that it’s seen a few patches and made its way over to consoles, there’s been no better time to play it. This is the second release for Polish developers Fool’s Theory, as they take their RPG knowledge from their first game and put it into a project that I imagine is more personable. The connections are there as the game’s setting is Fool’s Theory’s home country but it was also a very contentious time in history, and this backdrop lends itself nicely to the tone that’s been set.

Whilst the game is a slight bit of a history lesson for those unfamiliar, this means that the developers could create a fiction equally as nuanced as the real-life events unfolding. There’s a lot of ambiguity as you play the titular Thaumaturge, a ‘profession’ that sees its own adversities as you wade through a city of imbalanced social structures rife with prejudice.

But this is the foundation of what makes a great RPG; the decisions aren’t black and white but instead grey like the smog that bellows through The Thaumaturge’s Warsaw. During my 20+ hours of playing, my opinions were constantly changing on what the right thing to do was, questioning my morality as events were unfolding, which is when I knew the game had its demonic claws in me.

Inner Demons

You play as Wiktor Szulski, a Thaumaturge who’s living a nomadic lifestyle as he country hops in search of help with his ‘gift’. Thaumaturgy is the mystical art of sensing thoughts and feelings left on inanimate objects by the person handling them. This innate ability manifests as you grow to discover your personal flaw. However, it’s not just the power that you wield once Thaumaturgy develops but also a type of demon known as Salutors that latch onto the flaw, forever following you as long as you possess the trait it’s attracted to.

Changing your life for the better or ridding your flaw may sound easy, but once a Salutor has got you in its grasp you are influenced to feed into your flaw. However, due to Wiktor’s gift of Thaumaturgy, Salutors can be controlled to manipulate the people Wiktor interacts with – that is if he can tame them. After he finds help from the Rasputin for his problem, Wiktor receives a letter that his father has passed away.

This sparks the return to his hometown, Warsaw, a city that is under Russian jurisdiction due to their empire maintaining occupation. Tensions are high as there are rumblings of a revolution for an independent Poland simultaneously happening and there’s more than meets the eye with Wiktor’s father’s death. The game is dense with this world-building and does a lot of dry, lofty dissection of the politics behind the setting.

It’s a challenging first couple of hours digesting the story but I’m overall grateful for this approach. It meant that further along in the game I could focus on the characters and their motivations within the already well-established backdrop. Some may consider it a slow start but I think the methodical pace is just part and parcel of its storytelling.

Predicting A Riot

Whilst the societal climate, subject matter and main plot can feel like a dirge, the writing has an almost gallows-like humour and genuine levity to balance it. The locals are down but not out, hopeful for change and defying the powers that be by not taking it lying down. Wiktor is similarly playful in some of the many instances where you choose his dialogue option.

Wiktor’s main flaw is pride, many options of dialogue will point out if it’s a proud answer. Leaning into his flaw does the simple task of creating a decision on how you want a conversation to go down, but it also creates branching paths that would have otherwise been previously unlocked. This is the first instance where the game presents a gameplay mechanic that is entirely missable, so naturally you’re inclined to go in that direction.

As I was doing this though, I started to question the morality of what a Thaumaturge is. Yes, I’m using the powers for what I feel is right and I’m being a bit arrogant to create advantageous scenarios, but is what I’m doing really aligning with how I’ve roleplayed as Wiktor? He’s come from an affluent background, his father was a Thaumaturge too, but I’m often siding with the consensus of the liberation of Poland and the more socialist ideals like women having more rights and workers being treated more fairly.

Red State

There’s a complexity that’s not pushed onto you during the early hours of the game but rather unfurls through your time spent with it. It’s an impressive aspect of The Thaumaturge as it is only a 25-30 hour long RPG, but there has been a committed attempt to create a world that’s bigger than the one you’re playing in. It streamlines other aspects to create this ambiguous depth, but more on that later.

Another way to tap into your Thaumaturgy abilities to influence the conversation is to scan your surroundings. There’s a neat mechanic where you tap ‘R2’ and you’ll snap Wiktor’s fingers against the grimoire at his waistband. Vermillion red particles scatter from the book and scan for anything that you can read the feelings behind. Alternatively, it also acts as a waypoint creator pointing to your current objective.

Discovering new items you find with your grimoire will give you a base definition behind the object’s origins. However, if you’ve levelled up one of the few skill trees based on Mind, Word, Heart etc. (these are also tied to Salutors you collect) you’ll get additional information that unlocks even more dialogue options. As you can probably imagine by now, the interactions you have play the most crucial role in how the narrative plays out. So to have multiple mechanics influence the direction really sucked me into the game.

The writing itself is fantastic, item descriptions, reading paraphernalia, and the dialogue do a flawless job of thrusting you into the world; I just wanted to read and discover everything. The voice acting on the other hand is sorely lacking. You sometimes can’t read Wiktor’s emotions behind his voice lines, he doesn’t have a consistent accent and this can be prescribed to the other characters too.

Waging Warsaw

It doesn’t fully take away my enjoyment, to even be charitable it actually adds to some of The Thaumaturge’s rough edges charm. When you’re not using your silver tongue to influence the people of Warsaw at your whim, you’ll be fighting them side-by-side with your Salutors. The Thaumaturge has turn-based combat but yourself and your enemies’ attacks are at the behest of a timeline featured on the top of the screen.

On this timeline are rounds that dictate the actions made. Some actions may take one round to pull off whilst others might take a few. Enemies’ actions are also under the same rules, so it’s a balancing act of taking your time for the slower, more powerful actions or chipping away with shorter less damaging ones. The Focus bar also plays a big part in this as depleting the enemies’ will cancel their action and leave them open to a devasting move.

Enemies can do the same to you but I didn’t quite experience adverse effects but they may have been because I was playing on normal difficulty. It’s not just Wiktor fighting though as he can also send his Salutors in to attack too. Certain Salutors may disable an enemy’s trait, think of it as a buff/perk, which is a must-do during every combat encounter. It’s a good way of mixing up what Salutors you use as you can switch between them after every action made.

It’s a satisfying quick-to-pick-up combat system that keeps you engaged by slowly increasing the difficulty as you progress. Once I learned the dynamics of who to beat first and juggle between healing, attacking or damaging an enemy’s focus I was excited by the back-and-forth the combat brings. There are some difficulty spikes which feel unreasonable but you can always lower the difficulty.

Facing Fears

Some of the omissions I mentioned earlier are more of a case of Fool’s Theory realising their scope for The Thaumaturge. Whilst the game is dense with writing and dialogue, the game doesn’t definitively alter depending on your choices. Instead, relationships and outcomes get to a slightly different ending but still remain the same. For example, there’s a side quest where you’re in search of a serial killer. After a long process of deducing crime scenes and chasing leads the quest ends with a face-off between the killer.

One instance had me attempt to stop them from killing their last victim and in the process the killer is shot dead. The police officer you’re helping moans about the paperwork being difficult because the suspect isn’t alive to answer for their crimes. I wasn’t satisfied with the result so I reloaded my save and managed to keep them alive and arrested. The police officer still moaned about the paperwork and when I later met with the officer again he said the suspect was going to be hanged.

There’s a handful of instances where this kind of pseudo-choice doesn’t really change the result, just how we got there. On top of that, Warsaw is open-world but the areas are semi-linear and broken up by districts. You’ll have to fast travel to each district, despite a lot of your quests requiring you to travel between them. It’s a lot of loading screens that don’t take long but when you’re ticking off some of the sightseeing to gain XP, you will be doing a lot of stop-and-start.

Urge To Turge

There’s also the talk of money, the lack of it and the use of it, but you don’t actually have an in-game currency and you don’t buy anything per se. However, there are stalls to “buy” experiences which add to a sketchbook collectible that also gives XP, so there’s almost an idea of maybe a currency system that just didn’t work in the final product.

Getting XP is also generous as you’ll always earn some for reading environmental objects or winning combat scenarios. However, it felt like a missed opportunity to not be able to talk your way out of situations to gain XP. Sometimes it doesn’t feel right to fight but the other option isn’t as fruitful so you do it anyway. Thankfully though, you’ll earn more than enough to unlock everything in the skill tree.

The skill tree isn’t big and each unlock is essentially a perk you can attach to your actions in combat to give it a buff. This also increases your relationship with your Salutors, opening up more opportunities to use their flaw-centric dialogue option and I liked that I didn’t have to go one way or the other. All in all, whilst I call them omissions, they are just to make it a smaller yet mightier RPG, creating a great game all around.

Looking Pretty In The City

The Thaumaturge also boasts some excellent environments to wander through. It’s weird to say that some dilapidated buildings and uneven cobbled streets that pool muddy rainwater are a spectacle, but it puts you into what I imagine 1905 Warsaw is like. This is also juxtaposed to the bourgeoisie that Wiktor also brushes shoulders with as they live in their ornate mansions and fancy hotels, whilst a poor worker is chundering outside of the building after a heavy night.

It’s a visual dichotomy that compliments the same rules in the writing, which sells just how bleak it can all be. Contrasting against the dull greys and browns of the streets is also the use of your grimoire and those red specks you’ll see. They light up so vividly in the environments and it’s a unique and simply cool way to create a distinctive style for itself.

Comparatively speaking, character models are so-so. Some lack detail or finesse that don’t quite match how well the environments look, movement is stiff during dialogue scenes despite having some explosive emotions in the writing and I can never quite trust what Wiktor’s hairline is doing. Wiktor himself has an interesting design, which you can also alter through a change of clothes and a barber but outside of that the characters are slightly lacking.

History Is Written By The Wiktor

As you can probably tell, outside of some nitpicks that are usually praised in some AAA RPGs and labelled as “charming”, I had a great time with The Thaumaturge. This review has come out on the later side after receiving it to cover because I simply got so invested in the world Fool’s Theory has built here. It’s historical yet fantastical, brooding but oftentimes hilarious and it’s lean for an RPG but simultaneously dense.

The developers have done a wonderful job of packing so much into what is essentially a humble 25-30-hour RPG. I do wish there were a couple more systems to add some diversity and more roleplaying, I also think the world could have felt more open to explore but I’m overall thoroughly impressed with The Thaumaturge. If you’re into your euro-centric history lessons with a touch of folklore to make it a subtle dark fantasy, then this is the perfect game for you.

The Thaumaturge is available now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam

Developers: Fool’s Theory

Publisher: 11 Bit Studios

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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