Wictor (pronounced “Victor”) Szulski is the titular Thaumaturge, a person born with the special ability to wield magical powers through a connection to a demon known as a salutor. Wictor is drawn to his hometown of Warsaw after the death of his father, bringing him within the crossroads of various historical forces as well as a blood vendetta involving his family.
The Thaumaturge is fun, sweeping you into the world of early 20th-century Warsaw while wearing the pride and love for its Polish heritage on its sleeve, yet ultimately you do little more than run around Warsaw and then watch an ending cutscene; by constraining itself to historical fiction, The Thaumaturge doesn’t give its plot enough space to do anything, leaving what should be a story-based game feeling like it doesn’t really have one.
Thaumaturges maintain their connection to their salutor through a negative trait known as a “Flaw,” which the salutor follows. (Salutors aren’t bound to a specific person; they just follow whoever has the Flaw they like.) Thaumaturges can then wield the salutor’s power through their Flaw, which mainly gives them the ability to read emotions imprinted onto objects, as well as an array of other lesser-defined powers (such as entering another person’s mindscape and reading their thoughts).
Wictor has been losing his grasp on reality and his salutor, and in his desperation seeks help from a rumored miracle healer in the countryside. He meets a man known as Grigori Rasputin, who is able to restore Wictor’s thaumaturgic powers. Wictor then receives word of his father’s death and returns to Warsaw for the funeral, and Rasputin decides to join him.
In Warsaw, Wictor learns that his father’s death happened under mysterious circumstances, and that the grimoire bequeathed to him has gone missing. Wictor sets out to learn the truth of his father’s death and find the grimoire, as tensions between Russian forces occupying the city and Polish revolutionaries grow more and more strained…
I’ll readily admit I was not (and am still not) an expert on Polish history, and didn’t appreciate the powderkeg Wictor was walking into. At the time of the game (1905), Poland has been occupied in one form or another for over a century—yet patriotic dreams of freedom have remained, and (as we know in hindsight) will soon bear fruit. But not yet. Devoting a large part of the narrative of The Thaumaturge to a conflict that historically can’t be resolved during the game, means… nothing really happens.
Of course, there’s also the issue of Wictor’s father and grimoire. And that ends up being nothing particularly mind-blowing, with no especially compelling or engaging elements. I don’t think every RPG needs to end by punching God in the face with the power of friend, but it should still feel like we actually accomplished something. Heck, when you find the grimoire, it’s possible to just throw it away without reading it, which I think shows how little bearing what is supposed to be Wictor’s main driving force actually has.
Sidequests will have you running all around Warsaw, exploring famous landmarks and discovering traditions, fads, and oddities alike, each accompanied by a sketch. This serves wonderfully to draw you into the world of Warsaw, in a time period that is both quaint but also electric and full of flux. It’s nice being able to let yourself be immersed in the city… it’s just that when you look back on it, the actual substance of the plot feels lacking, like it was missing one more major twist or development.
The treatment of Rasputin by the game is also a bit funny. The game is incredibly obvious about its skepticism of Rasputin, but within the actual plot he doesn’t do anything overtly nefarious, and in fact is probably Wictor’s most consistent ally. It’s clear the game wants you to distrust Rasputin, and implies there is more to his machinations than meets the eye, but never gives Wictor a reason to actually dislike him.
Gameplay consists mainly of running around Warsaw talking to people and investigating objects. You can use an ability called “perception” which will direct you towards your next objective and highlight any nearby items with traces. As it turns out, there’s no failure state in the The Thaumaturge. Your choices may affect your relationship with other characters (which in turn will affect the ending), but no matter what you do you’ll be able to complete your quest. Which reduced the impact of some choices, but does make it a game that is very easy to simply vibe through.
One unique feature is the impact of Wictor’s flaw, Pride, on the conversation. Wictor’s Pride has a level, and certain dialogue options have a marker denoting they are tied to his Pride. Selecting a Pride option increases the level of Wictor’s Pride, and certain dialogue options will be unavailable or only available if your Pride level is too low or too high. It’s a simple but effective system where pride and humility feed into and reinforce each other. Some of the Pride dialogue are hilarious, but Wictor is relatively arrogant (and entertaining) even without them.
Thaumaturgy is divided into four “dimensions” (word, deed, mind, and heart), and as you level up you earn skill points that are put into these dimensions, granting new combo moves and attack upgrades. Certain dialogue choices also require that you have a certain number of points in a specific dimension, and each trace requires that you have a certain number of points in the requisite dimension. (Experience is gained from battles, but also from examining traces and completing quests. Everything in the game is scripted, meaning there’s a cap to the amount of experience you can earn.)
The writing is generally acceptable, and sometimes humorous, but not infrequently a bit weird or stilted either. Part of it might be the translation, but these moments typically felt like the reason for the awkwardness was that multiple possible dialogue options were tied together… clumsily. The writing also wasn’t helped by the delivery of the voice lines, which felt a bit odd throughout.
I played on a Steam Deck, meaning graphics were defaulted to the lowest settings, but they still looked lush and impressive, with one notable exception: foliage was awful. While everything else had nice 3D models, foliage was cheap-looking 2D images, like you’d see in a PS1 or N64 game. As it turns out, foliage had a special extra-low setting, just for the Steam Deck, and once I set it to low, the plants suddenly looked normal and blended into everything else.
The last major gameplay system is battles, which are relatively simple but have enough depth to remain engaging over the course of the game’s run. Battles are turn-based, with you and your salutor acting separately. Each action has a speed, which determines how many rounds it will take to go off. You can also view what each enemy’s next move will be, helping you plan your turns.
Wictor has four attacks: a fast weak attack, a slow strong attack, an attack that inflicts a damage over time status, and an attack that reduces the enemy’s focus (which I’ll explain in a moment). As you progress in the game, you unlock combo moves for each attack type, which means that if you use the same type of move two (or three) times in a row, each successive use will be a stronger version of that attack.
Salutors each have their own set of attacks, usually focused around a certain theme. You can freely switch between salutors in battle, but can only use one per round, meaning that your options in battle grow and grow as you gain more salutors.
Focus is a meter that both you and each enemy has, which can be reduced by certain attacks. If an enemy’s focus is reduced to zero, they become stunned and susceptible to a super-strong attack for a round or two.
On top of that, many enemies have a defensive buff attuned to one of the four dimensions, which can only be dispelled by attacking them with a salutor aligned with the same dimension, or by reducing their focus to 0.
So, putting it all together, for each enemy you need to decide whether you are going to kill them with direct damage, damage over time, or focus attacks followed by an ultimate, whether you are going to eliminate their defensive buff (and if so, with your salutor or focus) or ignore, and the order to tackle this all in. It presents a puzzle that isn’t particularly difficult, but has enough moving pieces to be interesting.
All in all, The Thaumaturge is a fun little time capsule to transport you to turn-of-the-century Warsaw, with an interesting twist on magic and a decent battle system, but without a core to the plot to elevate the game. Polish patriotism is on full display and the tidbits of real history and culture are enjoyable to take in, but a lot of the plot feels like it just doesn’t matter. There is one major branch in the end, but the final quest plays out similarly regardless of the path you choose. As it turns out, mysteries generally can’t survive the ability to read people’s thoughts and imprinted emotions—and The Thaumaturge doesn’t particularly try hard to be a mystery, but it doesn’t try hard to be much than a love letter to Warsaw. At that it succeeds, but I wish they had aimed a bit higher.
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