The Thaumaturge

[h1]My Review in One Phrase: The Devs are Cowards[/h1] This is the first time I'm going to write a negative review not because I think the game is particularly bad, but because I think it could have been so, SO much better, and the developers should know. The Thaumaturge is so close to a great game, but hampered because the developers quite obviously couldn't follow through on some fundamental basics of game design. First, the [u][b]graphics[/b][/u]. It's too good. And that might seem weird at first, but once you play the game, you'll understand. There's too much of a disconnect between how good the graphics look, and how much of an absolute jank the animation is. I don't know why the developers decided to go with this weird "isometric in gameplay but 3rd person in cutscenes" approach, but it's incredibly jarring, because it's obvious a lot of the animation and art works better in isometric. And whenever the camera zooms into 3rd person, it gets really ugly, really fast. Objects look like plastic, and animations looks bad for the fidelity. Every time I spend a significant amount of time in one camera mode, I get into this gameplay groove where I start settling into the game. Then, the camera switched and BAM! It's like I just got slapped across the face and my eyes needs to readjust. It's just so, so jarring. [u][b]Gameplay[/b][/u] wise, I'm not far enough to fully comment on the complexity, but I'm far enough to see a fundamental error in the design. One that a lot of beginner game designers often fall into the trap of making, especially in RPGs. The stats don't matter. What this means is that levelling up, putting points into your skills, all of that don't matter. You don't have to choose, or plan, or anything. Because there's only one character, the developer must make sure that whatever build you make will carry you to the end game. The fights aren't challenging enough to make you want to put anything more than needed either, since you don't have traditional "levels" to scale to. Outside of combat, because of how nebulous the classification of skills are, you don't have any way to know which ones will affect dialogues which way. If for example, you want to play a pacifist character, you don't know which stats is the pacifist one. What happens then is you start hoarding skill points since you don't NEED it for combat. So you wait until you see a thing where you don't have enough levels in to do, then you throw the skill points in that. This means The Thaumaturge doesn't have vertical or horizontal game scaling, which is really, really bad RPG design, because it prevent the gameplay from evolving. You're stuck at the "starting point", all the time. You can't do "more things", nor can you do the same thing "but better". You're just doing whatever comes along with just the illusion of choice. My final big issue is the [u][b]voice acting[/b][/u], because it perfectly highlights the main problem with this game. If you're like me, someone who lives in a culture of multiple languages with multiple accents, you'll hear it immediately when you play the English audio. Everyone is desperately trying to sound like they are using the wrong accents. You have Polish actors, trying desperately to sound more English, and Canadians doing their attempts at some Slavic accents. I don't know if it's because they were afraid it'd sound bad or whatever, but now it just sounds weird. When, in all honesty, they should have just embraced their Eastern European accents. Because it sounds so incredibly unnatural, almost robotic, when everyone is trying to be something the game is not. Like, why does my proletariat from Warsaw sounds like a Pol pretending to have a London accent? Mid way through chapter 1, I could not stand the voice acting any longer, and just switched the audio over to the Polish one, and even though I could no longer understand what was said, it sounded [i]natural[/i]. It sounded right, and so much better. All this is to say, the overarching issue is that the developers were not brave enough to commit to a vision. If they had just focused on an isometric camera design, or cleaned up the animation for 3rd person, the game would be beautiful. If they had just focused on either a Disco-esque nebulous stat system for mystery or combat focus, instead of this half-half nonsense, the gameplay would be uniquely fun. Instead of trying to make the game sound English, and just have it embrace all its Eastern European accents, the acting would be enjoyable. But they didn't do that. They got scared. I look forward to the dev's next title, because there's actual talent and promise here, just not focused into something worth while.

Welcome to 1905 Warsaw, where your primary weapons are historical politics, occult manipulation, and severe generational trauma. You play as Wiktor, a man who looks like a shipwreck survivor but dresses like a fashion icon, wandering the streets to collect terrifying folklore demons like they’re anxiety-infused Pokémon. The gameplay is fun: you walk into a bar, psychologically dissect a local thug until he has an existential crisis, and then unleash a Slavic myth to slap his friends into the shadow realm. You get to gaslight Tsarist cops, hang out with Rasputin, and force your inner demons onto everyone else. If you like deep isometric RPGs, historical fiction, urban fantasy, and projecting your psychological issues onto magical monsters, try this one.🦊🙂

An incredible game that is brutally hindered by a lack of variety in side quests, or more specifically "city quests". If they removed all the the "follow the red line till you click 3 things" quests this game would be half as long (maybe) which is such a shame because the more fleshed out main quests and side quests are phenomenal. Its a difficult game to recommend, but I just barely land on the side of "Positive Review". Its not just a completionist thing either, since the "see the city" type quests do give you XP, you'll probably want to complete them to be able to unlock all the abilities to put together builds, and the builds ARE COOL! The combat is fun but you'll go for long stretches of time not fighting anything, just ticking off limited time quests to make sure you don't miss out on XP, but those quests just require you to right click and follow the line till you can click an object. Do that 2-3 more times and the quest is complete, you get your XP and a sketch of a thing you did. Its not particularly frustrating but only because there's literally no challenge, its just a slog and its making it very difficult for me to push through and finish this game. I already click through any text that isn't a main mission anymore because there's just so much stuff that literally doesn't matter, unless you're really into history or Polish culture in which case this game is going to blow your mind. I still recommend it, but its a real shame how much of the game is just "put something up on youtube on a second screen and do chores". Also I think optimisation is a little iffy, I had to turn settings way down and still get concerning GPU and CPU temps.

The Thaumaturge to sandbox RPG przygodówka w której to ty piszesz własną historię zamiast podążać wyznaczoną ścieżką. Odkrywaj plugawy świat Warśawki. Wszystko co robisz wpływa na zależny od gracza los Imperium Rosyjskiego i rodziny carskiej. Każdy element ekwipunek jest zbierany przez samego ciebie. Twoi salutorzy decydują o tym kim jesteś. Zamiana z bezwzględnego judeorealisty na charyzmatycznego manipulatora jest tak prosta, jak zmiana salutorów i umiejętności. Możesz też łączyć elementy umiejętności kilku demonów. Ruszaj w dół Wisły, gdzie znajdziesz zarówno bogactwo jak i zagrożenia. Zrelaksuj się we własnym domu, na balangach z Abaurycym i na terapii u Rasputina. Możesz donosić na przodków ćwiklota i rusorealistów do woli. Chwyć za grymuar i ruszaj w głąb kanalizacji i baraków Warśawki. Dołącz do tajnych stowarzyszeń, graj z innymi taumaturgami! Bierz udział w ogromnych bitwach z menelami, dziennikarzami i glinami, zagarnij dla siebie kawałek świata! To jest The Thaumaturge. Pozdro z Sankt PeterZburga!

A mess. [b] The games loves wasting your time by having you run around the city with barely any interactions while you right click 200 times for direction. [/b] The story is too ambitious and at times barely comprehensible. Terrible job at guiding the players what consequences their actions have on the game (but to be honest it only has a slight effect on the ending). The translation is terrible as well. Not nearly enough synergy nor variety in the combat system. Not to mention the game runs terribly and the facial models aside from the recurring cast look horrible.

Gameplay got boring fairly quickly. if you're big into the atmosphere, go for it. otherwise, the story, while interesting, is pretty poorly executed and often doesn't logically handle you doing things in different orders. or give you good reasons for why you're doing what you're doing.

Es schmerzt mich hier eine negative Bewertung zu geben weil ich das Setting und den Stil grandios finde. Auch die Story hat mich sehr eingenommen. Allerdings ist das Kampfsystem dermaßen eintönig, nach anfänglichem Potential, dass die letzten Stunden sich einfach wie Arbeit angefühlt haben. Es wäre vlt. hinnehmbar wenn die Kämpfe nur spärlich verteilt sind, das Spiel überrennt einen jedoch quasi mit Kämpfen an jeder Ecke. Dazu kommt hinzu, dass jeder Kampf fast im Schlaf durchführbar war aber der letzte Boss dann dermaßen schwer gemacht wurde das ich tatsächlich gezwungen wurde die Schwierigkeit zu verringern, was ich sonst nie mache. Der Kampf ist auch nicht mal auf eine interessante Art und Weise schwer. Ich möchte an dieser Stelle auch nicht spoilern aber ich fand die Art der Mechaniken eher nervig statt herausfordernd, besonders im Vergleich zu den Kämpfen davor. Im Sale vlt. dennoch eine Überlegung wert. Setting ist einfach zu gut. Man benötigt aber etwas Durchhaltevermögen.

The writing and pre-war Warsaw setting are the best things about this game, but it is held back by repetitive combat.

Es un juego con una temática espectacular que mezcla el folklore eslavo, con la situación que se vivía en las calles de Varsovia antes de la caída del imperio de los zares. Me quedo con ganas de conocer más sobre el folclore. Me parece que el combate es entretenido y que da pie a bastante personalización. Me parece que da una modesta vuelta de tuerca a los juegos detectivescos, ya que puedes sentir las emociones en los objetos que ha tocado la gente. También tiene sus cosas malas, algunas las diré a continuación, pero siempre hay que tener en cuenta el presupuesto del estudio y su experiencia en el sector: Así mismo, como halago el sistema "detectivesco", usar la mecánica de rastreo constantemente para absolutamente todo se hace repetitivo, a veces el radar no llega por poco y abandonas una zona sin llegar a encontrar algo importante. El sistema de eventos como forma de subir de nivel, es sencillo y a veces termina dándonos una pequeña pieza de arte, pero hacia el final del juego da muy poca experiencia. Otro problema con este sistema es tienen un tiempo limitado (que no conoces exactamente) para completarse y la gran mayoría son por la tarde (en algunas no se especifica bien), así que no puedes completarlas todas. Yo he jugado en español y en algún momento me he perdido en conversaciones por malas traducciones (pero eso pasa hasta en las mayores empresas). En cuanto al árbol de habilidades, no existe prácticamente, no tiene sentido no subirte todas las ramas todo lo que puedas, que al final del juego no podrás tomar ciertas decisiones porque por poco no llegas al final de cada una de las ramas, pero si no lo haces así pierdes habilidades básicas, puntos de vida. de concentración y capacidad de interactuar con el entorno y tomar decisiones .Y por último que se me ocurra, el sistema de entradas de información es un caos. Quiero recalcar, que aunque he puesto mucho más texto negativo que positivo, lo positivo compensa, me parece un juegazo y que ojalá haya una segunda parte y puedan mejorar sus flaquezas

Le jeu était bien, le système de combat était génial, les quêtes secondaires étaient cool, mais je n'ai pas réussi à m'attacher ni aux personnages ni à l'histoire. La traduction pouvait parfois buguer, comme les cinématiques.