The Thaumaturge

Klimatyczna gra, która dobrze oddaje nieco okultustyczno-salonowy klimat początku XX wieku. Doskonały polski dubbing, dobra muzyka, ciekawe konsekwencje wyborów bohatera. Wiktor Szulski jako główny bohater sprawdza się świetnie - nieoczywisty, zraniony, pyskaty i dumny. Soundtrack zapada w pamięć a plusem jest zwiedzanie przedwojennej Warszawy. Kontekst historyczny to smaczek nie do podrobienia.

TL;DR: I found the overall game fun on account of its setting, but it's way too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long, the side quests are hella mid/pointless nonsense, and the whole "open world" vibe this small studio went for ultimately doesn't pan out. Even all of the 12 endings are kinda whatever. It's still somewhat fun, but damn man... P.S. I left the game on AFK multiple nights and that's why I have 91 hours logged. Pro's - The setting - The voice acting - The art style - The story, up to a point... Cons - The simplistic combat - The sheer amount of useless "quests" - IMHO, all of the endings seem rushed and are pretty unsatisfying - The "urban secrets" things are tedious af - Occasional graphical pop ins

Да - атмосферно, да - иногда интересные диалоги и прям хорошая атмосфера, но игра очень линейная. У вас будет только иллюзия выбора, которая ведет к одинаковым последствиям, мир вроде как "открыт" но на деле все опции закрыты, вы должны идти строго по сюжетной линии. Становится скучно буквально через несколько часов игры

Das Grundkonzept klingt erstmal spannend und interessant. Doch ich habe das Gefühl das Spiel weiß selbst nicht was es ist. Für ein rundenbasiertes Rollenspiel sind die Kämpfe zu eintönig und das System bietet kaum bis keine Tiefe, aber ich hatte auch nicht den Eindruck dass das Spiel das sein möchte. Ich dachte erst dass soll Richtung Detektivarbeit gehen. Also Hinweise sammeln, entschlüsseln und kombinieren. Allerdings ist auch dies gescheitert, denn ich muss mir ja garnichts durchlesen. Denn man läuft im Grunde immer nur von einem leuchtenen Punkt zu dem andern und irgendwann kombiniert der Charakter das automatisc und man kann weiter machen. Ach und zusätzlich auf Linux das erste Spiel das so regelmäßig crasht, das man die Uhr danach stellen kann. Fazit: Gute Ideen, schlechte Umsetzung. Vll können die Entwickler aus den Fehlern lernen und es nächstes mal besser machen.

THE GOOD: - The story is pretty good - The setting is amazing (I can't think of any game based in 1900 Poland) - This game is very replayable (in one run you can't discover everything the game has to offer) - Pretty good performance THE BAD - The combat gets pretty repetitive after a while

While „The Thaumaturge” boasts a few clever ideas, the overall experience is decidedly mediocre. „The Thaumaturge” is basically an isometric cRPG with plenty of character development opportunities, especially regarding combat. The combat itself is the most interesting and sophisticated part of the gameplay; the rest boils down to walking around, searching for clues, and choosing dialogue options. The clues come with overly long descriptions—there’s simply too much text to read, so I eventually started skipping them to get to the dialogue. The conversations offer a variety of choices, some of which impact character attitudes and the future course of the game. The game meticulously depicts Warsaw at the beginning of the 20th century—a city under Russian rule. The locations, districts, and architecture are designed with a high level of historical accuracy. I appreciated the multicultural aspect of the city, with events taking place in the Nożyk Synagogue and the Orthodox Cathedral. However, it is a great pity that the developers omitted Protestant and Catholic churches, which played a vital role in Warsaw’s life. For instance, players could have visited the Holy Cross Basilica—a focal point for patriotic gatherings where the hearts of legendary Poles, including Fryderyk Chopin, are enshrined—or the Lutheran Holy Trinity Church, a center of the German community known for its modern philanthropy, schools, and hospitals. Moreover, the game tends to portray Russian police and administrative officials in a surprisingly positive light. Aside from General Skalon, who is depicted as a repulsive individual, the rest appear as amiable professionals. This felt somewhat jarring, considering the current real-world political situation. In terms of mechanics, „The Thaumaturge” offers deep combat skill trees, allowing for a wide range of tactics. Some fights are genuinely tough! These possibilities are further expanded by your supernatural familiars—called Salutors—each bringing a unique set of skills to the fray. Oh, and there are some collectibles as well. You might want to try it, but only if you find it at a steep discount

Absolutnie wyjątkowa gra. Po 26 godzinach, gra skończona. Bawiłem się świetnie, idealnie trafia w mój gust a setting 1905 roku,, Ruskiej okupacji, Warszawy i "magii", "demonów" aż za dobrze do siebie pasuje. Ciężko jest nie oceniać jej sercem, jestem Polakiem, a klimat, dialogi, muzyka, postacie, no wszystko gra jak należy....jest bardzo, bardzo dobrze. Widać wyraźne inspiracje Wiedźminem i to wykorzystane w idealny sposób. Myślę, że to będzie złoty brand dla studia - absolutnie nic nie brakuje żeby robić piękne gry, seriale i wspaniałe książki. Jestem zachwycony i nie wiem jak to się stało ale zupełnie ten tytuł przegapiłem przy premierze (a raczej grami się interesuje, prowadzę nawet kanał na YT poświęcony Cloud Gamingowi), pojawił mi się na liście wyprzedażowej i kupiłem go lekko z przypadku i cóż...REWELACJA, odkrycie roku :) Nie pozostaje nic jak lekko ostygnąć i zrobić drugie podejście :) SPOILER: Chociaż nie wyobrażam sobie wybrać Rasputina po tym jak krzyczy "Niech żyje Roosiijaa" - a pies go...;);) No i Abaurycy - świetna postać. Nie mogę się doczekać DLC czy kolejnej części :) Działajcie tam! Macie mój preorder ;)

If I could give it a more accurate rating, i'd say... maybe get on sale? I wanted to like this game more than I did. Seeing that it was apparently story heavy and filled with RPG elements, I was pretty excited to play something similar to Disco Elysium but with a little more gameplay which is honestly what that game lacked. It doesn't measure up to the same caliber at all; my impression is that the devs were way, WAY too ambitious with what they wanted to do and started assembling the game without any plan in mind for keeping everything polished and coherent. The Pros: + Environment and world building is absolutely the games strongest point. The setting of early 1900's Warsaw feels very fresh and the devs have managed to nail the athmosphere of walking around in the city perfectly, with lots of small love letters for it's culture and history. Lot of moments where you feel like just taking a pause and taking in the athmosphere of the game. The art team really nailed it. +Music is great. Adds to the vibe, not much more to say about it. +Decisions matter. There are several distinctly different endings to the game and you can definitely feel that your actions have consequences as you keep progressing the story. The Cons: -Voice acting and dialogue can be very, very awkward, with some characters being significantly worse than others. Probably a combination of bad writing and voice actors being forced to use a language they're not 100% comfortable with. Characters don't really sound like they care about anything, except Wiktor's prideful dialogue options which were actually pretty fun to use. -Story felt mediocre, no really emotional moments or intense scenes, it all just felt very "meh" -Animations, while good, are severely missing throughout the game. Characters suffer from stoneface syndrome, not really displaying any emotions whatsoever in most conversations. Combat animations are inconsistent without any explanation. -Combat is very simple and nothing feels intentional. The skill tree doesn't matter, you can really just level everything without putting any thought into builds or specialties. The animations are satisfying and the devs could easily polish the combat system, but have instead raised the white flag by adding the option to just make combat be instantly won so that you can skip it. Overall it was a decent game with so much potential that just flops, stopping it from being the amazing experience it could be. I want to see more from the studio but wish they put a little more time into actually playing their game to see if everything actually functions when put together instead of just doing 100 things and being bad at them all. It's a decent game, I can still recommend it on sale if you like similar games as I found it to be an enjoyable experience, but I just wish it could've lived up to it's full potential.