The Thaumaturge (2024)

I really want to love this game, but I'm so conflicted.

The writing is really good, but I'm kinda really bored playing it. And there's a few specific reasons why.

The most glaring thing is sound design. Quite often, the game just has... No music. At all. And when it does, it's often really low-energy, ambient music. It just makes the whole experience feel bleh. The sound effect space is really empty too, with foley in particular frequently missing in combat, dialogue and cinematics. It's very bizarre to be in a busy, crowded social function where the only sound is slow violin background music.

The combat system is really cool, I actually like what it's aiming to do; turn-based JRPG style combat where you control your protagonist and your spirit familiar simultaneously. Trouble is, the combat effects are extremely complicated and difficult to parse, leading to having to spend time reading each move carefully before selecting it. It greatly slows down the pace of battle and makes every decision painful, and not in a compelling way.

I really, really love the themes on display here, but the setting is kinda lame. I feel like I've played so many games set in late 1800s, early 1900s Europe that I'm just kinda over it. While this is an interesting period of history for Poland and the Russian Empire, the writers haven't done a great job setting the stage to make the setting compelling.

I will say, though, that the dialogue and fact-finding elements of this game are PEAK. If the dev takes anything from this experience into their next project, this is absolutely a winning concept.

I'm sad to say it, but I think I'm going to have to drop this game. I want to love it, but it just isn't holding my attention. :/

So I finally, FINALLY, have gotten a chance to play this one.

After months of delay, having to import a copy from overseas, a Provincial election, living out an hotel for work... I can FINALLY sit down and actually play.

First impressions? Mixed, but generally good.

The English dub is... Not very good, all told. There's a massive disparity in the quality of the acting from character to character, and I am presuming they hired actors both in Poland, where the game is made, and from overseas, because some characters have appropriate Polish and Russian accents for the setting, and others, who are meant to be Pols, have American and British accents. It's very disruptive and honestly breaks the immersion for me.

The Polish dub though? From what I can tell, excellent. The emotional range is improved, and there's a lot of nuance to the voicework that doesn't really exist in the deadpan delivery of the English dub.

This game is also certifiable Euro Jank™️, with lots of little technical hiccups and performance stutters. In fact, playing on Quality Mode on Series X is straight-up not recommended, it chugs like a college frat boy at a tailgate party. Still has some stutters and loading hitches on Performance Mode, especially when loading into a new area, but the incredible art direction and vibe here overcome it for me, personally.

The gameplay is... Super interesting. The exploration and narrative segments are definitely pure CRPG, but the battle system, where you control both Wiktor and his Salutor (the spirit he is partnered with) in a really clever turn-based JRPG system is really cool. Attacks are timing-based, and coordinating with your Salutor to work with status effects, interrupts and other shenanigans is really cool, and I'm loving how much variety there is. The battles are sloowwwwwwwww though, and that's something I'm a touch worried about - though the game seems far more narrative-focused overall.

So I've been extremely hyped for this game for quite a while now, but when I went on Twitter looking for a firm console release date, I came across the image below.

This is incredibly important and exciting to hear, because The Thaumaturge dives DEEP into Slavic and Eastern European folklore. One of the familiars you can summon, Veles, is actually one of the deities that I, a Slavic Pagan, have devotion to. Veles and mat Zemlya (the Earth Mother) are the two that I primarily show reverence to.

One thing with Slavic Paganism (Rodnovery) is that information on it is... Muddy. Because these beliefs held strong until around 500 AD, well after the forced baptism of Europe, a lot of concepts in Rodnovery were appropriated into Christian mythology - ie, Czernobog and Dazhbog being reassigned (or possibly invented) to be evil and good dieties mirroring Satan and God. A lot of what's been preserved of Rodnovery survived from those East of the Ural Mountains, whose beliefs also intermingled with those of Siberian and Central Asian peoples also inhabiting the region. There is a saying, "Russians wear sunglasses to Church" that alludes to an enduring cultural attachment to the old beliefs; that a lot of Slavs never truly accepted Christianity. So I'm really, really eager to see how this game approaches that.