The Thaumaturge Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published March 4, 2024 · Updated March 4, 2024

The Thaumaturge Review, a story-driven RPG with morally ambiguous choices, takes place in the culturally diverse world of early 20th-century Warsaw. In this world, salutors exist as esoteric beings that only thaumaturges can truly perceive and use for their needs.

The Thaumaturge Review Pros:

Beautiful graphics.
29.82GB download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – screen mode, resolution, brightness slider, resolution scaling, scaling quality, frame generation, Nvidia reflex, v-sync, overall quality, bloom, depth of field, effects quality, foliage, global lighting, motion blur, reflections quality, shadow quality, texture quality, and volumetric lighting.
Three game difficulties – story, balance, and challenge.
Game settings – faster combat cinematics, dialogue skipping, mini-map, and text language.
Accessibility options – increased text size, colorblind mode, game cursor, nudity, and blood.
Full mouse and keyboard support along with the ability to remap the controls.
In-game cutscenes with character interactions.
Powerful and impactful voicework and music.
You are a man looking for a cure for your ailment.
Multiple choice encounters.
Third-person action-adventure gameplay.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play and then they get stored in the help menu.
Perception plays a huge part as you can see things that are hidden anticipate someone’s actions or show you the route to a marker.
The camera can be zoomed in and out.
Fast loading times.
Very atmospheric.
The game grabs you straight away as the intro doesn’t mention anything about your -*passenger/partner* who is with you.
Find lore, letters, and backstories around the world.
Turn-based combat.
Attacks and abilities are assigned slow and fast speeds which act like casting times.
Perception in a fight lets you see what your enemy is planning.
You can pet the dogs!
Button icon prompts show around the world.
Memorable characters.
Beautiful yet grim-looking locations.
Observations play a big part, learn info from people and items that then lead to conclusions.
When obtaining any observations you can use perception to read people’s emotions, actions, and thoughts.
You have four core dimensions that play a big part in your development and they are – heart, deed, word, and mind. Interactions and choices can grant openings via one of these dimensions.
Earn exp from many actions and get upgrade points to put into your four dimensions and unlock new abilities and buffs.
Handy shortcuts to the menus, maps, and level-ups on the d-pad.
Quests can have multiple objectives and you are free to do them in any order but sometimes you need to do them a certain way.
Before a fight encounter you get a helpful reminder and a chance to level up your character.
Enemies have focus and hitting them with particular attacks knocks it down, gets rid of all of it and they then get put into the breakdown and take more damage.
When in conversations with people you can see that you can get more out of them if you find more clues or observations.
It’s a game that everyone will play and have different experiences as you can make a character how you like.
Interactions and observations etc can be locked from you because you don’t have a high enough level but you can return once you level up.
Conclusions can also let you manipulate people into doing things for you.
A world map unlocks new locations and aids fast travel.
The EXP bar shows up every time you earn EXP.
What I like is the ending of a scenario or mission is always the same but it’s how you get there that’s different, I can go off and do my own thing and I find a different approach.
Save and load when you want.
Salutors are these otherworldy creatures and fighting with them can be huge on the scale and impact of their abilities that you can harness and use, they can call in reinforcements and have a shadow protecting them.
States can be cast on you that weaken, strengthen, or do nothing to you whilst in combat.
After time you get a nudge to show where you should be heading.
You feel like your actions and inaction make a difference.
In later fights you can choose to fight as yourself or have a Salutor fight for you, if they have a green frame around them then they do more damage to the highlighted enemy.
Salutors are your supernatural party members and they look fantastic.
Traits are what enemies have and it ties them to a dimension type, if you have a Salutor with the same dimension cancels it out.
The combat is really good as it requires a lot of skill which is easily achieved thanks to the on-screen prompts, I like how bodies will just crumple around you as you still fight.
A wardrobe is where you go to change outfits, tailors sell suits and hairstyles.

The Thaumaturge Review Cons:

Cannot remap controls for the controller.
No benchmark test for performance.
Didn’t have any HDR settings.
Pop in graphics at times.
Slow starter with a lot to take in.
The text in the game can look a bit blurry in places.
The game is not the best at helping guide you especially early on.
A lot of searching but you are not always sure what in order to get more conversations with people that in turn move the game forward.
The loading screens are so fast you can’t read what is on them.
Some of the faces look wooden in their actions and dead-eyed with emotion.
At times the multiple choice feels redundant or not fitting with the situation.