The Thaumaturge is a gritty and supernatural story by developer Fool’s Theory set in 1905 era Warsaw Poland. The game combines real world events and people tangled up with mystical creatures and the practitioners who capture them called Thaumaturges. The game is compelling, well rounded and has some mechanics I have never experienced before and is a great experience despite some repetiveness.

The story focuses on Wiktor Szulski, who is a Thaumaturge in isolation as he battles literal internal demons. He can innately detect traces of emotions on items to learn secrets about people and to draw conclusions that leads him to solve crimes or detect flaws that could lead him to track down Salutors.

Salutors are mysterious and elusive creatures of Slavic, Jewish, Bavarian, or Arabic origins that attach themselves to flaws of humans and use this connection to control them. A Thaumaturge can absorb the flaw and take control of the Salutor for their own purposes or to dismiss it.

Wiktor has had a Salutor for a long time and when he tried to purge a second one from a hapless victim he lost control of Upyr, his first connection, who was attached to Wiktors flaw of Pride. Wandering for years he finally found a healer in the form of Grigori Rasputin (yes THAT Rasputin) who helped him not only re-establish the connection to Upyr but control multiple Salutors which is unheard of.

This kicks off the story of The Thaumaturge which has Wiktor returning to Warsaw Poland after his hated father has died and trying to restart his life. Poland is in the midst of a Russian takeover, the world is on the brink of war and Wiktor just wants to find the one item his father left him, the legendary Black Grimoire that is the source of a Thaumaturges control and power.

Initially the game seemed to be more of a Disco Elysium style adventure game with plenty of dialogue and internal choices but ends up being a more exploratory experience with puzzles, sidequests and plenty of combat. The combat in fact is very well implemented but I found it occurred a little too often, why random thugs keep challenging a magician who controls psychic demons was a mystery.

As Wiktor explores Warsaw and meets old figures from his past the game starts rolling out plenty of side missions, goals and new Salutors to discover. The map is fairly useless as it only shows zones, not detailed per location maps, so the ability to sense and see a trail to the objective is spammed nearly non stop.

This quick button press trigger Wiktor to snap his fingers and any points of interest nearby are highlighted and a trail to the current objective appears. If there is mundane clues like posters, books or items they are instantly visible, but traces of key items represent as a beautiful array of lights that focus when the object is found.

Because of this mechanic I literally run around the city snapping my finger nonstop reading and interacting with every object that gets tagged. This often triggers a short mission or next step in the narrative so this is essential to play the game.

There is a ton of lore, story material and neat little tidbits to discover by doing this and every little discovery adds XP, which feeds skills generating a satisfying loop. Exploring not only lets you meet people and gain skills/Salutors but also very cool collectibles like drawings of an experience you unlocked or records with a song on it you can listen to anytime.

There is a lot to discover in The Thaumaturge and some frankly amazing ideas and implementations that grabbed my interest very quickly. Unfortunately because the game has a lot going on the fast travel and navigation systems devolve parts of the game into following glowing paths and jumping back and forth between locations often to get to the next side quest point or story beat.

Thankfully the things that really shine are truly terrific. The world is amazingly represented in a turn of the century Poland on the brink of being overwhelmed. The characters are varied and uniformly interesting even though the dialogue is clunky at times.

The game mechanics are spread around exploration and puzzle solving through dialogue/clues and combat. The combat leverages learned skills and assistance from your Salutor. It is a turn based affair with each character acting in sequence.

There are a ton of tactics in combat as enemies at times have traits that diminish some of your skills so swapping out Salutors to find an effective match is necessary. There are boss battles when new Salutors are encountered or attempted to be controlled and this are handled as waves of enemies and special attacks from the boss.

While the combat can be deep it generally becomes a back and forth issuing commands and waiting for enemies to complete their actions. Once you get the hang of combat it can become repetitive especially as it happens somewhat often.

While I have some quibbles with the traversal system and combat I can safely say that there are very few games like The Thaumaturge, and I mean that in the nicest way. The story is bonkers, Rasputin is implemented in a very compelling way, the world is incredibly interesting as is the era the game is set in.

Visually the game looks fantastic with a terrific art style and really unique looks for the demonic Salutors. The Thaumaturge is also fully voice acted, which outside of the main characters is a little hit and miss, but it is a welcome feature as is the terrific music and audio presentation front which is front and centre in the experience.

If you are a fan of anything from adventure games, eastern European culture, turn based combat and gritty supernatural scenarios then this game will tick a lot of boxes for you. Those looking for a deep and captivating experience will also enjoy The Thaumaturge, just be aware that the game takes a bit to get going, but once it does it is a unique and enjoyable game.

We were given a Steam PC code for review purposes and The Thaumaturge will be available March 4th for PC via Steam, the Epic Game Store and GoG.