✨ We have reached 0.3 release! ✨

Including my initial review here while I also give my usual thoughts and ramblings. The CC? Fantastic. The graphics? Beautiful. Performance issues? I haven't had any. This game has run smoothly for me consistently, even as far back as the first EA release. The devs mentioned that this update especially has had a lot of changes re: shading, and that is absolutely true. The depth that this shading update has added makes a huge difference, the wilderness is truly stunning and detailed. I find myself roaming around with photo mode on quite often just because I'm enraptured by how the areas all look.

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Now, let's address the obvious: the mixed review score. The negative reviews really just feel unwarranted, or like they haven't been updated for recent patches. Yes there were and likely are some bugs that will need to be addressed, and yes there is room for improvement on some things but this is also Early Access-- and explicitly marked as such. This game has not fully released, but I see a lot of reviews here acting like it is and complaining that they got an 'unfinished game'. I mean, yeah? Early Access means it's not complete yet, you're just playtesting the available content. And the early access is only going to be 30-33% of the content we'll get in full release, so there will be even more in future updates. There are certainly some valid complaints, and I do have a few of my own. I am admittedly not a huge fan of the combat style compared to the first game and other games, but it's fairly quick to adjust to and I think the complaints about it are blown way out of proportion.

Since this is early access, I will give a different sort of rundown of my thoughts versus a ranking system. As usual, what I'm looking for in an early access game to review is:

✅ Dev Responsiveness: check, the devs are constantly interacting with the community, especially with recent updates. They strongly encourage reporting bugs so they can be aware of them and fix them, which always bodes well to me. They also have consistently been putting out massive updates every few months, giving people plenty of time to play it through and express comments and concerns.

✅ Is it playable? Yes, this game has run pretty smoothly for me, and did even in past updates. Even then, the devs are actively patching bugs, fine tuning the shading and graphics and making small changes here and there to combat. There are now three different combat modes that you can play in and I think that it will make a huge difference for a lot of people. In settings there is a tab called "Game Profile" and you can change the combat modes at any time as well as customize your personal preferences (like autonomous party, auto attack, cursor control, etc.) The preset modes are: Focused, Hybrid and Tactical.

➡️ Expanding on the above, if you are a strategic gamer that likes to control all elements of a fight with all of the character management, Tactical is the mode for you. If you just want to focus on your character without having to micromanage your party or plot out how you want to go about a fight I would recommend Focused. Hybrid is a combo of the two so you can have the best of both worlds when you feel like it.

Imo the dev team has done their best to stay true to the kind of game that they want to make while still compromising to try and make it enjoyable for their fanbase. I think they've done a pretty successful job navigating that minefield so far. Of course you can never make everyone happy, but I do think that they're making an incredible game and it will only get better as it progresses along.

✅ Fun: this game has been enjoyable so far. I haven't even gotten to a lot of the big story content that was introduced in the prior patch, but everything I've seen so far has me absolutely hyped. Spiders is fairly consistent about their strong character writing and ability to punch me extra hard where it hurts when it comes to emotional moments in their games, so undoubtedly I will still probably be devastated by this game... but it will still be fun. I'm here for it.

✅ Bonus yapping about the character creator: Yes, there are more detailed character creators that exist out there, but they did fantastic with this one. The first Greedfall's options were unfortunately far more limited, and that's what I expected going into this game as well because all of Spiders previous games are also like this. And in the initial Early Access launch, this was also the case. But now in 0.3 they have released their character creator and I love it! There are so many more options and customization features than they've ever done in a game before, and I am thriving. Imo it helps connect with your character I think, and I'm already much more attached to my character than I was with my last save file. Wins all around.

✅ Also yes, I love that they kept the intro where a lot of the native language is spoken and translated on screen. I see so many people complaining about this aspect of the game, and it really annoys me honestly. Yeah, they're going to speak their own language because they're on their own island with their own clan. Why would they not?

Also yes, my reviews are usually not all rainbows, magic and unicorns:

❌ I did have a bug that every time I got stuck in combat mode every time I went into combat. What helped me was crouching down into the sneak stance and standing back up. There was one time that I also needed to get down into stealth mode and interact with a fast travel point to rest to reset and fix the glitch, but that was the only time it glitched so much that just crouching down didn't fix it.

❌ there are some errors with typos every once in a great while, but honestly I only notice them because I do a lot of editing for my job and I've honed myself to notice these things and point them out. They will likely be patched out fairly quickly, and none I've seen are egregious.

Additional side note:
I do hope to see some old faces from the first game, even just as a brief cameo since the timelines do intersect some... but we will see.

I noticed that on the reputation tutorial screen they did mention that there is no good outcome for getting a good reputation with the imperialists. I absolutely love this, because then people cannot genuinely say that they didn't know that siding with the colonists is well... bad. Many complaints about the first game (that the people saying this clearly didn't play) was that it was a "racist colonization simulator". If you played through the first game it becomes extremely obvious throughout the game that obviously the colonists are horrible people doing horrible things. And de Sardet is also a victim of it, for the record. However, this game has made it crystal clear that the behavior of the imperialists/colonists are *not* encouraged or acceptable. And they actively warn you from the start that you shouldn't even consider befriending them or think you will get a good outcome if you do.

Final thoughts/verdict: I love this game so far, and I really hope that people give it a chance and experience it. The first game is genuinely such a special game and extremely underrated, and I feel like this game will also be a unique hidden gem in the genre. In all honesty it would take an enormous amount for Greedfall II to be more beloved to me than the first game, but I do think it will also be a game I highly recommend and love based on the trajectory that the game is going right now. If you don't like EA, the game is predicted to be released sometime next year and it will be well worth the wait. If you don't mind a few silly bugs here and there and some playtesting, give it a try.

First:
Overall Rating
★★★★★

The Thaumaturge takes place in 1900s Poland, under the occupation of Russia. Wiktor Szulski is a Thaumaturge capable of great power with the help and guidance of Rasputin, a charismatic and mystic monk with unprecedented abilities. (Yes, Russia’s greatest love machine Rasputin.) Wiktor has many talents— canonically— including a natural penchant for ruining marriages, a flaw of pride, and an unending reservoir of sarcasm and biting wit.

However, your choices do matter and people do remember them for better or for worse, meaning that Wiktor does and can change throughout the story depending on how you speak with people, what quests you do, how much you have leveled your dimensions (Heart, Deed, Mind or Word) and what information you have gathered.

Full disclosure: the game mostly picks up in the later half of Act 1 and really ramps up in Act 2/3. Act 1 really focuses on introducing the world, the mechanics and some of the characters.

Now, I bought this game in 2024 when it came out, but put it in my backlog because I already had a variety of other games I was already playing. I wish I’d played it sooner! A game being able to grasp me and pull me in to this extent is rare, and makes it a gem of a game in my opinion.

There are easily missable achievements, but there are two very good guides on Steam to help with that if you’re interested in achievement hunting (neither are mine, so this isn’t a self promo). In all honesty you get almost all of these easily if you walk around and spam your ability, which I recommend you do. You learn much of the world and get many quests this way just as you investigate everything else. Some of these are gated by when you progress the main story, so if you want to explore all this game has to offer only progress the main story after you have cleared the majority of your side quests. Don’t be alarmed if some are still incomplete by the end of an act, some do cross over acts as well. I recommend checking over areas multiple times, sometimes there’s more to be found than you could find the first time. Exploration is highly encouraged and rewarded by this game.

This game plays beautifully on the Steamdeck, though I do recommend only using the actual charger it comes with because this game is very intensive and will drain your battery expeditiously.

Unlike a lot of other people I know, I (usually) go into games as blindly as possible and learn the world and characters as the story wants to tell it. I do it this way because I want to make my own conclusions about the characters and who I believe they genuinely are without the influence of knowing certain endings or decisions. Afterwards I decide whether I want to pursue some achievement hunting. With that in mind, I played a more humble Wiktor that got along with his twin sister Ligia, who did not grow his flaw and who attempted to deal with situations with at least a little bit of grace. That locked me out of the high pride dialogue and ending(s) so I’m looking forward to exploring that in another playthrough. Your playthrough may be entirely different, depending on how you decided to grow Wiktor’s personality.

Some of the things I really enjoyed:
✅ the lore is awesome. Salutors are not exactly a new concept (demons, deities, ghosts, creatures etc.) but this game handles it very intriguingly.
✅ I don’t see much media at all set in this time period (especially in Warsaw), so I was extra excited to see a game convincingly set in this timeline. Most settings are set during the wars and not what came before. Because I am a history nerd, I read all of what the game had to offer in tidbits with the newspapers and notes and never got bored.
➡️ However, I’d like to note: this game does reference/show the antisemitism that was rampant at the time. This game takes place in 1905 (with magical historical alterations such as salutors and thaumaturges), WWII started in 1939. There was a long period of time that lead up to the Holocaust where that hatred festered and flourished, unfortunately. The Thaumaturge does not hold back on the attitudes of the time period. I only mention this because the subject is still a very fresh wound for some.
✅ the graphics, this game is absolutely lovely.
✅ Wiktor’s seemingly one sided conversations with Upyr who manages to convey his judgment incredibly well for having such a skeletal face.
✅ the entire onion/fork situation
✅ The character design and details are fantastic. I love the fact that there is a specific quest to dress up Wiktor. They do also have great fashion in this game in general though, I love a lot of the outfits I’ve seen throughout my playthrough.
✅ I’ve enjoyed exploring every corner of the maps. There seems to be more things to do and find every time I go back into areas, and even the side quests just to find urban secrets are mysterious and fun.
✅ I touched on salutors briefly but it’s worth adding that the designs, lore and flaws they’re attracted to are so interesting. The devs put a lot of thought into the salutors they chose to focus on, and I was always looking for more info on them and their impact within the game. Also for the record Dybbuk’s design was SO cool and it’s such a shame we only saw him briefly. I also wish we could have gotten to see Paimon in game… but I’m so glad we got to see Baalberith! I was also so excited to see Morana and I love her design the most.
✅ Rasputin’s character was so interesting to me. So much is shrouded in stories and legend, but this game certainly gives him a personality and motivations. I like that I never knew what to expect from him or his answers. There is definitely that charisma and charm, but you also know that he has his own plans and goals with or without you. His abilities are so much different than anything else we see in the game that I just enjoyed every time we had to interact with him because I enjoy his character and his mystery.
✅ despite the rather grim things that happen in parts of this game, it never loses its personality and charm. There were quite a few times that I had to laugh at some of the truly unexpected situations/quips that come up.
✅ there is something about this game that is so magnetic and addictive that I just wanted to play it all the time.

Minor quibbles:
❌ quick and frequent saves are your friend, this game is abysmal at autosaving at any time that will be useful to you.
❌ I love a challenge, but it did seem kind of odd to me that the level of challenge in fights varied so much and it wasn’t even dependent on the area or act.
➡️ However this game is great about forcing you to change strategies based on some fights. It was nice to not get comfortable in one way of fighting through the whole game, I like getting to try all the different upgrades for abilities.
❌ the resolution of the Golem situation felt a little hand wavey compared to the thought put in the rest of the game.
❌ while I love games where choices really do matter, there are two instances in particular that the game seems to consider good decisions for a good ending… and I don’t agree. For one of them you have to take your cousin’s flaw at the end of Act 1 or you’re locked out of Mind 7 for one of Rasputin’s endings. For the other, giving Ariel the golem is necessary for at least one of the good endings but Ligia losing her flaw takes a huge toll on her for the rest of her life. Neither of those should have been forced to reach some of the good endings. The rest of the game is pretty good about respecting your choices, but these two are the exceptions. I’m not a huge fan of that.

All in all, this is a fantastic game from start to finish and I’ve immensely enjoyed my time playing it. 5/5