The ThaumaturgeI'm pretty mixed about this game, I think it does get worse as the game progresses
The Thaumaturge is a narrative Isometric RPG about poland in the 1905, this game also markets itself as disco elysium, an RPG where you make morally dubious choices and your actions have consequences, however, the game really drops the ball in this aspect
My actual problems with the story comes from the gameplay mechanics of the game, as the title suggests, you're a thaumaturge, if you touch an object, you can feel the energy of it and you can deduce shit about the people who interacted with that object in the past, when talking to people, you may unlock new dialogue optioons if you've senses something related to the topic of conversation before, these answers are marked with a star
Thing is, often than not, in conversation, there is a correct option, and that is, the option you deduced by touching objects, in some points of the game, this is the only option that actually advances the story, so there really isn't much freedom to choose what action to take
The npc really wont react strongly to whatever you say either, whenever you talk to someone, sometimes you have the typical "x character will remember this", and I just think this takes away from the experience of the game
showing what a character will and will not remember is a bad idea in this type of game IMO, since by saying that, you're also saying all of the actions you've made that didn't have that popup appear are basically worthless. There is nothing actually wrong with doing these, complex games with branching stories are stupid hard to create, so that's why you got to sell the illusion of choice, if you didn't tell me half of the things didn't matter, I would probably have believed a lot of the things I did had consequences in the long term
The story itself is also painfully lineal, no action that you take will really divert the story in any form, even the dialogue options that I was talking before, that "x will remember that", that only REMOVES the option to say something different in certain scenes
again, if you wanted to keep the story lineal, the way to have presented those options would be instead of removing options because of taking certain choices, going "your actions have unlocked this special dialogue!"
The game also for some reason has a combat system, honestly I think they just added this because every game has combat, because the system really doesn't evolve as the game goes on, it's just a chore. However, the combat skills you unlock will also affect what you can do outside combat, which sounds good, there are 4 main upgrade paths, but after investing certain ammount of skill points into each, you need to find a salutor to keep upgrading it (a salutor is like a cool ghost that helps you), the unlocks of this are tied to the main story
so, whever you start act 2, you expect this to stay the same, in act 2 the game opens up a lot of sidequests, but given the lineal structure of the game so far, you would assume that they would just give you extra lore or more piecs of clothing for the protagonist, but instead, they fucking have the salutors you need, and unless you do those side quests, that I remind you, are OPTIONAL by nature, you will always have a bad end, REGARDLESS of your choices up to that point, which is just bad
also, those skills will again, unlock new choices of dialogue, but they also show you that there are many other locked options
The game just feels WAYYYYYYY too railroady for a game that's supposed to be morally grey were you make difficult choices, a feeling that I never really got playing this game (there are also a thing called "flaws" that has this same problem but i'm not getting into it you just get the idea)
In the end, in act 3, there is a scene where you basically fucking die, spawn in the void, and then someone fucking walks up to you and starts judging all of your actions, this is the only thing that will really determine your ending, and it's a fucking SICK scene but it just that well, the choices I made never really felt difficult or anything, the story up to that point was just kinda mid, so that scene fell flat, but if that was in any other game, that scene would honestly been so peakeven for as much shit as i've given this game, the game still works as a average RPG, you don't have freedom to choose, but that just leaves you with a normal RPG which is honestly enjoyable, nothing too fancy, but it mostly works
placed in C tier
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next: half-life
still watching ginga eiyuu densetsu
have yet to start reading blood meridian
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also, I just looked up in youtube this game to see if anyone I knew had talked about this game, and I found a video titled THE GAME THAT REVOLUTIONIZED THE GAMES ABOUT THAUMATURGES and i'm like bro what others game about thaumaturges are there I had to google that word before starting to play this game like what the fuck
you might enjoy it more, or maybe you won't vibe with it 
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