Disco Elysium (2019)

What a weird experience. A strange world, a non-fantasy, non-sci-fi alternate-earth world, of a period with similarities to both the 1970s and 2000s in terms of style and tech. Real-sounding, though strange characters, with believable motives and meaningful personalities. None stranger than the protagonist himself...who wakes up with little knowledge of what he's done...or why.

So a mystery within a mystery - investigating a murder while realizing who you are yourself, reminiscent of Planescape: Torment...but, surprisingly, possibly even weirder, as PT was set in a weird world with weird characters, and DE add to those weird mechanics. What is Half Light, or Esprit de Corps? What are White and Red checks? How does time progress and how do Thoughts affect your abilities? All these are for the player to discover. A third level of mystery. I loved the inner dialogues, the political and historical commentary and the types of things your character ends up doing. Playing this was a unique, refreshing experience, whith mostly slick presentation and some strange music, to boot.

Super recommended for RPG lovers who like to read a lot.

Everyone, including you the player, is racist, sexist, fascist, communist, monarchist, anarchist, interventionist, liberalist, Darwinist, capitalist, egalitarianist, an addict, a cryptid believer, a hypocrite, and most importantly a liar, to others and themselves.

That's real, though we don't always use the same words to describe it. Its real. We don't agree, but we talk. People talk. Keep talking and you'll see. If you talk enough, you'll figure out who you are. If you talk and talk and keep talking maybe, you'll figure out who others are. If you stop talking, maybe the community, the city, the fabric of society itself will talk back. I believe in you, you got this.

Yes, this is a great, unique, outstanding game.

But for me unfortunately unplayable on Switch. It just keeps crashing at least every hour or so and then on Nintendo Switch it takes more than 5 minutes to get back in the game - and then you have to redo your lost progress all over again.

I really really would love to finish but can't bear the buggy state the game is in...

I really don't know where to start - I'm stunned. Flabbergasted. My first real favourite RPG was Fallout. My family was lucky enough to have a computer that could run it. I was lucky enough to run across it. It was a watershed moment for me. Up until that point I had 'wahoo-ed' with Mario 64 (not a diss on that unassailable game) but rather to state that never had I before Fallout won a game by convincing the antagonist that their plan was shit from the start.

No violence needed.

Playing Disco Elysium had me in that same 'oh, this is new' headspace from right about the beginning.

I have seen some stellar reviews of this game on this website that I can't hope to add to, so I will keep this brief...

If Fallout made me feel like I was sneakily in the periphery of an adults only meeting as a ten year old, Disco Elysium saw me fully as my adult self. In the reflection that is Disco Elysium, I recognized a world that's chaotic, grey, turbulent and confused. A world that is far too often squeezed through the lens of the prioritized male gaze. I encountered characters I could mistake for run ins at the shop or those that are so often interrogated by media and our larger culture - rightfully so. What I experienced in Disco felt fully realized and in many ways I felt like I wasn't playing a computer game at all.

This Review is Spoiler-free.

I don't even know how to write a spoiler-free review about a game thats all about the story, but here we go.

Story:
Obviously can't write much about it, but this is what makes the game a solid 5/5 for most players I assume. It is excellent, better than most games to be honest. I personally had some minor issues with it, but can't go into detail about them without spoilers, so I won't. They shouldn't stop anyone else from playing anyway.

Gameplay:
This is what made the game imperfect to me. While the core gameplay is relatively simple and a good translation of classic point-and-click discovery adventures, it has some issues. Fast Travel is locked behind something you have to find, and it only works in certain places. Walking around therefore becomes tedious at a certain point.
Sometimes, progress is locked behind so-called "white skill checks", which means you have to succeed them or level up said skill to try again. This forces the player to invest valuable skill-points in skills they don't necessarily want to get, just to progress the main story.
However, aside from that, mechanics are refreshing and encourage players to explore and go on side quests. And optional content is very fleshed out and intriguing.

Extras:
Music and Atmosphere are super cool in this game. Very immersive.
Pricing is ok (got it for 10€ on sale. the 40€ retail price is a bit too steep) and it took about 10 hours to complete with some side content. But it can easily go on for 20h , there is lots to explore!

Disco Elysium is a unique game. It's an open world, point and click adventure game with tabletop role-playing mechanics. Like most point and click adventure games, you walk (or run) around, talk to various characters and find and use items to complete tasks.

But in Disco Elysium, you also have a character sheet with a set of stats and skills. Many of the important things you want to do or say require a skill check, with two six-sided dice being added to your skill value. Thus, the higher your skills, the higher your chance of getting things done.

Its open world is relatively small but filled with characters to talk to, locations to explore, items to find and side quests to take on. Exploration is adequately rewarded with side quests, roll modifiers and items.

So, you get quests, talk to characters, find items, roll skill checks, complete quests, earn EXP and upgrade skills to have higher chances in future skill checks. I found this core gameplay loop to be highly satisfying and entertaining.

That was the unique part of Disco Elysium. Now, let's move on to the flawed part.

I mostly didn't like the main story, especially the ending, but that's more of a personal opinion than an objective fact. The murder case itself is mostly in the background, and the focus is mainly put on the struggle between the two extremes of the political spectrum. If you're into politics and/or philosophy, chances are you will enjoy the story. But if you're looking for a mystery/detective story, you'll probably be disappointed.

Most of the characters are fleshed-out, well-developed and fun to talk to, but the main character isn't one of them. The main character is somewhat of a blank slate (a case of alcohol-induced amnesia, which also rationalizes all the exposition) for the player to project him/herself onto. But the thing is, most of the other characters remember him as a miserable, despicable man. So I'm spending a good chunk of the game being resented for things I had no agency over, which is not fun. I don't want to be a flawless superhero, but I don't want to be a terrible man either.

There's too much exposition: characters talking about the world, history, philosophy and politics. The writers went out of their way to write a comprehensive history for the world they created, but it seemed to me that they were so impressed with their own work that they felt they had to include all of it in-game in the form of long and boring expository exchanges. Most of them don't have any bearing on the main story, so you can just skip them. But the game also encourages you to engage in such exchanges (with hidden rewards such as EXP and side quests). Imagine the writer of your favorite novel included all the history he/she had written for the world and the characters in the novel. How fun reading that novel would be? In addition, I found some of the socio-political commentary to be a bit too in-your-face.

Mechanically sound role-playing games, such as Fallout: New Vegas and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, allow you to approach obstacles from different angles. In those games, you can choose to be a super-soldier who smokes enemies Rambo-style, a sweet-talker man of the world, a technophile nerd or whatever type of hero you want to be. However, in Disco Elysium, parts of the main story are locked behind one specific skill check. And there's also the chance that you might fail even the easiest checks. Thus, instead of building your character the way you want, you end up spending your skill points for the specific checks you need to pass, which is not a satisfying role-playing experience at all.

TL;DR: While I enjoyed playing Disco Elysium and hope they make more games like this, there were parts of it that dampened the experience for me.

PS: If you enjoyed Disco Elysium, you might want to check out Citizen Sleeper as well.

At times this feels less like a game and more like an interactive novel. Disco Elysium has some amazing world-building, full of history and lore. The characters are unique, the story is interesting and there are lots of entertaining moments like the communist book club or the ravers. There's no combat system in the classical sense, everything is dialog-based.

The main reason I rated this with 4 and not 5 stars is that even though I really liked the game when I played it, I didn't feel like playing it all that often, as illustrated by the fact that it took me ~15 months to finish.

5/5

So good it makes me want to change my last 5/5 to a 4/5. Completely unique. Choices matter. Multiple laugh out loud moments. Absurdist and dark comedy. An engaging story told with style. Genuinely a must play. Begs to be replayed.

Side-note: I wrote a letter to the Australian ratings board when they refused this game classification on PS5. I think they later overturned the decision.

Has some serious design-level flaws (white checks required to progress is pretty dire conceptually, especially in the last act), but the prose was better than all but very few games I've ever played and what it promises and (almost) lives up to is something that I have always wanted on some level.

There has never been a game that better simulates what it's like to play a tabletop RPG in the truest sense - Pathfinder Kingmaker has a dizzying array of character builds, sure, and Planescape: Torment is fantastically written, but Disco Elysium feels like an unpredictable, reactable world in a way that captures being with friends sitting around a table while one of you plays the world in ways that I can't really impart unless you've done it yourself.