Disco Elysium (2019)

Disco Elysium is a wonderful RPG that you should absolutely play. It has better writing than most games, and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. However, it's too aware of its own epic sense of worldbuilding. Sometimes it feels a bit self-indulgent and it slows down its own pace. The game particularly loses its sense of direction when the second game area opens up.

In some senses, it's a confusing game. You clearly cannot see all of the game's content in a single playthrough. However, the playthrough time (clocking in at around 25 hours or so) seems to discourage multiple playthroughs. Stanley Parable this is not. And yet, despite these foibles, Disco Elysium earns its place alongside that game, The Secret of Monkey Island, and KOTOR as evidence that games are art.

Disco Elysium is one of the most unique, interesting games I have ever played. I never expected a game, where there is zero combat of any kind, would keep my interest for as long as it did, or have me coming back with every free minute to play a little bit more. Like I said, this game is a "whodunnit?" mystery, but it goes so far beyond that, with some of the best writing I've ever seen in a video game.

As an alcoholic detective suffering from memory loss, you team up with straight-laced by the book Kim Kitsuragi to solve the murder that happened outside of a hotel. While you are solving this crime, you are also learning more about yourself, figuring out your past, and what kind of person you are now. You also learn about the town, the political powers that control it, and you can decide how political you want to get (or stay apolitical and stick to solving murders instead).

The game is a combination of point and click adventure, plus table-top RPGs. Certain moments of the game are called "checks" and they require you roll specific combinations via dice. You can improve your odds by equipping your detective with specific items or pieces of clothing to increase attributes, do side quests to gain more experience, or read books on different "theories" to become more aware and educated.

This game is dark. While it can be wickedly hilarious, it has a deep sadness to it that can make it a tough game at times to play if you are not in a mood. If you want something cute and cuddly, I'd stick to Kirby or Warioware.

I played the Switch version and overall thought it ran pretty well. I noticed it ran a little smoother docked vs. handheld, but the difference wasn't that noticeable. There were times where it "chugged" a little bit and the controls at times can be a little touchy when trying to examine areas or explore new areas, but it never felt game breaking. The art style is gorgeous and the music fits the theme. The voice acting is very strong as well.

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It's not the easiest game to play due to the overlying darkness of it, but the unique nature of it and the deep themes make it one I hope to replay at some point in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the world built by Disco Elysium as a character, a police detective, I got to gradually build and understand as I progressed. The game feels like a Point and Click style adventure and puzzle solving game, but with the added ability stats system of an RPG style experience that both shape the information you are fed but also how you take on solving the challenges you are presented.

You are given a full, rich world to discover, and plenty of choices to make in how you want to proceed in it. There's a lot of fun to be had in experimenting with the stats system, and how you can approach everything.

I will say it is a little rough on the edges however in some areas, especially perhaps in the Switch port that I played: -Some pathfinding confusion in navigating some areas -Some slow down and frame rate dips when saving, auto-saving, or when certain effects are happening, like it snowing. -The skill check system for completing tasks can be annoying at times, with progression feeling like it's tied behind lucky dice rolls or just save scumming. This coupled with changing your clothes to better optimize these skill checks can make this system feel tedious instead of fun.

Other than these small issues I found the game to be a really enjoyable experience with some solid room for replay-ability. I'll briefly touch upon the writing which incorporates most of the experience as a Point and Click style game. I've seen critiques online that the game's writing is bad, or pretentious, and that it delves into political ideologies in a obnoxious or one-sided manner. While writing tastes are subjective, I personally found these claims to be false.

The writing for this game while not always great or amazing, had many solid moments for me and felt creatively done. I can say the same for the voice acting being better than most games can offer. The game does often touch upon political ideologies but the game's setting and plot does certainly lean into it, and you can generally opt out of taking strong stances if you want, so I don't see how anyone could take it as a major issue in any sense.