Disco Elysium (2019) - Detective RPG

Seriously, tweets like the below are making it impossible to not plan on buying a copy of this Tuesday despite feeling like this $40 will be the difference between being able to upgrade my PC on that paycheck or not. I wish I knew exactly how much my bonus and PTO cash out was going to be. I suppose I could just plan on upgrading in early November…

Some video impressions from RPS:

I wonder if its possible to play the entire game in just your briefs?

If not that’s going to be a gamebreaker

Not sure about a tidy-whities playthrough, but it seems like wearing your disco-style bell bottom trousers will impact your roleplaying. The UK IGN podcast spent an hour enthusiastically discussing the game, with one recalling an instance where their character tried to make a pump, and despite having the required physical stats, they didn’t believe enough in themselves to follow through. After unequipping his heavy garb, they made the jump, but half-way through a mini-story unfolded where his mind began reflecting on how cool he looked making the jump in his underwear.

Another strange detail that occurs in a bit of flavor text. After encountering a few racist characters, part of your brain interrupts a dialogue scene to discuss that while there seem to be a lot of racists in the city, the latest one is your favorite so far, before suggesting the best one will be the next one you meet.

This sounds like it’s going to be amazing role-playing experience.

Helpful guide if you don’t want spend the first 90 minutes of the game staring at the character creation screen (and probably ultimately feeling like you have to start over again).

“Summary: In a day and age where social and political issues are subtly weaved into the very fabric of nearly every form of entertainment, Disco Elysium takes them head on without a hint of shyness. Disco Elysium is certainly not a game for those that are faint of heart, but if you have a sense of humor, and you’re looking for a breath of fresh air then Disco Elysium is a must buy game.”

Man, I really want to play this. Too bad there’s no console versions. I might even see if it’ll play on my low-end Surface.

For games like Fallout, I really enjoy that process. In fact, that’s still my touchstone for how a game can have a fantastic character creation screen that it’s actually fun to read through and fiddle with for 90 minutes. (As opposed to most games, where it’s not fun at all).

Thanks for posting this, I’m only just reading it. It really just reads like a preview though, honestly, most of the review is spent explaining how the game is played and then offering up some examples. The only thing he notes here as a cricism seems to be the music,

Audio-wise the music fits the theme fairly well, but isn’t overly memorable.

…and the voiced dialog, which he thought was amazing and wants more of it.

The voice acting is phenomenal, and it’s really disappointing to get half way through a conversation and the NPC suddenly doesn’t have any audio anymore. Please patch the game and do them all! They are great!

(which is a silly request for a small development studio to provide for a million lines of dialog, so maybe the reviewer is new to writing about video games).

Which brings me to my own point, why did he score the game an 8.5 when the only things he didn’t seem to enjoy were the music wasn’t as good as it could have been and he liked the voice work so much he demands more of it? Were there bugs, did he have problems figuring out where to go? I don’t mind an 8.5, it’s a great score for a game of this size, but I can’t figure out why it didn’t get higher given his lack of (meaningful) concerns?

image

just reason gazillion why I don’t like numerical scores, tbh

I’m pretty sure he didn’t play the whole game. I’ll be surprised if he played more than 10-15 hours of the game.

That’ll only help if the guide has a section on fighting my feelings of failure when choosing option A or B and then later on finding out option E, G or H has some cool interaction I sorta wished I had! Which then compels me to restart the game using option E. Wherefore I then learn that option L or M has some option that E doesn’t have. So I start again… and so forth!

I posed this question on the site itself, I suspect this isn’t a professional reviewer the more I look at that site and remember where I’ve seen it before (it’s the Wiki I used for Dark Souls and Sekiro games, and they refer to their articles as “blogs”).

It isn’t. The text and tone of that review make that exceedingly clear.

I also like how he says the game “isn’t for the faint of heart.” I would like to know what games ARE for the faint of heart… Match-3s? Hidden Object Games?

Sounds like he’s saying it’s a game that might not appeal to a casual gamer. I could accept that. But if that’s true, he should just say it!

Yeah, agree - also you are probably right about him not even completing the game - just seems very unlikely.

Fits comfortably in the middle of the 7-9 score range too. Like a glove!