Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

I've had GOG since pretty much it's inception and have never written a review. Disco Elysium is one of the most genuinely enjoyable games I've played in a long time. Yes, it is pretty much an interactive novel, which some people don't like, but it's so superbly written and expertly planned out, that it's well worth the hours and hours of reading. The art is uniquely beautiful and stark, characters are dark, deep, sad and rockstars. It's a weird french communist english eastern european asian world filled with endless options to carve out who you want to be or what you want the city to be. I highly recommend you grab this title.

This might be the best written RPG ever, with a unique story, unforgettable characters and what ends up being an experience different from all others. Just play it.

(Game bought on Steam) I really wanted to like this game, as having played many RPG's for many years, the reviews made it look my sort of game. Starts off OK, a very interesting premiss but you soon hit the number 1 problem .... so much reading! I don't mind a bit of background to set the game up or to progress the story but the sheer amount of seemingly random information you have to read just became too much. Played it for about 25 hours to give it a chance but it actually got worse not better! Eventually uninstalled without finishing as I lost interest. Not in the same league as Planescape Torment.

This game turns out to be a crushing disappointment for me, after reading so many enthusiastic reviews, calling it the best RPG of all times etc. Well, it's not. At all. Disco Elysuim is a very weird and uneven package. It has OK'ish, blurry graphics, weak user interface, very dated design, no music, poor sound, almost no voiceacting and when it has it, it's mediocre at best. Leveling your character when a level up comes up has no practical sense, the entire game mechanics revolves around hoarding skill points until a check comes up, adding them on the fly and then passing the check presented. Rinse and repeat. Change clothes if the check is really hard. Making a failed check being OK for the story is a good design choice, but it's really not revolutionary and when a failed checks yields the same results as a passed checks, you feel like what you actually do in a game has no impact at all. Internalizing a thought, while a neat idea, has a lot flavour sense, but almost no mechanical sense and very little impact on your game. Characters are pretty OK, not very memorable tbh but at least well - written. World building is the best part about this game and while presented in a unattractive way, it's rich and well done. Dialogues are good, humour is present and while I liked it, it's a matter of personal taste. The idea of consulting different parts of your brain is interesting and I liked it, but its nothing to write home about. The story is overall OK, the "murder" part is about average and not very engaging, based upon running from point A to point B and making skill checks. The "personal" part is more engaging and I liked it, though the ending of it is pretty shallow. This game has a lot of reading in it (about Planescape: Torment amount), and if you want to experience a good detective story, you'll be better off just reading one of Agatha Christie's books. TLDR: it's an average game, over-hyped to be something truly special. And it's not.

your character wakes up, coming off a bender of epic proportions, and fully amnesiac. it turns out you're in revachol, a slowly decaying remnant of revolution and war, and you're a cop, and you're here to investigate a murder of somebody whose dead body is still hanged in the backyard… you are a mess - bloated, pathetic, with a host of warring impulses and demands fighting for space in your head - but thankfully there's a pillar of stability waiting downstairs: kim katsuragi, your assigned partner, a man with godlike sense of dignity and endless patience for your bullshit. together you can investigate a crime, stop a small civil war, and maybe, if you play your cards just right, dance a truly epic dance together in a shot-up church. there are also cryptids, karaoke, board games, mystery of a crashed police car, discovering your own feelings about the homo-sexual underground, and many other things. the thing is, it's the kind of a game where you perform field autopsy on an old corpse while preteen kids are watching avidly and offering their color commentary. a lot of bad things happen - to you, to the people around you, to the town around you, to the world around you. the weight of the history is heavy, and you're small. you can't solve decades of war and trauma and poverty with the power of your save-scumming and pithy one-liners, alas; but you can solve a murder. you can help a sweet and worried old woman. you can put your cheek to a kid's fuzzy plush toy, when offered. you can tell a person, that their loved one is dead, and lie about how drunk they were when they died. you can sit on the swing with your partner, waiting for the tide, and whistle together - two birds on the wire… it's the gentlest, kindest, sweetest, most hopeful game i've seen in the last decade. it's a manifesto to human spirit, and to how only love and hope holds the world, always falling apart, together. everybody is human; everybody is awful; everybody is holy, even you.