Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

If you enjoy CRPG's with excellent writing, immersive world-building, and revolutionary narrative structure, then look no further. I've been a CRPG afficionado for around 3 decades, and this game might crack my top 5 (for reference, the others would probably be BG2, Planescape:Torment, Witcher 3, Fallout 2, but that's just off the top of my head, don't hold me to it). Probably my only real criticism is the lack of fully-voiced characters. While some lines are (wonderfully) voiced, the majority of the dialogue is not; you will have to read to enjoy this game. One more caveat: while you have a great deal of control over character development, you are locked into playing a male. If you can get past these quibbles, you have a real gem in store for you.

This is a tragicomedy detective game about a slightly crazy amnesiac detective and the many voices in his head trying to solve a murder case in a run-down, diesel-punk low-fantasy setting. The game can be broadly divided into two parts: the first half is about the investigation, where our detective tries to find out more about the case, the people of the neighborhood, their own past, and the police gear they misplaced during the events leading up to their amnesia. This is by far the strongest part of the game, full of memorable characters, great moments, and an actual mystery to unravel. The player has to figure out who's lying and why, all the while taking care of side-tasks and making sure to earn enough money on the side It's a slow but engaging start, but even here, a bunch of problems are present. First off, the copotype is already a bit heavy handed, but the real problem is the whole "political alignment" system. The player's options on said politics are more often than not just childish, with the available options all being over-the-top caricatures and various flavors of crazy (except for communists, of course, who are just well-intentioned underdogs). They distract from the actual murder mystery, and even if one tries to just avoid them altogether to focus on the plot, the game still labels the player a "laughable centrist". Overall, I think that ignoring the political options altogether is the best way to play the game. The bigger issue, however, is the last stretch. You strike out all the suspects, wait for some big reveal to turn everything upside down, you get an (admittedly really good) action sequence, and then... it turns out there's no twist. The real killer was just some old guy on an island driven mad by a certain poison whom we've never seen or heard of before. You interrogate him, he confesses, then there's a final evaluation of your performance, and then FIN. It's still a one-of-a-kind game, but damn, that was a bit of a let-down...

So just sing its praise and claim your fellowship now...or be bested by time.

This combines elements of open world games, text games, and RPG games. It's also a giant open world. It's easily over 200 hours of content with multiple outcomes and interactions for your character. The dialog can get quite out there, esoteric, and laugh-out-loud funny at times. Some parts like the dream and vision sequences can have alternatively a horror edge. This is quite a unique game, very well written and lots of emotional range. Your character levels up different emotional, physical, or intellectual traits as desired. The clothing and drugs acquired also adjust these same traits in certain ways. Certain tasks and interaction are dependent on dice rolls with ability points plus clothing points, much like D&D. Also, certain psychological thoughts you can dwell on can overcome certain obstacles or open up new areas, but since you're limited in how many of these thoughts you can install at a time, there's in no possible way to explore it all in a single play through. There are many crossing paths and outcomes, and whole different places can open up over time. There are religious, political and social themes your character can adopt in the game.

This game includes the best dialogue writing at least since "Planescape Torment". It's intellectually stimulating, has an unbelievable clever humour that made me laugh really loud a lot of times. It really takes you on a trip through a maze of interesting, absurd thoughts and a solid crime story. I suggest this even to people who normally don't like "RPGs" but enjoyed Point and Click Adventures, because it's kind of a cross-over. And it belongs to the best game of all times in both genres. I am in love!