Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Wow this game is like Neil Gaiman meets Black Isle studios and they had a baby over some stale coffee.

Insane, brilliant and compelling.

Simply put Disco Elysium is one of the best modern "detective/point and click adventure" around. Absolutely can't miss with it and it has a ton of replayability.

Had all the trappings of RPGs I've liked in the past- great writing, characters, the ability to impact the world you find yourself in; as I found myself reaching what I figured was the end of the first or second act, I thought- this is going to be really great. Then the game ended. After 13 hours. I must stress that for the time I played it, this game was really quite good. I enjoyed the dialogue that you could have with facets of your character, the lack of combat, and the interactions you could have with other characters in your role as a detective. I like me some text, and the game has quite a lot of it. I'm a fast reader, so it wasn't a problem for me. The world was interesting, and there were plenty of exciting moments. But the game clearly has pacing issues- I ran out of stuff to do by the 4th day, despite very thoroughly exploring the map and completely emptying what passes for the game's quest log. The game is meant to run for approximately 7 days and is marketed as being about 60 hours long, but I was pushed into the endgame by this dearth of content and the fact that some of it (definitely *not* 47 hours worth) was gated behind decisions I didn't want to make (such as working for the corrupt union official) or skill checks I was never going to pass. It's conceivable that I accidentally missed huge chunks of the game- but it's the fault of the game for making that possible in the first place despite the efforts I made to be thorough. I'm not bitter about the money I spent on it- I've played the game, that's that. But the fact remains that, in reaching the ending *so quickly*, being shunted back to the main menu after only a fraction of the time it would take to complete any of the game's peers in the genre- Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin- the game was ruined for me. I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth, the fault of terrible pacing that left me expecting much out of this supposedly colossal game.

Starting this game up, picking out a character type and going through the first 15 minutes of game play was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had, and I spent my youth playing games like MDK, Police Quest and Freelancer to give you an idea of the timescale here. This is beyond question one of the most intriguing collections of wit, refinement and vision that I've ever seen produced in any format. All that being true, I set the game aside some time ago. I will likely pick it up again, but I'll lay out what made me step away since this is a review and not an award presentation. I read fast, very fast, so lengthy dialog does not bother me. What bothers me is lengthy and too cryptic dialog, or dialog that doesn't seem to have anything to do with advancing the story or the character, i.e. musings on fictional politics, morality or other literary type themes. It was after a very, very, very long stint (~1 hour) of trying to get through a single conversation so I could save the game and do some housework that I was turned off of wanting to start the game up again, and I remain in the off position. You may think, well just leave the conversation and save. This game has ways of dealing with that attitude, you see. This all being said, the dialog is well written - but when your main interest is the story, setting and characters you don't always want to detour into.... other things, however witty they are. Kudos, though, to the developer for touching on profound subjects - the polar opposite of the trend it seems. That's it, my main gripe. Everything else is patch-out work, and also I'm sure I'll play it through at some point... especially since it managed to kill my first character so fast there was no auto-save to load ; a hilarious first for me