Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

That's it. That's the whole review.

I had so much fun with the first few hours of this hilarious, beautiful, seemingly-literary, point-and-click-revival mystery game that I made my best friend install it and play simultaneously with me. We absolutely loved the characters, humor, thickening plots, and introspection -- at least, we did, until we reached the end. Apparently some people enjoyed the ending, but it was enough to make me feel negatively about the game as a whole. I will not spoil it, of course, but it soured us both on the game. The ending made us both feel that the whole "mystery" had been arbitrary, that there weren't any deeper meanings in the story, and that there weren't any player actions that had meaningful consequences. Everything we thought we had been enjoying looked like a farce in retrospect. It's hard, therefore, to make a recommendation on whether the overwhelming brilliance I was appreciating during the first 90% of the game justifies playing it. My persisting feeling about the game is just that it was dumb and a waste of my time.

This game is like playing the best novel I've ever read. I wouldn't think it'd be possible to make an almost all-dialogue RPG feel well-paced and easy to absorb, but somehow it is. The fact that it's almost all well-written and well-acted just seems even more improbable. And then there's the fact that when you get right into it, the game almost feels therapeutic. Disco Elysium is a game about wrestling with one's own loss and damage without deploying platitudes or excusing the shame and regret that comes with dysfunction. It's world is a fictionalised caricature, but it's a very sober reflection on post-communist failure, a bombed-out district where the hope and romance of better tomorrow turned sour and then got ground into the dirt. It's a game a about a massive hangover and the cold light of day - the literal one the booze-soaked amnesiac protagonist wakes up with, but also an emotional one, a political one, a philosophical one. It's a game about starting in the shadow of failure and regret with no realistic chance of anything better, and then finding a way to live with it all the same. It's a game about immense sadness that is also sharp, funny and compelling. It's darkly humorous without being nihilistic or edgy. It's often cynical, but not hopeless. It's tender, but not cloying. It's explicitly political and extremely dense, without being too pretentious or self-serious. It genuinely feels like it should be impossible to make something like this and have it also be enjoyable, but it is! If you're looking for a more informative review, well, sorry. But the reason I'm almost entirely focused on writing is... that's all there is, really. It's part RPG and part adventure game, but even the stats you level up are all about engaging in dialogue with different aspects of your character's own brain. If you're the kind of person who loves a good book but feel too addled sit down to read one anymore, then give this a go.

Internally coherent hangover simulator. Its hardcore as it gets.

In Disco Elysium you incarnate a detective after a really bad hangover. You lost your memory. The main plot will revolve around solving a murder case but you may also opt in to piece back what you did in the past few days or solve several quests, some of which feel odd to perform for a detective. The game is centered around mature themes, livened up by humour. This largely sets aside some RPG codes such as the usual combat focus and choose to rely entirely on skill checks and dialogues. There are a lot of checks which will open thoughts or extra dialogue options to shape up how your character reacts to situations. This goes further with the thought cabinet feature: depending on dialogue choices you will get to select some thoughts that will provide boni and mali while opening up some more dialogue choices. For exemple you may get to think yourself as one of the "cop types". I really enjoyed the roleplay potential. I find it hard to impersonate characters with D&D alignment system but here the wealth of ideas and opportunities really helps. Skill description for exemple all come with supposed malus at high skill level. Admitedly I didn't felt these malus, however it inspired me to roleplay. My character specialized in composure (the ability to hide his feelings and read others) so I decided that he would always refuse to acknowledge being wrong. When prompted to give my opinion on things I had no clue about (which happens a lot when you lose memory!) it would lead me to digging myself in deeper in ridiculous lies and bad faith answers. Thought cabinet and in-game situations helped develop this aspect. As a little downside the main quest line was built oddly. This largely relies on passing white checks (skill checks you can retry, one condition being to increase the relevant skill). Checks can be made easier by talking, exploring so there's no hard lock however it led me to juggle with equipment to boost skills and spend points on skills I didn't want to.