Gamedec - Definitive Edition

The game is a text-heavy Roleplay-Game with many different choices. It swims in the wake of games like Planescape Torment or Disco Elysium. I don't get most of the (more) negative reviews, especially the one about te design of the level-ups The game does most of what it does quite brilliantly. The story is fascinating and I liked the twists and different choices I was presented with very much. The concept of having to switch your approach (someone called it Psychopath-Path) in order to gain different specialisations is unusual, but actually if embraced, it adds a nice little tactical element to the game. It's something different than standard XP and Levels (btw. you don't need any specialisation to finish the game properly). I know that people don't react to every encounter the same, there's usually an emotional and cognitive range. So I wasn't bothered by that and really, the different choices of responses regarding the "levelling-up" didn't matter that much in terms of the outcome. There were choices much more important than those Critisizing the game for doing something novel and not just implementing the standard RPG-mechanics, says more about not being open for something apart from the beaten path then about the quality of the game design. I loved the experience and kept on playing day after day, captivated of the story. 5/5 stars, would recommend to everyone who loves text-heavy games with tons of lore and a fresh setting.

This game has a great cyberpunk premise and nice art, but it can be a bit confusing. You're bombarded with lore. Trying to make sense of the world can sometimes be difficult without at least skimming through several lore pages, unless you can somehow tell from context the difference between a mobrium with a zoenet or a diginet in its rendan. The world is full of various moral and philosophical questions for your detective to ponder. Your choices not only affect the world but also your character progression. A compassionate response to a moral dilemma unlocks abilities that can put people at ease. Later in the game, your compassionate doctor might take a side job as a shock jock or a logical programmer. It's a little odd, but if you roll with it, it's fun. The characters are pretty interesting. You'll meet a wide variety of factions you can ally with or antagonize. These choices will eventually affect what ending you can get, but there often isn't a "right" answer to a case. Even after uncovering every clue, I sometimes felt I had to rely on hunches. This, and the ending, makes a replay attractive.

First of all: "this game is similar to Disco Elysium" is not true. What they have in common is only lots of text and isometry. It is not RPG but pure adventure, yet it doesn't have linear plot of classic adventures. How so? Well, it's because what is called here deduction/detective is actually by 95% next scene generation based on player's choice. Sounds great? Well it's not. One walkthrough is short, and so called "logic" of so called "puzzles" is so peculiar that it made you talk to your screen very loudly, asking "Why? WHY? Goddamn why? How so? What the hell?!". Mostly you will pick decisions randomly just to end all this and see what's next. Also after about a half of one walkthrough you will be informed that your "detective" work has no meaning at all, and now you must decide how this strange sick world will continue to exist. But in this decision you will be restrained by choices that you made perviously (and mean literally nothing because spoiler). I am literally out of words to describe how strangely disappointing this game is.

Gamedec is one of those games that starts out really strong, but that still ends up being a disappointment in the end. My play time was a bit over 11 hours. The first half of the game is basically you working on different investigations and all that is a solid 5/5. The trait system feels interesting at first, and early on I was already getting excited to replay the game to see how having different skills would affect how the scenarios played out. However, the longer I got to the game, the more I started to realize that the trait system is actually pretty pointless. As others have already pointed out, having different traits doesn't really affect the outcome of the investigations, but it's there to just make some parts a bit easier/faster. Although the story is really interesting at first, in the end I was left off with a feeling that nothing I did in the game mattered at all. Given the main theme of the story, this might even have been intentional, but it still definitely killed all the enthusiasm that I had towards replaying the game. Also, lets talk about the ending. There are multiple different endings, but the way those were presented was an absolute disappointment. When you reach the end of the road, you are basically given a list of all the possible endings and asked to choose from those. Most of the endings have some conditions you must fulfill to ulock them, but those are just checks for if you killed the person A/anyone at all, and if you sided with side 1 or 2. But like that's it. To me the ending of the game felt really disjointed from the rest of the game. There are also some minor bugs/inconsistencies in some dialogues/deduction options, but I don't feel that those really affect my overall experience. To conclude: Gamedec is not a bad game. It starts out really strong, but falls flat after the first half and finishes itself off with an underwhelming ending.

While technically sound and with some interesting ideas Gamedec failed to excite me for its plot and mechanics. I didnt feel like a detective solving mysteries, but like someone bumbeling through a world by simply doing things because they are possible. The progression and roleplay dont work very well to evoke a sense of meaning and agency either and it doesnt help that the games setting leans heavily into the simulated nature of the ingam-games removing the plot even further from the player. However, in some moments the game pulls clever twists on you and does make good use of the simulated worlds and their interaction with the ingame real world. Finally, since this is so often mentioned, I dont think that Gamedec is all to similar to Disco Elysium. While the two games have much in common, you should not expect a similar experience.