There, the heading says it all. This is, simply put, the best game ever made. It is hauntingly beautiful, quietly depressing, genuinely hilarious and existentially frightening. It juggles heavy philosophical ideas, wacky antics, absurdist undertones, a thrilling murder plot, a failed communist revolution and many, many more themes - and manages to do so in such a fantastic way that, once it all came together, I was left genuinely speechless. You know, the kinds of games where, after beating it, you just sit quietly staring at the credits rolling by while trying to find your way through all the emotions coursing through your body? I had that with Disco Elysium. I sat there quietly for a good 10 minutes just feeling it all. You probably already know all the essentials about the game: isometric adventure game where you play an washed-up amnesiac police detective/bum trying to solve a murder in a run-down part of town in a unique world. I hesitate to describe more, not least because the narrative has more branches than Yggdrasil and every run is guaranteed to be unique. One caveat: This game is text-heavy. Thanks to the Final Cut adding voiceovers to everything, it isn't as heavy reading as something like Planescape Torment, but you still need to be able to sit and enjoy dialogue upon dialogue without skipping through them, if you really want to enjoy this game. Also, you need to be okay with RNGesus screwing you over at the most crucial of times - a lot of outcomes in the game are decided by dice rolls, and if you're the type who rage-quit out of XCOM 2 because your sniper missed a 96% shot then this will probably not be for you either. If you are okay with the above then you can truly savor one of the most unique games ever made. As I saw a video essay term it: "There will never be another game like Disco Elysium". Truer words were never spoken. Play it. Something beautiful is going to happen.
I love this game, but it sucks as a game. By that I mean that while it portrays a fascinating, cyberpunk'y dystopia, has fantastic characters, great voice acting and an Orwellian (as in the game, Orwell) art style, and it tells a story worth telling, it feels like the developers realized at the last second that they needed some interactivity in order for it to not be called a 'Walking simulator' and so, they threw in a bunch of unnecessary, irrelevant, David Cage-ian tasks. "Hey, you can change the background music in your apartment! And you can buy a balloon! You can even look at this random flower and get a description! That makes this an interactive experience, right?" There's only a handful of puzzles in the game that rise above mundane, and they're still extremely easy to solve. Still, the game is carried by its story and characters and is definitely worth experiencing for that alone. But, kind of like how David Cage's games have always been met with criticisms of "Why don't you just make a movie? It's clear you just want to make a movie!", I can't help but get the feeling that this story would have been told just as well in another medium - there's just not enough relevant player interactivity to make it feel like YOU have a stake in what is going on. They do throw a couple of hard choices your way, so the potential for interesting choice-and-consequence is there, but they all literally happen in the final 5 minutes of the game. All in all this is a good idea (a great idea, even) with a somewhat flawed execution. Highly recommended for the story, but don't expect any interesting gameplay.
I'm playing the Mac version of this game, and while the premise is really intriguing - basically a mix of Orwell and Papers Please - the gameplay itself is bogged down by a mindnumbingly clunky interface. Clicking anything takes a couple of seconds to register and animations move at a snail's pace, which can be frustrating when you're running against the clock on some missions. In addition, the interface is cluttered with a lot of unnecessary items, leading you to have an entirely too small space for handling the actual game itself. However, the biggest offense the game commits is that it is way, WAY too vague about what it actually wants you to do. I usually skip tutorials as I'm pretty good at picking up on the general stuff of how to play most games, but this is one of those games that REALLY needs some better signposting explaining what it wants you to do. Apart from that you've got typos, pop-up windows you cannot click out of - forcing you to label someone as safe or threat before having the chance to go over the evidence - as well as straight-up crashes. Even the audio settings don't work, as the music is blasted on max regardless of if I even turn the volume bar all the way down. The music itself is decent enough, electronic hacker tunes. It's such a bloody shame, as there are clearly some really good ideas underneath it all. Interesting commentary on unrestricted governmental overreach and what invasions of privacy can be justified. However, all the technical issues and dumb interface decisions makes an otherwise great premise into a chore to play through. The game is newly released, and hopefully the above issues will be fixed in future patches, but as of v. 1.05 the game is still too broken to recommend.
