What to say about Disco Elysium? It is a fever dream whose schizophrenic conglomeration of extremely tender moments, riotous quips, and meticulous world building evokes an experience seldom achieved across any art form. It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a narrative voice like the one in Disco's without it crumbling into sophomoric and indulgent fare, but Disco's writers somehow pull it off. It is the best implementation of a dialogue system I've ever seen, shedding the archaic requirement to navigate every single nested option. The art and music meld perfectly to flesh out the city. The reactivity and choice and consequence are staggering. The world and characters are conscious of your behavior at an unprecented rate. It is a singular experience that no one should miss. It will stick with me for years to come.
(This review will contain no spoilers of any kind. I did not play the demo). Any CRPG that hopes to take a stab at greatness needs to makes its mark in the first few minutes. The player must be thrust into a world that already breathes, and is just waiting to be discovered. Such is the case with the great city of Sigil in PS:T, and in the wilderness of Arcanum. And such is the case with Stygian. The art is beautiful and the writing is nuanced. The game has the hallmarks of any old school RPG: a deep character creation system that steers C&C, mouseover descriptions of the environment, and a thoughtful inventory system. It also has echoes of the point-and-click adventure genre in the attention to detail given to each area. The writing in Stygian is not try-hard. It doesn't set out to be purposefully "dark," and like Fallout 1 and 2, it is not afraid to be funny. The characters you meet are just the right amount of eccentric. Stygian shines because of what it *doesn't* tell you. There are wonderful moments of, "How the hell do I do this?" Whether it is how you manipulate the interface, or explore the game world, it's nice to be left in the dark sometimes. Mileage may vary in how much you enjoy this. Stygian is extremely polished for a crowd-funded game. The menus are gorgeous. Aside from a few very minor hitches and v-sync issues (my machine is old)), and one or two minor pathing issues, it runs and behaves great. Combat is a hybrid of encounter-based and classic AP turn based. It offers some very cool visuals, and unique character resource pools also affect the gameplay. For the diehard Lovecraft fan, it will come as no surprise that this game is a veritable candy store. Even early in the game you'll start to catch a vast array of what I hesitate to even call easter eggs. If you are a classic CRPG fan, a Lovecraft fan, or just a fan of storytelling and world building, find your way into Stygian.
