STORY & ROLE-PLAYING I think the greatest aspect of this game is how reactively it is written. Through the Mythic Path system, your game experience can vary quite dramatically, both in terms of gameplay as well as in story. Contrary to similar claims made by some other games, your choices in Pathfinder truly do matter a great deal. The dialogue also allows a great deal of defining the role you play. The main baddies are also mysterious and well-written. It's not as well written as Planescape Torment, but still it's really great. COMPANIONS Chris Avellone co-wrote this game. And it shows. Expect smart subversions of stereotypes, and interesting and sometimes even philosophical dialogue. The companions are strange, in a good way. You may love some, you may hate some, as it should be. COMBAT I usually play CRPGs for the story, role-playing, and the companions, not for the combat (i.e. I like games Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium, and Pentiment). So I was somewhat hesitant to play a combat-heavy game like Pathfinder WOTR. I am happy to say that I actually liked the combat. Owlcat made the good decision to fully allow for both RTWP and turn-based combat; Pathfinder WOTR excels at both. PUZZLES & MECHANICS The puzzles are poorly designed. An important part of puzzles is that certain clues must be given such that the player can figure it out, yet at the same time the player feels smart for solving the puzzles. The game handles this very poorly. I haven't played with crusade management, so I can't comment on that. CONCLUSION So, although the game is not perfect, I can very safely say that the positives greatly overshadow the negatives. I recommend this game to lovers of reactive CRPGs. Now, there have been some reviewers saying that the game has spyware and the EULA is shady. This is nonsense. The EULA is comparable to any other game, and there is no spyware of any kind (I ran all my anti-virus and anti-malware software on the game, and no hits were found).
Disco Elysium was presented as a dialogue focused CRPGs, like Planescape Torment. Being a fan of the latter, I was very excited for Disco Elysium. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I will first mention one of its greatest qualities: Disco Elysium is well written. But this one good quality is over-shadowed by its faults. Disco Elysium's world, its characters, and the only companion (namely Kim), are all very bland and uninteresting. Only the player character's skills, which each have their own “personality” are interesting, but that’s about it. Kim is merely a cop, the player is merely cop who drunk himself into amnesia. Don’t expect characters as unforgettable as the characters from Planescape Torment, because there aren’t any truly interesting characters in Disco Elysium. The level of freedom is quite limited. The main story has one real ending (unless you count dying before the end as an ending), and the main story is quite rigid. And although certain problems can be solved in a small number of different ways, the differences do not affect the story a lot. Don’t expect an RPG with many different endings, multiple solutions, and branching narratives, because Disco Elysium is mostly (though not completely) on rails. Also, for a CRPG (or CRPG-like game), the game is a bit on the short side. But it felt long, at least for me, but only because the story was boring. I kept expecting some interesting event would occur, but rarely did something notable. Only the first couple of hours was the game interesting, and after that, it became overly bland. There were only a small handful of moments that were truly interesting. (spoiler: like when I found out the murder victim was both hanged AND shot, or when I found out there was a group of game developers in the game world trying to create a D&D-like game using radios). All in all, the story did not impress me. I disliked this game’s art direction, but that’s a matter of personal tastes.
