Disco Elysium
The Good: The game does a wonderful job at allowing you to choose your actions carefully. You can state your opinion at every turn, sing karaoke, ask nicely or be up-front, go along with the main case or discover mysteries elsewhere, do a thorough examination of a body or simply send it away, as well as many other clever dialogue options. A lot of these decisions can be taken in any order. I found myself talking to the leader of the work force within the first five hours of the game before even hearing the commotion outside or learn of the union strike that was happening right in front of the hotel. Amnesia might not be the best decision but it certainly works towards your advantage as a player. You essentially lose everything and you must discover not only why you are where you are but who you are, where your things went, and pick up the pieces of your identity and sanity. There is no combat in the sense that you may think from traditional role-playing games. Instead you must combat various emotions which can be very complicated. There are 24 different things you can choose to upgrade and each one plays an important role in "unlocking" skill checks in the game. Just know that even if you accidentally shouted at someone or was denied the opportunity to keep your self-respect when being mocked by your own police force or couldn't concentrate because the chair you are sitting on is way too uncomfortable, you are given about 5 seconds to use an item to restore yourself back to normal when you only have one point in Volition. Having higher points will initiate conversations with yourself, like empathy will interrupt and tell you how they are feeling or perception will let you know what they just mumbled to themselves, and lower points could make you have unusual side-effects like poor authority will have you start stuttering and making stupid insults no one would take seriously or poor endurance could kill you in the first three minutes of the game. All of this is can be very entertaining.
The Bad: There is one thing I have to confess: I did not finish the game. The game is very "artsy" in the sense that at least half of the game is having a philosophical debate with a random stranger. Pick any person you can talk to and suddenly you are being pulled in some sort of debate on whether communism is bad, racism is good, if it is alright to believe in the fact that there is a hole in the universe that will gradually destroy everything, or you should believe that there is some form of invisible insect that exists when there is no evidence that anyone has ever actually seen one before. A lot of your decisions really don't make sense and do not actually benefit you in the end other than the satisfaction of doing the right thing "in the moment" of doing them. This type of game wouldn't be complete unless everyone had some sort of emotional baggage that was barely keeping them alive day-to-day. You will have kids swearing at you, people drunk or high on something, and superior brutes who will yell at you for being inferior. This can get very daunting as you find yourself as someone who "partied so hard that you don't remember who you are" and going through alcohol withdrawals as the days progress. Although time is a bit tricky to understand as it only progresses when you make a statement and not when you are running around, there will be plenty of times where you are stone-walled by a "wait until X time passes" moment which forces you to explore other things as you wait around. This can make the build-up of tasks to be a little overwhelming for something that should be as simple as persuading someone to tell the truth. The thing I really hated was the fact that it costs a level point to learn a new thought slot and another point to forget one. You are given 3 and a total possible 12 slots. This was very damaging to my playthrough as I quickly ran out of points just trying to figure out what those over 50 thoughts in the Thought Cabinet were. I might have been better off not using any of them. Clothes barely helped me and rolling the dice always had that weird chance of failure even when I had 90% chance of succeeding. One time I had 75% chance that failed 3 times in a row (without reloading the game). Even some of the reviews state that the ending felt rushed and unfinished compared to the rest of the game. Besides all this, I would have to say I got through 70% of the game.
Review: Disco Elysium turns the RPG-genre upside-down as most of the game involves you stating your opinion to a series of philosophical and socialistic debates with no consequences to your actions what-so-ever. Discovering side objectives will entertain you more than rolling the dice in solving the game's main storyline. I applaud the game for including various emotions that constantly interrupt you with additional facts and information during your investigation, but I do not recommend attempting the feat of playing through this game to anyone.
11-20-2019