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Disco Elysium review thread
- Thread starter texhnolyze
- Start date
Ken is usually the sounding board on things involving racism. It well handled.
Nice nice, great to hear. How's the diversity in the cast though?
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Critical Hit - 8.5/10
Washington Post posted a review too in their new Launcher section. No score though, and I can't find the summary. Weird review.
Washington Post posted a review too in their new Launcher section. No score though, and I can't find the summary. Weird review.
Eurogamer hated it. The most negative review I've seen so far.
Eh, I mean they didn't give it an Avoid, but still, yeah, the reviewer want feeling it at all. I can see how it wouldn't gel with everyone to be honest.
interesting! i think the waypoint guys weren't too impressed with it either.
Same, and I think the experience can be highly variable depending on your choices and approach.
That said, I couldn't disagree more with some of the assessments here (and with some of the early Waypoint takes, which were wildly off-base). Appropriately, Eurogamer had a terrible review of Planescape: Torment back in the day, and I think this one will age about as well as that one did.
91. Holy shit. Well done devs, well done indeed. A proper RPG being given actual credit for how good it is, such a nice change.
Austin thinks the tone and world are cynical and ugly. Which, having played 22 hours of it ... is not the case.
Interesting read although I'd disagree that you're mostly doing sidequest that are not related to the main story (or figuring out your own personality); compared to most RPGs it rather feels the opposite. You're obviously gonna do some legwork for other people but it's almost always with a clear goal regarding the investigation in sight.
For someone who doesn't want to roleplay (as anyone but him-/herself), the game's probably not the best choice though, yeah -- that's a somewhat rare concept these days.
Why? The Divinity and Pillars games all reviewed with similar scores.
Yeah, I would say it's astonishing how interrelated the sidequests are. Even the early ones I thought were offbeat turned out to have broader significance to understanding the case or its context.
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What a weird review. This part in particular doesn't quite make any sense to me.
I know which part of the game he's talking about here, and I'm pretty sure that you can be a kind person in accessing these situations. Cuno is a troubled teenager, yes, and it seems like you can't really help him at first. But later on, a path will open for you to at least understand him and help him cope with his drugs addiction.
On a more general dialog choices. You certainly can be a kind person. You can choose to shake a person's hand or not, you can say thanks or not, you can choose a sarcastic remark, a serious one, or even choose to be hostile. Every now and then, you can also praise people, especially your partner, Kim. The game certainly does give you some choices to become a kind person.
Also, is it normal for Eurogamer to publish an official review written by a freelancer?
I listened to Waypoint earlier this week and Austin seemed to enjoy the game artistically & mechanically, but was more worried about the late game follow-through.
I believe he said he was only a couple/few hours in. And while he respected that other forms of media could successfully present unlikable main characters (think: Breaking Bad), he had anxiety that the narrative pillars in Disco would celebrate being a s**t-heel racist (if you chose to roll that way), vs. having something more interesting to say about the ultimate downfall of making these types of choices.
Seemed like more of a "wait and see" kinda deal instead of being down on the game outright.
I really hope he has some followup impressions once he puts more time into it, but they were all bemoaning the sheer number of embargoed games currently in rotation so I wonder if he'll even have time to get back to it. Shame, 'cause Austin is one of the top people I wanted to hear reactions from for this particular title. (Rob Z. too, but I don't know if this type of game is his jam.)
After playing this game for a while, I feel like the reviewer here is way off-base. I get some of the criticism - Like, the game can appear to be coming from a very cynical place - But from my experience in the game so far, I think it it does have human heart in it and its characters. Regarding the game not letting you be nice - The game actually acknowledges the lack of choice it sometimes give you ("Say the very communist or very fascist thing or fuck off"). And it feels justified for the guy you woke up as and the situation in the city.
At the end of the first in-game day and I feel like I've been able to be nice pretty often. Maybe that's because I put points into Empathy - but then that would make sense, right?
You absolutely without a doubt can be a nice guy AND rewarded in the gameplay AND rewarded in the narrative. HOWEVER its not going to bend over backward to placate someone who wants to force each and every situation. NOR will it force a badguy narrative every single time either.
Another thing where I think for people don't think they have a choice to become what character you want, is because the dialogue is generally so well written that you feel like you have to see everything. Going through everything does make it feel like you're a weird psycho. I think people who can't refrain from doing that will feel like they have no choice on what their character really is.
I typically love Eurogamer but I completely disagree with their take here. The game makes it very possible to be the character you want to be, you just have to resist the urge to click every possible conversational topic. Don't want to absorb a racist ideology? Find a different way.
So from playing the game I felt it's handled pretty well. They use made-up names for the different races and slurs so it helps it not be too jarring when you listen to them give their stupid diatribe about race realism in-game and then use logic to poke holes in it. It actually works thematically because your character wakes up with a level of amnesia where you don't even remember what reality is anymore.
It's a game that kinda makes fun of people with strong stances over all sorts of different political issues but still gives you the freedom to let your character be any one of them as well if you want. Like the game notices I keep picking leftist socialist conversation choices, remarks how badly communism has failed in the world, and asks if I really want the impossible task of being The Last Communist despite all that and I went sure, why not. And now I get bonuses every time I choose to be a pinko commie scum in the conversation choices.
And if my character ever gets tired of that, I can spend a skill point to unlearn the internalized thoughts and become something else. Or I can be communist, ultraliberal (basically a libertarian), moralist (conservative? basically pro-status quo), AND fascist, all at the same time.
It's definitely different from other games in that you don't need to, and *shouldn't* pick every single option offered to you if you don't think it would make sense to do so. The voices in your head are just voices, you don't need to listen to them if they're spouting nonsense. Unless you actually wanna play a schizophrenic, then that's fine too. It's actually how i tend to play most other RPGs where I save scum conversation choices to get the most items/XP even if it didn't technically fit my character's previous actions.
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Wow. Who would've thought that the highest rated game of 2019 is not a FROM Software, "Capcom is back!" nor a Nintendo exclusive game.3DNews (Russian) - 10/10
Daily Star - 10/10
Opencritic update:
It's a first game from a completely unknown studio somewhere in Estonia.
Anyway, here's the Daily Star review with 5/5.
I'm mildly triggered by his capitalization of "wild" (where that game at, Ubisoft?), but otherwise, I agree completely.
Are there any annoying bugs or performance issues with this game at the moment? Thinking about diving in as soon as my Prey playthrough is complete
Yeah, aside from being a huge Planescape fan and all the inspirations they've mentioned for the game, this is another one of the reasons I'm eager to start playing it
Yeah, aside from being a huge Planescape fan and all the inspirations they've mentioned for the game, this is another one of the reasons I'm eager to start playing it
Not really. Some people reported running into an obscure progression wall in some quests that locked them out of advancing the story, but updates are coming out at a steady pace and bugs are being squashed. I think it released in a good condition.
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Not really. It's generally polished. I just finished the game earlier and I didn't encounter any noticeable/major bug.
The game is not demanding at all, my modest PC can run it at 4K with DSR. Pretty smooth.
Killa Penguin - 8/10
https://killapenguin.com/gamereviews/disco-elysium-review/
A lot of smaller sites seem to be reviewing the game at the moment.
https://killapenguin.com/gamereviews/disco-elysium-review/
A lot of smaller sites seem to be reviewing the game at the moment.
That's awesome. Super excited to finally check this out
94 on OC now.
More possibly "was Disco Elysium robbed in 2020".
Yeah this complaint is pretty odd given that you are given the ability to be so nice that people begin disrespecting your authority because you're too apologetic and compassionate. The "Good Cop" trait/thought path basically embodies kindness to absurd degrees.
Unrelated but I also have felt the Lynchian tone has been overstated. I love Lynch and have been playing with a high Inland Empire Stat and honestly the game reminds me more of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Gibson than it does Lynch stuff.
Might as well throw mine up in here:
Slant Magazine - Disco Elysium Is a Shrewd Whodunit and Marvel of Open-Ended Design (4.5/5)
Slant Magazine - Disco Elysium Is a Shrewd Whodunit and Marvel of Open-Ended Design (4.5/5)
One bit of high praise I can give the game is that I haven't seen a combination of character, setting, and art style this effective since Grim Fandango. It's got that good '90s PC Game vibe to it. Blade Runner (the PC game) would be a good comparison, too. Actually maybe the closest non-RPG comparison (minus the humor, of course).