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Disco Elysium review thread
- Thread starter texhnolyze
- Start date
It seems to me that there's a fair bit of misinformation in some reviews regarding the systems at play, and I genuinely wonder why that is. I didn't follow this game at all up until like 2 days before release, and I felt that the systems were very clearly defined and laid out.
Has Waypoint given any more thoughts on the game? Because I don't know how you could witness some of the ending events and come away thinking that the game is cold and cynical.
Has Waypoint given any more thoughts on the game? Because I don't know how you could witness some of the ending events and come away thinking that the game is cold and cynical.
This is an astute observation and distills the unique nature & value of this game as a narrative device.
Props.
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More (non-English) reviews.
Gamesource.it - 90/100
Gram.pl - 10/10
Why is that lots of major gaming websites still don't bother reviewing this game. Do they need a free copy or what?
Gamesource.it - 90/100
Gram.pl - 10/10
Why is that lots of major gaming websites still don't bother reviewing this game. Do they need a free copy or what?
Indie games especially ones that are only out on PC on average just don't get a ton of reviews these days.
You should definitely have the title of the thread edited to have the MC score in it just to get people's attention..... the game deserves it! I think some people who would not have been interested might click if they saw it's at a 92. Takes something special to get there.
This really does feel so true. It's one of the few games where I feel like conversations and thoughts flow in a very natural way. Usually the "quid pro quo" kind of aspect of RPGs is very clear in the dialogue, and NPCs wear their personalities on their sleeves. But in this, I have talked to NPCs for a long time before I'm like "wait, this person is actually just an idiot" or "oh they've been lying to me this whole time and I just fell for it because they were placating me." And a lot of time seemingly innocuous choices carry you very far in directions you didn't mean to go and then you have to backpedal. It's so cool how dialogue is pretty much the entirety of the gameplay and they do so much with it to make it feel impactful and sometimes kind of dangerous.
It's also cool how having very high levels of some traits is not universally helpful. They all have good and bad characteristics and they will mislead you. Even a seemingly helpful skill like Visual Calculus (for investigating and figuring out details) sometimes interjects with totally misleading information, like that a rickety bridge looks dangerous when in reality it's fine. Good skill for a detective but too much and you're over analyzing everything you see.
Slant said:
This really does feel so true. It's one of the few games where I feel like conversations and thoughts flow in a very natural way. Usually the "quid pro quo" kind of aspect of RPGs is very clear in the dialogue, and NPCs wear their personalities on their sleeves. But in this, I have talked to NPCs for a long time before I'm like "wait, this person is actually just an idiot" or "oh they've been lying to me this whole time and I just fell for it because they were placating me." And a lot of time seemingly innocuous choices carry you very far in directions you didn't mean to go and then you have to backpedal. It's so cool how dialogue is pretty much the entirety of the gameplay and they do so much with it to make it feel impactful and sometimes kind of dangerous.
It's also cool how having very high levels of some traits is not universally helpful. They all have good and bad characteristics and they will mislead you. Even a seemingly helpful skill like Visual Calculus (for investigating and figuring out details) sometimes interjects with totally misleading information, like that a rickety bridge looks dangerous when in reality it's fine. Good skill for a detective but too much and you're over analyzing everything you see.
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Niche game gets fewer eyeballs and clicks, which is ultimately less advertising revenue. It's a relatively time-consuming and costly thing to have a writer play through and write about the game when they could be working on something higher-profile.
Given that it could change on a review-to-review basis, that's probably not a good idea.
I mean a lot of threads do it, it can always be changed. Just a note to be like "hey this game is unusually good."
You'll have to take it up with a mod then, I'm pretty sure only they can change titles.
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I mean, is it too much to ask for some of the biggest gaming websites to act like one?
Also, wouldn't reviewing a fantastic game that came out of nowhere would make people curious and click?
Also, wouldn't reviewing a fantastic game that came out of nowhere would make people curious and click?
Yeah, and there was another niche game review thread with 92 on Opencritic in the title released shortly after Disco, and it didn't help much. (It's Spirit Hunter NG)
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I've actually avoided reading reviews, as I'm still in my first playthrough, but a 7.5 is shockingly low based on my experience so far.
Inland Empire: Don't go down that path. Don't click that review link.
Drama: Click it! We need to understand their lies!
1. Open the review.
2. "I don't have time to read this right now."
You: Open the review.
This completely misses what makes the game such a unique, incredible experience.
Inland Empire: Don't go down that path. Don't click that review link.
Drama: Click it! We need to understand their lies!
1. Open the review.
2. "I don't have time to read this right now."
You: Open the review.
This completely misses what makes the game such a unique, incredible experience.
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Reading it, seems like their main criticism is that they find the the more comedic dialogue/elements and the dark subject matters are too jarring. They also have some issues with the progression (which find often arbitrarily time-limited) and say the dice rolls are a bit BS.
They nonetheless praise it for being extremely well written and voice acted, but suggest it would have been better off as a point-and-click adventure game since they found some mechanics too obtuse.
They nonetheless praise it for being extremely well written and voice acted, but suggest it would have been better off as a point-and-click adventure game since they found some mechanics too obtuse.
They also didn't seem to like failing. Which, sure...I don't like failing either! But this is really a game where you have to roll with what it gives you based on how you've decided to play your character. It's the first game in a long time where I've just acknowledged from the outset that I wasn't going to be able to see or experience everything because of my choices.
I can kind of understand that getting a bad dice roll on a 90% chance that deals damage to you can be a problem, especially if you've only got 1 hit-point in that category and have no healing items (like right at the start of the game). The OT has a lot of people dying to the first ceiling fan. One part I wish the game explained was the ability to use healing items mid-conversation, and how that can save you from getting one-shotted. We're too used to not having inventory access in dialogues.
This is what makes Fallout New Vegas so special to me and why Disco has me hooked and wondering how many times I could replay this game and see something new or different because of the failures.
I think some people just want to be able to do everything perfectly, which is NOT what Disco seems to be about at all. You're an amnesiac drug-addict trying to come to grips with the world, you're not going to ace everything and that feels so refreshing in a game to me.
Don't worry those same outlets will be the first one to write how indie developers struggle :D
vice review is a fun read. long
Yeah, I like the Vice review a lot, although I think Cameron has a wariness about the ideological stuff that I no longer share having engaged with it (and having waded into the fascist stuff on a second playthrough). I think he started to lurch toward something right at the end ...
... but still gets tripped over what he calls the game's "hollow laughter at the ideological human," which I don't think is fair and doesn't comport with my experience. I think the game loves all its humans, almost to a fault.
One thing I wonder is if he learned enough about
All the ideologies and the Revolutions and the violence of the free market or communism that scattered the lives of all the people I'd met so far seemed to matter less in the face of this impossible thing that addressed Harry.
... but still gets tripped over what he calls the game's "hollow laughter at the ideological human," which I don't think is fair and doesn't comport with my experience. I think the game loves all its humans, almost to a fault.
One thing I wonder is if he learned enough about
the pale.
It's my actual favorite game ever.
It feels premature to say that, but I also can't remember anything ever affecting me the way the final act of Disco Elysium did.
Yeah, I'm enjoying the game a lot. I've been busy lately, so unable to play, but I'm excited for the next bit of free time I get to get back into the game.
Some light spoilers below.
I tried "following" Measurehead for a bit just as a tactic to see what would happen (of course, notifying my partner I was just doing it to try and get to the button). I eventually went against the final choice of following him in the end because I didn't want to annoy my partner or make too bad of a choice. But it was fascinating reading his racist diatribes. They really put a lot of work into the dialogue. I suppose if you're going to have that type of social ideology in a game and make it a chooseable path, this is one of the best ways it could be done (imo). There's a dynamic between your inner voices and the characters, and the game gives you nudges, sometimes even possibly misleading ones, depending on the voices. They also nailed the whole hypocrisy of people who have those beliefs (if I read correctly, the guy was not actually fully the pure blooded race he valued and claimed to be, but was actually from Revachol. You can push further in making him uncomfortable with this point if you choose, but I abstained because I didn't want to provoke a fight just yet.) The options for how to handle it seem pretty well thought out.
Just for comparison purposes, I chose the Sensitive character profile, so this could be directing my choices and dialogue a certain way. It will be interesting to try another type, as I wanted to try the Thinker, but ended up going with my choice because it seemed it would be more fun and fitting for me.
EDIT: Lol, I guess I meant for this to be in the OT.
Some light spoilers below.
I tried "following" Measurehead for a bit just as a tactic to see what would happen (of course, notifying my partner I was just doing it to try and get to the button). I eventually went against the final choice of following him in the end because I didn't want to annoy my partner or make too bad of a choice. But it was fascinating reading his racist diatribes. They really put a lot of work into the dialogue. I suppose if you're going to have that type of social ideology in a game and make it a chooseable path, this is one of the best ways it could be done (imo). There's a dynamic between your inner voices and the characters, and the game gives you nudges, sometimes even possibly misleading ones, depending on the voices. They also nailed the whole hypocrisy of people who have those beliefs (if I read correctly, the guy was not actually fully the pure blooded race he valued and claimed to be, but was actually from Revachol. You can push further in making him uncomfortable with this point if you choose, but I abstained because I didn't want to provoke a fight just yet.) The options for how to handle it seem pretty well thought out.
Just for comparison purposes, I chose the Sensitive character profile, so this could be directing my choices and dialogue a certain way. It will be interesting to try another type, as I wanted to try the Thinker, but ended up going with my choice because it seemed it would be more fun and fitting for me.
EDIT: Lol, I guess I meant for this to be in the OT.
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It's bizarre that it goes on to praise the voice acting, which is arguably the weakest aspect of the game.
I can't decided whether to get this. Like it seems a bit too weird but also cool? What's the general gameplay loop? Is it a proper RPG or just a casual one with little depth? Is it really hard and uses some rules like Thac0 or is it easy to get into?
There's no combat so no Thac0 or whatever. It's all just dice roll skill checks and dialogue.
My two cents: just ignore all the buzz about being "original, brave and groundbreaking".
it's simply a pretty damn solid game on its own even putting aside any attempt it does to distinguish itself as unique.
What I mean with this is that these elements are arguably added value, but being "weird" is far from the only merit of this game. There's a solid backbone here even just taking it as a traditional RPG.
The devs have said they'd love to port it to consoles but there's no current plans to while they're focusing on the PC launch and post-launch support/translations. Whether or not they can afford to will probably depend on how successful it is.
I review niche games all the time!
Problem is there are just so many of them coming out each week. There's no way I can cover every last one. I just wrote two reviews over the past two days, and yet I'm still neck deep in the backlog.
Also, my PC isn't powerful enough to handle Disco Elysium...
I understand why it's marketed and categorized as an RPG but I would describe DE as closer to a point-and-click adventure with DnD elements. There is a lot of depth to the character build and dialogue but you're given the success percentage and modifier info before making any dice rolls, the systems themselves aren't complicated.
I hope you get one, although the game's script is like a million words and chock-full of great prose, so it would be an enormous undertaking to translate well.
The devs have said it's something they'll talk about post-release at some point, specifying Chinese, Polish, French, German and Russian (at least).
Everyone deserves to play the game, so I hope they manage it.
I really enjoyed this game. The writing, setting and skill/dialogue options are so fresh compared to many other RPGs. I had a good ol' time in Revachol - Still thinking about the game now, several days after I finished it.
I will definitely replay it at a later time and do things differently.
I will definitely replay it at a later time and do things differently.
The game has received a few more 9's and 10's in the past few days and is back to 92 on Opencritic, tied for highest reviewed game of the year. (From what I've played so far, it deserves it. I need more free time!)
EDGE magazine also gave the game 9/10, though I don't think Opencritic will include that.
EDGE magazine also gave the game 9/10, though I don't think Opencritic will include that.