Disco Elysium
A terrible murder has occurred in the city of Revachol, and it is in the hostel of Whirling-in-Rags that we find you, the hero, in nothing but his underwear out cold with your ass in the air. That’s right folks, the game starts with you passed out on the floor, and with a SERIOUS case of amnesia. You will have to rediscover yourself and maybe solve some crime(s) while you’re at it in Disco Elysium.
I’m not going to lie, I’m not sure why I picked up this game, it was a spur of the moment purchase, and within the first 20 minutes my character had met his untimely end. So I began again. You will be given the option of a couple different pre-made characters, but for some reason I’m always the kind of person who would rather roll the dice and see what will happen with a custom character. That being said the amount of customization of your character is massive. You will literally be rebuilding a person in this game. Sure you have your base stats, but your decisions, your items, your different interactions, all of it will change and craft your character into something unique.
There are tons of different characters that you’ll be interacting with, some you’ll want to strangle, punch, or shoot after the first couple of interactions, and the interesting thing is sometimes you might actually get that chance. You will be challenged with certain options while interacting with people that will require an attribute check, there are two different kinds, red (you try once and then you can never get a redo) and white (if you fail you’ll get to try again later). These attribute checks will allow you to perform an action to get more information out of someone.
I ended up spending over 32 hours in this game, from start to finish, and sure there were some times during the game where I didn’t know what to do and sort of walked around aimlessly, but I have to say for the most part I was locked into this game and found it incredibly hard to take breaks from. There were just so many subplots, characters, side missions that you could go on. There were so many items to collect. There was still so much left in the game that I didn’t get to do because I missed my chance or I never had a strong enough required attribute to pull off a successful roll. Speaking of those attributes you’ll get an extra layer of interaction with them when they start to talk to you. If you don’t believe me, then get this game and see how right I am.
This is sort of an open-world game in a ¾ view (at an overhead angle), and there are definitely sometimes where because of that view you’re going to want to scream. The reason is because something that you need to do is too close to your bottom toolbar making it a game of trying to precisely highlight what you want to do. I do want to go back a second and explain why I said this is a sort of open-world game, I think it would be better called an open-city game. You will get to explore the city from end to end as you progress through the town, and you’ll be given many different side quests to take on, that you can of course complete in any order you wish. There is also the possibility of different results for solving/completing quests/jobs that you are going to be given.
What can I say this game just has so many layers, so many different characters with different personalities/nationalities/viewpoints/etc. I was glad to complete the game, but when the game ended I wanted to continue onto my next adventure with the character that molded for those 32 hours. If you’re looking for a game to really sink your teeth into, you’re going to want to check this game out.
