Possibly the best written and most replayable video game out there. It's been over a year since I originally beat this, but coming back to it the past few days and deciding to play things differently confirmed the magic of this game to me once again.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.