2 reviews liked by yukilovesyou


The world of Disco Elysium is one that immediately fascinated me, and I'll never forget it. Almost everyone in this world honestly sucks in some kind of way. A lot of RPGs have these characters that act as some kind of standard for good morality, and you can see where everyone else lies in comparison. Disco Elysium is not the only game to not really have that, but it's one that, in recent memory, really sticks the landing. Everyone here sucks, people are morally grey at best, they're assholes, they're corrupt, they're greedy, they're in one way or another, pretty shitty, and I love it. It especially motivates me as a player to push the player character into being the one exception, the good guy who can want for things to be better, and it's really hard to be that guy. I've had moments during my playthrough where I sat for multiple minutes thinking of what option to take in dialogue or during an investigation, what would be the right choice. Sometimes, there isn't one, and that allows for the state of the world in this game to be extremely gripping. It's a post-revolution world in this city that's messed up to all hell with civil conflict knocking at its door. Of course there are going to be moments where there aren't right answers. You can also thrive in picking the worst answers, or being someone who's indifferent and just wants to finish his work. You can make the player character go down many moral and personality paths even though he does have his own mostly-established character. This is a beautiful game with a beautiful world and characters so messed up that I can't help but care about the world they live in. I look forward to playing it again and seeing what else I can get out of it.

LISA is, as its subtitle suggests, is one of the more emotionally painful experiences I've had with a game, and I mean that as a positive. This game's story puts Brad through so much torment that it almost feels like it hates the player themself at times. I don't want to go into the story beats at all because they're best experienced completely blindly, but just know that despite how damn funny the humor in this game is, its revenge narrative and main character are heartwrenching at times. It's difficult to progress in this game at times because of how fucked the next steps that Brad is going to take are. If you're familiar with how dark Mother 3 can get, this game has that same sort of feeling, but can obviously go so much further with it because it's not a Nintendo game.
I wish I could sing nothing BUT praises for this game, but it is an RPGMaker game. I love turn-based combat games, but LISA doesn't do too much to make its combat exciting. The encounters aren't annoying, just could've been less repetitive after you figure out what status effects do and how to execute dial combos. Also, the customization in this game doesn't really do it for me, it's just completely whatever.
Navigating the world can be a puzzle sometimes and it's pretty fun, not revolutionary, but it's hard to be bored on your way to your next destination.
Overall though, great experience that I have to recommend to anyone that enjoys RPGs in the style of the Mother series or Undertale, as much as I'm sure that comparison is such a beaten dead horse that it's just a pile of guts by now.