A party you won't remember.
Before starting the game you can customize your character. You are given about 10 stat points you can distribute in four sets of skills: Intelligence, Emotional, Physical and Motorics. These points represent two things: Your base starting points on each set of skills as well as how many extra skill points, earned when leveling up, you can put on whichever skill. There are about 6 abilities per skill, for example, Physical has Shiver, Endurance, Pain Tolerance, Half-Light and Physical Instrument. These abilities work in various subtle and not so subtle ways. For instance, if you've got them high enough, they will get in the middle of your conversations, as if they were another voice in your head, to give you extra details, and sometimes, even more dialogue choices. These are done in a super witty way, for instance, if your Perception ability is high enough, the Perception voice might pop in and tell you about a character's gestures, betraying what they are saying. Or Drama, if high enough, will address you as 'My liege' and tell you if it notices a lie. It's brilliant.
As you talk with people, you'll also come across two types of 'Checks', white and red. White checks, when failed, can be reattempted later if either you put in another Skill point in the pertinent ability, or, if you manage, through conversation or investigation, manage to get a modifier in your favor. For instance, there's a Volition check when talking with a corrupt leader that will increase your odds of passing a check if you didn't take the money he offered you. Red checks, however, cannot be reattempted. Mind you, every check has a numerical chance of either failing or succeeding, and you can very easily save before an attempt and retry until you pass that 22% check, but I found it more interesting to live with the consequences. If I failed a check, I failed it and that's that.... at least with the checks that didn't seem very important! Regardless, it always feels amazing when you pass a sub 50% chance of success check, and crushing when you fail a 80% chance of success check!
Another thing to keep in mind, when attempting checks, is that your clothing affects your skills, so you might want to dress for the occasion... even if that means looking like a clown! There's flavor text for every piece of equipment, and most of the time it explains, in hilarious ways, why certain clothes add or remove points on abilities.
Another element that affects your stats are 'Thoughts'. As you talk with other people, depending on your choices, you'll get thoughts in your head. You have about 12 different thought slots, although only 3 of them are free, the rest cost skill points, and each thought takes some in-game hours to develop, once you complete a thought you'll gain some perks... and maybe some negative detriments too. Thoughts like these can help you bypass some of of the weaknesses of your build. For example, failing 3 physical-instrument checks, besides hurting you, will let you develop the thought "Anti-Object Task Force", which, once developed, increases your maximum cap for physical abilities, a godsend, since my first build had very low motoric and physical stats!
While there isn't any combat to speak of, you have to be mindful of your Health and Morale gauges. Certain actions will cost you health, mostly if you fail them, while others will hurt your morale. If either drops to 0 you lose. You can purchase medicine for both, and it's a good idea to carry a bit to heal yourself with, as the next dialogue could end up unexpectedly hurting your morale.
And then there's the story itself. It's brilliant. Basically, you play as a detective who wakes up from a night of excessive drinking and partying, waking up with no memories. Who are you? What is a detective? Where are you? Everything is alien to you. And very quickly you meet Lt. Kim Kitsuragi, who'll be your companion through thick and thin, as you try to uncover the mystery of the hanged body. The story is full of twists and turns, as well as a ton of truly hilarious situations. There are a ton of fully voiced NPCs that you can interact with, and there are a ton of optional sidequests that might get you closer to solving the crime, discovering who you are, or just to add depth to the game.
There's a TON of content here, and whoever wrote the script is one madman, as the amount of lore surrounding the world of Disco Elysium is, frankly, staggering. There's a lot of dialogue and situations that most players simply won't come across with. And there are many different ways to solve the same puzzles, or get the same information, or even different information! The first time we played the game, we were a mostly goody-two-shoes sorry cop, always apologizing, so the Hotel Manager wanted to bill me a ton for my previous partying. On my next playthrough we decided to be a SuperStar cop, so when confronted by the bill... I decided to try to run away, a Motorics- Savoir Faire check we failed, so we crashed into a paraplegic woman as we flipped off the manager! And the manager charged as a little less due to the whole scene! The game is amazing and unexpected that way/
Most playthroughs take about 6 in-game days. Time only passes as you interact with people and objects, and the game does a neat job of introducing new characters every new day, at least for the first 4 days. For example, it's only on day 3 that a new section opens up, allowing you to get comfortable with the game's first town throughout the first 3 days. Oh, and you don't get to meet the union workers until day 2. It's a well thought-out pace that keeps you from feeling overwhelmed. There doesn't seem to be a penalty for staying up late, although most NPCs go to sleep by 3 AM so there's nothing else left to do besides going to bed afterwards.
While the story itself is very gripping, the characters were just as amazing. It was hard not to fall in love with the characters, either because I hated them or because I just grew endeared to them. Klassje, for instance, was one of the most interesting characters in the game, and precisely because I hated her so much is why I love her part in the game. And then there's good ol' Kim, he is with you throughout most of the game, and thankfully, he is a great character too.
As fantastic as the game is, it has a few performance issues that are hard not to notice. The framerate on the Switch version leaves a bit to be desired at times, which is a bit shocking considering it's not a particularly visually intense game. The load times are also rather lengthy... unless you patch the game, which reduces them considerably. Performance aside, some parts of the environment were a bit hard to navigate, as it's not immediately obvious how you should move through them. And, sometimes, highlighting the item you want to interact with was a bit of a pain. None of these issues break the game, but they do rear their ugly head rather frequently.
Disco Elysium is as amazing as everyone says it is. It's not quite a game for everyone, as the game is made up of a ton of endless text-boxes, but even so, it's absolutely worth a look thanks to how well everything works, and how many cool details and interactions the novelty having your skills 'talk' to you add. But then there's the fantastic story its memorable cast of characters and situations, situations that can play out very differently depending on how you decide to roll!
9.0
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