May Assassination #4 (Backlog / PoP Pick)
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It's everything everyone has said before. I struggle to say something original or unique about Disco Elysium, but it is a great game if you enjoy reading and roleplaying, which can easily be compromised if you decide to save scum or become a completionist. You walk around, you decide how you want to behave in this world starting from a shell of a former character, and you basically exist while also trying to solve a murder case. The whole gameplay is dialogue, and deciding which thoughts and skills to invest your hard-earned points on for the chance to unlock different conversation paths.
And it is incredible at that. The writing is of course the highlight, but I could not forget the voice acting, which is probably the best I've seen in a videogame, or at least in the Top 3. I literally cannot get EGG HEAD yelling HARD-CORE from my head
Instead of focusing on the highlights, I'll just point out two things I thought worked pretty poorly. The first is the Skill Check Lock system, which prevented me from experiencing two storylines I was invested into. Basically if you fail a White Check, you can retry it after investing points on your skill. I failed a 97% Suggestion with Lilienne and already had reached my 6-point cap in that skill, making it impossible to progress in that storyline. Maybe I could have forgotten old Thoughts, learned a new one, and increased my cap, but I could not know which one until I've done so and I didn't have so much free time and points around. A similar thing happened when doing the nightclub quest, where I failed the Physical Instrument check to open the fridge and had already hit my learning cap, effectively locking me out of a very interesting quest. I was still able to beat the game, but it left me a sour taste that the game softlocked me out of these quests - either give me alternative routes to progress, or give me a permanent fail state, but don't give me this partial failure that I'm unable to act on.
The other poor thing was the whole clothing system. Dressing HDB was lots of fun, and the reaction I got from some NPCs with my outfit was always solid, but it felt really time-consuming and unfun to stop conversation with White Checks in order to browse through my entire outfit to find that one or two pieces of clothing that will give me a boost. It was a waste of time and a break in immersion. It would be much better to leave clothing only for self-expression and flavor dialogue, and instead, have stat boosts linked to items that were always on, and that could be pawned for cash (which could then be used to buy other items with other always on boosts). That requires some balancing, but of course, the clothing system also needed some, it was just poorly implemented.
In summary, great game, incredible VA, it's long but it really hooks you in, and it is a fantastique experience most gamers (and all readers) will enjoy