Disco Elysium - Review @ HG101

Hardcore Gaming 101 reviewed Disco Elysium:

Disco Elysium - PC (2019), Mac OS X, PS4, Xbox One, Switch (2020)

In 1984, an Estonian born Karelian (from the former land of Karelia that's now divided between Finland and Russia) named Robert Kurvitz came into the world. He would end up singing in a prog rock band, become a novelist, and now he makes video games because he's super into Dungeons and Dragons. It's important to keep this in mind because Disco Elysium, his big premier game from his studio ZA/UM, is very much based around his interests and his political reality of being part of a minority that faced a complete economic collapse with the end of the Soviet Union. It's not subtle about it.

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Many have said that Disco Elysium is wildly inventive and possible one of the best RPGs ever made - and those people are right. There's so many fresh ideas here handled so well that it's hard not to admire what the game managed to accomplish, and the emotional impact it can have in the process. It's a fresh take on the genre made with help by building on other classics, and it also lets you walk around in your underwear and rubber gloves if you so desire, so it's pretty amazing. Go play it and put on the war paint. Your right and left brains agree on this decision. Also, probably a good idea to apologize for colonialism.

Thanks apscp2008!

More information.

Still haven't played the game yet, but I might someday if I have nothing else to play.

I can't disagree strongly enough with the author's opinion. While the writing did seem good from what I played, I found it pretty boring overall.

It also irks me to see someone claiming it's among the best in the genre. I'm not sure I'd even call it an RPG tbh. It's really a point&click adventure game with RPG elements.

I swear, this place sounds like a mall meeting place for grumpy old men at times. "In MY days, RPGs had to walk to school uphill through 10 feet of snow! And it was uphill coming back too!"

Disco Elysium is an amazing game. It's ok if you didn't like it, but calling it "not a RPG" is a bit much. It has stats, level ups, inventory, skills, outcomes that change depending on your decisions (or dice rolls), multiple endings and amazing world building.

Now quit shaking your cane at me, I'm getting off your lawn!

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm not sure I'd even call it an RPG tbh. It's really a point&click adventure game with RPG elements.

Taste will vary, but if this isn't an RPG, I'm not sure Torment was either. The combat in Torment was barely more than an afterthought -- the heart of the game, as with Disco Elysium, is in all that text.

Originally Posted by spblue
I swear, this place sounds like a mall meeting place for grumpy old men at times. "In MY days, RPGs had to walk to school uphill through 10 feet of snow! And it was uphill coming back too!"

Disco Elysium is an amazing game. It's ok if you didn't like it, but calling it "not a RPG" is a bit much. It has stats, level ups, inventory, skills, outcomes that change depending on your decisions (or dice rolls), multiple endings and amazing world building.

Now quit shaking your cane at me, I'm getting off your lawn!

Cool that you liked it so much, but I found it mediocre. There's nothing amazing about the game in the least, but hey, we all have different opinions about stuff. Maybe I'll give it another shot someday if I'm in the mood for a text-heavy adventure game.

Originally Posted by spblue
Disco Elysium is an amazing game. It's ok if you didn't like it, but calling it "not a RPG" is a bit much. It has stats, level ups, inventory, skills, outcomes that change depending on your decisions (or dice rolls), multiple endings and amazing world building.

Yeah, it felt completely like an RPG to me. The combat wasn't really missed, probably even forgot about that while playing it. It was kind of like playing Planescape Torment or Torment: ToN with the combat deleted - ie: wouldn't change much, would still feel like RPGs.

In fact, it even felt far more like an RPG than a game like, let's say Skyrim, where the story feels largely non-existent and all the traditional RPG systems are dumbed down practically to the point of non-existence. I'd remove the RPG label from Skyrim (and rename it an "action-adventure") before I removed the RPG label from Disco Elysium.

But everyone's got their own definition of "RPG", so there's that. I just know mine.

Having said all that, I do prefer my games to have combat, and lots of it. If given a choice.

Originally Posted by Hexprone
Taste will vary, but if this isn't an RPG, I'm not sure Torment was either. The combat in Torment was barely more than an afterthought -- the heart of the game, as with Disco Elysium, is in all that text.

Which Torment? If you mean PS:T, I'm going to have to disagree. There's a big difference between having medicore combat and not having combat at all.

If you mean Torment: Tides of Numenera, then yeah, maybe. I haven't done a playthrough, but I understand there's only a handful of combat encounters in the entire game.

Originally Posted by Stingray
But everyone's got their own definition of "RPG", so there's that. I just know mine.

Off topic but there is a hilarious thread on the codex about that.

Link - https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/…t-rpgs.135333/

Originally Posted by spblue
I swear, this place sounds like a mall meeting place for grumpy old men at times. "In MY days, RPGs had to walk to school uphill through 10 feet of snow! And it was uphill coming back too!"

Disco Elysium is an amazing game. It's ok if you didn't like it, but calling it "not a RPG" is a bit much. It has stats, level ups, inventory, skills, outcomes that change depending on your decisions (or dice rolls), multiple endings and amazing world building.

Now quit shaking your cane at me, I'm getting off your lawn!

I always think the idea of too much negativity is a bit unfair. I think that wherever you have a community of enthusiasts, we tend to be opinionated and have quite strong and clear tastes. And I don't think that being opinionated in that sense is necessarily a bad thing. If this were a music community, you'd see lots of strong differences of opinion, and a lot of it might seem like picky criticism. It goes with the territory.

I don't find this place too bad at all, and usually quite balanced in most discussions. There's a few people that always talk the same shite almost to the point of spamming, which gets quite irritating, but overall I think people are discussing legitimate differences.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Off topic but there is a hilarious thread on the codex about that.

Link - https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/…t-rpgs.135333/

Hah, the author of that and myself agree on the classification of games like Skyrim and Witcher 3 (tending more towards action-adventure than RPG) but for completely different reasons. To him, it's an issue of not enough C&C. To me, it's more due to the simplicity of the systems and the fact that low-level combat mechanics (such as swinging a sword or blocking a blow) involve the player's skills, as opposed to going purely by the character's stats/skills/etc. Doesn't really matter though. Trying to come up with some definition of "RPG" that everyone else will use is futile - people are going to use it however they personally want to.

Tried playing it, then I got killed in a choice that wasn't obvious to me that I would. So I decided that was the ending of the game. Didn't play more than an hour I think. I'll play it one day again maybe, but I'm afraid I might make the same choice again as I won't remember what I tried previously…

The combat I remember was with a chair. Like the act of staying seated on it. Original? Perhaps. Idiotic? Yea. Look, some of the game is funny, but I mean you can almost die from being too uncomfortable by staying seated in a chair. And the unending, boring dialogs about psuedo in-game racism, and then accidentally becoming one in the game's perception by choosing the wrong dialog option was completely unappealing. Don't get me started on the conversation about fake bugs or whatever that lady was going on about in the hotel lobby. I learned to drop out of those inane moments and assuming I'm not missing something vital.

There's very little to explore also. Some of the writing is hilarious, brilliant, some of the in-brain conversations and skill checks involved are amazing, and even some of the more wacky dialog branches could be entertaining. But so much of it was absolutely mind numbing as well, and more often than not you are pushed into choosing dialog options that aren't even close to what you wish you could say, and then getting called out for it by the game. I'm not arguing for or against it being an RPG, I would say it is more RPG than not, I'm just pointing out some of the game's flaws.

And finally if you don't think there's an anti straight male agenda in there then you aren't being particularly astute.

I tried really hard to get into this game, played 15 hours according to Steam, and stopped. The forced backtracking to complete quests, combined with the painfully-slow, clunky movement speed-- and frankly, rather uninteresting story overall-- got me to uninstall almost immediately.

Bottom line is that I don't get the hype, really at all.

funny, backtracking and reusing assets is my ideal game world . hopefully the next one will have a saner philosophy , hopefully trump winning again will help .. i doubt they will take a worse narative than junkies + extra resources and feedback hardly do you harm.

Originally Posted by borcanu
hopefully trump winning again will help.