Am I the only one who hated Disco Elysium?

[bolland98403]

I bought DE a couple of weeks ago and put about 12 hours into it. I thought it was crap, and I like to think I appreciate good writing and the cop genre. After all, I am a former defense attorney and avid reader - including noir detective stuff. Anyhow, I disliked everything about this game, and won't even try with a new game/character make.

[eyoung.truth]

No, I don't like it either

[eyoung.truth]

Personally, I just don’t agree the ideology behind the game. And it seems there is a strength that keeps pulling me out form this game. So I have to admit I’m not into it and I can’t finish the game

[Jabs]

Hi, I'm a civil litigation attorney, I own my own law firm, and I would not consider myself an avid reader. I've never left a review talking about my profession. I don't see how that is relevant other than to try and elevate one's status on a gaming platform. How many times did you take to pass the bar? #oneanddone

[Tyo_ma]

lil bro got destroyed by non-avid readers while trying to talk down ahahah

[🐤🎀First AIDS Kid🎀🐤]

Originally posted by Tyo_ma:

lil bro got destroyed by non-avid readers while trying to talk down ahahah

court-appointed avid readers these days..

[Sciophyte]

Not to come off as pretentious or anything, but would Disco Elysium appeal to a former astronaut, underwear model, and author of numerous books on string theory like me?

[john.moredread]

The idea of the game is good. They way it was done is really, really, really bad. I do not like the writing style at all, The way the graphics look is crap. Nothing really happens in this game, it is misising inner consistency. I looked up the internet and the solutioni is like: "When talking to the fascist, don't answer at all to get through" - that is all the game has to it, What to do is completely random. A very, very bad game and it is a shame they sell this crap. You can not decide anything in the game it is all decided by the developers. Want my money back!

[Skyish]

I enjoyed DE for a while.

[Sciophyte]

I guess what pulls me in so far is just how weird and different DE is. Yeah, there doesn't seem to be much going on but the dialogues are the fun. In what other RPG does your subconscious, or whatever, tell you to "smoke the ***** out of a whole carton of cigarettes"?

[Tyo_ma]

Originally posted by Skyish:

the characters were shallow

lmao cant take you seriously after that. Try to read more books, i guess, you'll feel the difference. Also there is a reason, why this game used to be the best game of all time according to metacritic

[Puzzled Sphinx]

so many fans of this game clearly never played another crpg before. the characters arent that flat but they are pretty 2d. only one suspect actually ever gives you a twist that you can influence. the whole game just flies by you because YOU the player are not important. Harry isnt important to the world, the game tells you that like 1000 times. hard to feel excited about a world where you and your characters mean nothing. Harry is always meant to be 2d, the dialogue always implies he is the way he was at the start of the game, and if you try to make him better the game literally tries to kill you for it. and even if you live, nothing HAPPENS, the game literally calls you a soft idiot centrist and goes on and on about stuff that has nothing to do with the plot. the main villain is a huge exposition dump, and the ending is literally just a complete non-sequitur. none of the games events actually connect, there is no ladder of meaningful progression, your progress is literally gated by, you guessed it, a broken or locked gate , except at one point that could have been really cool where you take a boat ride but instead of being emotional meaningful or fun it is just a silent cut scene where nothing happens. oops cant go that way cuz it isnt the right time yet hehe.

[Puzzled Sphinx]

Originally posted by Skyish:

I enjoyed DE for a while, but it got boring at the end. Did I miss something? The plot was pretentious and the characters were shallow. The UI was novel, but there was really no good storyline. At least not for me. What did I miss? What was your favorite part? Getting insulted by the many disagreeable characters is not my cup of tea. DE is an endeavor of rudeness hiding in random babble.

you just walk around exhausting dialogue trees for ten hours, you didnt miss anything. the last half of the game sucks bad.
none of your choices ever matter, the game will always progress the way IT wants to, aka how it was written to, without ANY involvement from you, you literally HAVE to progress the game in the way they want or it just soft locks you, you can almost always progress but never in a meaningful way, the game just lets the breaks off so you can progress when you are done exhausting all the dialogue trees. No dialogue options you pick EVER matter, all it does is give really odd achievements (which have an insane amount of developer voice, a very politically opinionated and extremely conservative voice at that) you can simply retry, or pick EVERY dialogue option, none of the npcs ever change their thoughts about you. i tried, i literally did this to test it, you can just sit there and press the buttons, nothing happens unless there is a skill check to avoid damage, you can buy more than enough healing supplies, you can almost always retry all your rolls without even cheating, at that point you are just rolling dice because luck is a mechanic that exists in rpgs, not that they actually USED the mechanic in any interesting ways. Nothing is unique to crpg, this game copies what came before it, does it worse, but has a nice water color art style.
thats its only 1 merit, the art and music. Otherwise this is a 0/10 experience. the fact that the areas are SO small, and there are a lot of interior cells, the devs could have EASILY injected some more NPC interactions that actually matter. NPCs should have remembered you from conversation to conversation. they dont. At best, you will lose 1 opening dialogue choice because you already greeted the npc. Other than that you always get the same dialogue with the npc over and over and over. The devs could have easily had each NPC have an evolutionary arch, and had that have an affect on harry, nope, the npcs just stand in one place. Only Kim really talks to you about that kind of thing, and again, it doesnt ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING. he just says "oh ok" 1000000 times, until the game ends and he either says "good job" or "bad job" no in between, and is 100% based on your moral choices, so in a way it isnt a moral choice because none of the morals have ANY nuance. all the choices are "would you kill this baby? would you shoot this woman? would you kill yourself?" like bro no, stfu none of that is fun, interesting, meaningful to me or harry, and its a really piss poor way to fill the hours of a game

[doingwork]

Not everything is for everyone. To me, this is one of the best games ever made EASILY, to be honest one of the best pieces of any media every made. It is the closest to art a game has been honestly. Theres not a lot of games, not a lot of things in life I think about nearly every day even years after completing them.

Its just so many miles beyond any other game in terms of writing, characters, and just depth of concept. The game forces you to ACTUALLY think like a person might and self-reflect in ways you don't often see in media, especially video games.

I know plenty of people who don't like this game and many who wouldn't, but for what it is, its absolutely incredible.

[Big Helper]

Well, there's your problem. This is a *game*. You're a *reader*.

[MyNameJeb]

Originally posted by Puzzled Sphinx:

Originally posted by Skyish:

I enjoyed DE for a while, but it got boring at the end. Did I miss something? The plot was pretentious and the characters were shallow. The UI was novel, but there was really no good storyline. At least not for me. What did I miss? What was your favorite part? Getting insulted by the many disagreeable characters is not my cup of tea. DE is an endeavor of rudeness hiding in random babble.

you just walk around exhausting dialogue trees for ten hours, you didnt miss anything. the last half of the game sucks bad.
none of your choices ever matter, the game will always progress the way IT wants to, aka how it was written to, without ANY involvement from you, you literally HAVE to progress the game in the way they want or it just soft locks you, you can almost always progress but never in a meaningful way, the game just lets the breaks off so you can progress when you are done exhausting all the dialogue trees. No dialogue options you pick EVER matter, all it does is give really odd achievements (which have an insane amount of developer voice, a very politically opinionated and extremely conservative voice at that) you can simply retry, or pick EVERY dialogue option, none of the npcs ever change their thoughts about you. i tried, i literally did this to test it, you can just sit there and press the buttons, nothing happens unless there is a skill check to avoid damage, you can buy more than enough healing supplies, you can almost always retry all your rolls without even cheating, at that point you are just rolling dice because luck is a mechanic that exists in rpgs, not that they actually USED the mechanic in any interesting ways. Nothing is unique to crpg, this game copies what came before it, does it worse, but has a nice water color art style.
thats its only 1 merit, the art and music. Otherwise this is a 0/10 experience. the fact that the areas are SO small, and there are a lot of interior cells, the devs could have EASILY injected some more NPC interactions that actually matter. NPCs should have remembered you from conversation to conversation. they dont. At best, you will lose 1 opening dialogue choice because you already greeted the npc. Other than that you always get the same dialogue with the npc over and over and over. The devs could have easily had each NPC have an evolutionary arch, and had that have an affect on harry, nope, the npcs just stand in one place. Only Kim really talks to you about that kind of thing, and again, it doesnt ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING. he just says "oh ok" 1000000 times, until the game ends and he either says "good job" or "bad job" no in between, and is 100% based on your moral choices, so in a way it isnt a moral choice because none of the morals have ANY nuance. all the choices are "would you kill this baby? would you shoot this woman? would you kill yourself?" like bro no, stfu none of that is fun, interesting, meaningful to me or harry, and its a really piss poor way to fill the hours of a game

A extremely conservative voice? How do you mean? This game was made by communists.