14 DAY TRIAL // It's completely wrong to try and play a detective adventure game with a character that has the IQ of a chimpanzee, but that's totally cool in Disco Elysium. Indeed, you won't have an easy time, but playing a dumb but strong detective in a decrepit world is perfectly viable in this game.
Disco Elysium is a quirky RPG where you play an alcoholic detective who wakes up in a pool of his own puke with no recollection of what happened. Depending on what skill you chose before the opening sequence, your monologue will be shorter or longer, but keep in mind that the longer it is, the more information you'll learn about who you are.
There are 24 skills and at least half of them are quite unusual for an RPG, such as encyclopedia, drama, conceptualization, visual calculus, esprit de corps, shivers, savoir-faire and a couple more. Disco Elysium is a game that throws at you a lot of checks that require a wide range of skills. You can have all the skills, but those that you have will help you overcome some challenges using a specific path.
The game is split in days, which means that some things won't happen until one or more days have passed. The more things you manage to discover in a day the better, and while there might be deadlines to solve certain puzzles, it seems that you can take your time to unveil the whole plot.
I've been given access to a preview version of the game that allowed me to play through the first day, but I died after 4 hours reading a letter addressed to me, probably because my heart couldn't cope with the shock.
Morale and health are the only two stats that matter in Disco Elysium and you get them in very short quantity at the beginning of the game, so any shock or fight can kill you fast. There are plenty of objects in the game that replenish either morale or health, but they're useless if you're one-shoted.
Disco Elysium is a “game of words.” There are way more than one million words in this game, so be ready for a lot of reading and less combat action. I confess I didn't understand everything that developers probably wanted to convey to the player, but I did feel the emotions.
I also love the oil paint art style, I think it fits perfectly with a psychological thriller like Disco Elysium. I haven't got into a fight yet since I went the Sherlock way and boosted my “deduction” skills instead of trying to get physical, but my next playthrough I'll try another path.
I did see a lot of what the game has to offer during my several hours spent in Disco Elysium to know that this game will be eye-opening. Developer Za/UM says the game could take between 60 to 100 hours to finish, so I'm ready to take their challenge.
Thankfully, I won't have to wait too long, as Disco Elysium is scheduled for release on PC via Steam on October 15.
