#DISCO ELYSIUM SWITCH REVIEW FULL#

Your skills are your allies, and like any set of allies they can both assist and mislead you. This wasn’t just fanciful world-building it often led to clues or insights concerning my investigation. Shivers would pull me aside on a cold night, and ask me to feel the city of Revachol, to take in and absorb the very soul of it.

I dumped points into my physique skill Shivers, the trait that allowed me to be attuned to the world at large, where even a rustle in the wind could lead to revelation. The skills you focus on are the chattiest, and they will constantly chirp in your ear, giving your build choices more weight than a simple statistical boost ever could. Your skills are the various aspects and modes of your mind, and they are a chatty bunch. I went with the sensitive build, and both my Volition and Inner Empire would chime in during conversations, or pull me aside with an epiphany. The erstwhile Detective Kim Kitsuragi will often be at your side, but your skills – the voices in your head – never leave you alone. Rather, Skills double as your companions in Disco Elysium. Your “skills” in Disco Elysium are not simply numbers you raise to overcome the various skill checks, though that does factor in. If none of those tickle your fancy you can craft your own amnesiac detective by choosing which of those four trees you want to focus on, and then cap it off by choosing a key skill, one that will guide and support your throughout the game.

#DISCO ELYSIUM SWITCH REVIEW FULL#

There are four attributes in the game (Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics), and you can opt into a Sherlock Holmes-esque Thinker with a full encyclopedia in your head, a Sensitive detective akin to Twin Peaks Dale Cooper (with your own Inland Empire), or a Physical brute who uses their fists and laser-point aim to settle disputes. You open the game by selecting either one of three predetermined builds, or by crafting a custom one. Disco Elysium isn’t concerned with providing you safety nets that mask your poor choices that keep you on the “critical path.” And it all starts from the top. Sure, there is an ultimate “end” to the game, but how you get there can play out in a myriad of different fashions.

This is a game that will allow you to fail, and force you to handle the fallout. There is no “Character A will remember that,” here. It’s now on you to determine who he will become in the wake of this mind-shattering hangover, and unlike similar games, Disco Elysium allows you to truly shape him as you see fit.Ĭhoices matter in Disco Elysium, even the mundane. The amnesiac trope may be tired, but the approach ZA/UM uses is not only novel, but important: it’s clear this character has an established past, has endured terrible things, and tried to drown them all at the bottom of any bottle of booze he could grab. It’s on you to solve the crime he has been tasked with investigating, all while piecing together the shattered remnants of his psyche. Cut to credits thanks for playing.įor the uninitiated, Disco Elysium is a CRPG detective story, in which you inhabit the battered flesh of a man with no memory, all because he went on the world’s (arguably) greatest three day bender. Instead, they let me kill myself in the first five minutes, because I decided at the outset to not focus on my physical traits. But developer ZA/UM isn’t concerned with adhering to decades of video logic, of providing a story with a variety of largely inconsequential choices. Fade to black, baby: no more pain.Īny other RPG would have simply given me some flavor text, patted me on the ass, and hurried me on my way towards my ultimate destination: completing the game. I’m rewarded with a heart attack for my efforts, and I die. I attempt to grab the tie without first turning off the fan – I feel confident with my fifty-eight percent odds of success – and I fail, losing my sole pip of health.

I reach up to pluck it from it’s perch, only to find myself confronted with the first of many, many skill checks in Disco Elysium. Looking up I see an insidious necktie hanging from the fan, swirling about in solitude.

I slowly find my brown party pants, my stained shirt, and a single crocodile leather shoe it’s partner went missing in the night. Holding my head in my hand, I stumble about and grab the various bits of clothing dashed about, trying in vain to remember how I got here I drank myself into such a stupor that I’ve lost my memory.

Disco elysium switch review