Disco Elysium Review (Warlock76)
So... my feedback on this game is going to be incredibly personal and biased, and I do not think that it will help you make a decision whether or not to purchase it. But I'm going to tell my story anyway. It relates to my very low play time of just forty hours at time of writing.
I picked this game up at the start of an incredibly ugly and acrimonious divorce from someone who had (I felt at the time, and still feel, just over two years later) treated me incredibly badly. My mother, my only relative, was (and sadly, remains to this day) profoundly unwell. I was suddenly very, very alone, and understood none of the reasons why. I was in a very bad, very dangerous place mentally, and that is something I am still working on. I was a mess, and still have some of the concomitant problems of that mess - I am still suffering from insomnia, and I still have very low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. So, guy having a bad time picks this game up, right?
Playing it was... ethereal. The story is well written, and the little foibles the game has (your skills all have personalities, and you can 'mull things over' in a memory cabinet to change how you, and they, operate in the world) are incredibly innovative. The artwork is both grotesque and beautiful - in fact, I think the soundscape and visuals of this game might well be the most aesthetically pleasing I have ever encountered in a game - and the characters are well rounded and have understandable motivations. You may not agree with them, but you can see how they got there. But the story... oh, the story. It's a heartbreaking story of endless optimism, and speaks to you of letting go, and how things will be OK because you're still here, it's OK, you just need to stand up... Something beautiful is going to happen...
in short, I think this was the right game, at the right time, with the right story for me. That's why I only have forty hours. The game was so existentially wonderful as an experience, I feel that treating it as 'just some game I have' and playing it to death (and the replay value is there, believe me - I will go back one day) feels like it would undo what the game did for me, or at least, it would cheapen it. It would not exactly be an overstatement to say: This game might have saved my life.
So, yeah. A solid 10. Easy. No contest. My favourite experience, let alone favourite game. Give it a try, especially if you're the only person in the whole world and everything around you is silent. Because when you stand up again... well.
Something beautiful is going to happen.