Disco Elysium is one of the most unique games I have ever played. The game is dripping with its own inky oil art style, enforced further by brilliant writing and unique situations make this RPG fascinating to play as well as look at. The premise of the game is that you are a cop in the city of Revachol. Last night you seem to have partied too hard and you wake up with no memory of absolutely anything. Nothing at all. Including how to behave in social situations, or anything about where you are or why you are there. In Disco Elysium you do not put stats into strength, dexterity, constitution, which has become almost universally recognized in RPGs, but rather into things like empathy, composure, authority, visual calculus, electro chemistry, logic, and more. Rather than building your character physically and you are building them emotionally and mentally by putting together a psyche that can be useful in solving a lynching case, and many other tasks you find yourself completing which is where the game begins.

When you wake up in your trashed hotel room you meet another character, Kim Kitsuragi—a cop from another precinct who will be your partner for this case. He is the anchor, the silent watcher, he who takes notes during conversations, and helps the main character get his bearings back. He is a template for how a police officer should act and you can choose to follow his lead and learn from his behavior, or you can continue your crazy antics while he takes notes on how real police work is done.

The crippling amnesia of the character serves both the player and the story quite well as it puts the player and the character in the same boat as they try and learn the way this world works. The city of Revachol is not too fantastical but enough things are different in this universe to make it feel different from our world which makes it more interesting to learn about. It is nice to learn about the world naturally and from the many perspectives of the people who live there, and it encourages you to talk to everyone which is good because dialogue is where the magic happens.

As you converse with others your stats will be rolling dice to determine if you pass the various checks that come up (sometimes secretly) in a conversation. Being empathetic enough to understand where someone is coming from or noticing the pain in the words they say, logic to figure out what would work or why what you are trying does not work, you can roll visual calculus to reconstruct a crime scene, the list goes on and that isn’t even mentioning when the skills all argue with one another about who is right.

Sometimes you fail checks, and your character is stuck in faulty logic which can be hilarious to watch and the options for these moments are varied. You can choose to trust one skill over the other depending on your build, but this is never a sure thing as emotions are biased. This is a surreal game to play as it does not always pay to exhaust every dialogue option as one wrong move and you can be put on bad terms with people, but the options are always interesting and varied and you are usually given several interesting choices. Dialogue options never feel like good option, bad option, middle option, but rather are three entirely unique options so you are not sure which one is the good option, bad, or crazy one.

There are also thought cabinet which act kind of like perks. Once you learn a type of thinking exists you can internalize it to mull over taking a temporary debuff such as considering communism gives you an empathy penalty. Once you gain enough experience you can internalize the thought and use it as a perk. Character leveling up feels so different in this game as you can use levels to up your individual stats, unlock more thought slots, or forget an internalized thought. My character is not much stronger than he was before, but he is more put together thanks to internalizing volumetric shit-compressor (aka I got my shit together.) There is no set level in the game but as you start to play the game you get a sense of what kinds of skills you want your character to have and that makes for some of the most interesting level ups I have had in an RPG in a while just on a decision-making level.

This game is not action packed, off-the-wall adrenaline by any means. It is mostly reading and exploring while you try and solve various mysteries and quests you pick up around the city. But the gameplay trickles down and finding a new lead or area in the case opens a lot of opportunities. The mystery is interesting enough to hold you attention as a pivotal main quest to keep in mind as you progress. The crazy situations I have gotten myself into by failing skill checks almost makes this game worth the price of admission. That being said the price of admission is steep at $40, and it is worth mentioning that the game has some trouble starting on some machines. A quick google search and you will see that many people have had the problem of the game crashing at launch but after I did the fix mentioned in a steam article, I have had no problems since. It does leave a sour taste when you spend so much on a game that does not even launch at first, but I promise this game is worth it. The uniqueness of the premise and the amazing writing make for a very interesting first play which alone would be worth it, but I can only imagine how subsequent playthroughs are and I am excited to try a different character build to see what’s different.