Recent reviews by Zeph

For all the performance issues, bugs in the simulation, and underbaked features, I still wanted to like this game. I was holding off on this review until we got mods because I expected them to fix the glaring holes in the base game, as they did for its predecessor. With today's news that the content editor is months away, not days as was previously stated, I cannot recommend this game at full price.

I still fully believe this game will surpass CS1 in every way within a few years, but it needs mods and patches to do it. This is an early access game being sold as a finished product, I feel misled by the promotional materials and statements of the community managers, and will be putting this game on the shelf for a long while. I can only hope that the deluge of issues with this launch do not hamper its success long term

GOTY. Larian MVP. Maybe wait a few months for bugs to be patched

Buy it on sale. More bad than good but at this point you should know what to expect. More of the same

Look, I love this game. It's phenomenal and has great potential, but in all honesty I can't recommend it in its current state. There are just too many issues that need to be ironed out before version 1.0; and I fully expect most of them to be addressed and when they are I will happily update this review. But for now, the clunky UI, means I'm constantly clicking back and forth to find information. The incomprehensibly opaque mechanics mean without a redditor who decompiled the code I still wouldn't understand cohesion mechanics, and I spend as much time trying to decipher the tech tree as I do playing the game.

Again, if you love complex games in the genre, and you liked Long War, you'll love this game, but in its current state you really have to WORK at playing it, which is not something I can recommend for casual gamers

Easily one of my favorite games at this point. I've been holding off playing until the 1.0 release, but since that comes out tomorrow it seemed like a good time to update my review. I'll probably put in another few hundred hours playing this through for the full release - if you like factory games, sandboxes, or legos, you need to give Satisfactory a try. There's really nothing that quite scratches the itch like Satis does

Disco Elysium is not a great game. It's clunky and doesn't explain its mechanics well and you're often punished for following the suggested course of action. And yet, with all that, it may be my favorite game of all time. I don't know if I have fun when I play DE, but it makes me FEEL. It has a message, deep and layered and complicated, it exists in constant conversation with both the player and itself. Loving this game is work, but it's work I've never been happier to do.

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Everything Disco Elysium contains can be boiled down to the two words in it's name: Disco and Elysium

First, Elysium: Not just the name of the world you play in, Elysium invokes the memory of the ancient Greek's blessed afterlife reserved for the righteous. Appropriate for an afterlife; DE itself is something of an epilogue. The main story has already happened; we do not play through the most important events in Elysium, we do not shape the world - we merely play the role in which we (the players) are cast in the ashes of what could have been. This feeling of afterlife is further reinforced by the ephemeral uncertainty the game's narrative enforces: having lost your entire memory, the main character learns about the world as the player does, creating a surreal parallel between the narrative and the experience of playing through the narrative. This result is a powerful harmonious ludonarrative backgroud which allows the game to speak not just to the character, but to the player and often itself.

Second, Disco: Finding joy in madness. Finding beauty in destruction. Having a staring contest with the void. Rage against the dying of the light. Dance like the world is ending. A middle finger to the status quo. Art. Life. Momentum. Disco.


The mechanical star of Disco Elysium is the skill tree and thought cabinet. Disco's 4x6 skill system uses a tried and true foundation and builds on that to deliver an unforgettable gameplay experience. Because each skill has a narrative impact in addition to the mechanical, the skills you invest in reshape the entire subtext of the game. Invest in intellectual skills and the game offers you a cerebral experience, the world as understood through the prefrontal cortex. Invest in psychological skills and get a more emotional game, subtext colored (literally) by empathy and feeling. More points isn't always better - a high authority skill demands to be respected even over trivial slights; high electrochemistry will have be the voice of addiction calling you to indulge at every opportunity. Combined with a story where failures are often more interesting than success, and you get an highly re-playable experience that conforms itself to your choices in a way most RPGs can only dream of. The skill system plays on the ludonarrative as an expert musician, ensuring that the mechanics always present you the player with a response tailored to the protagonist as you've built him.

The characters around you all have individual motivations and backgrounds only revealed with passive skill checks - only a main character with high Espirit D'Corps can truly understand your colleagues in Jamrock. Only with high Inland Empire do you truly connect with your lifelong friend and necktie. The depth of these relationships is so tangible yet well concealed that any conversation about the game is sure to surprise even experienced players with paths-not-traveled and connections missed. For every theme woven through the fabric of the entire game, there's an additional depth that can only be revealed through multiple play-throughs. Characters who are one dimensional throwaways in one game can invoke powerful feelings of camaraderie in the next.

The above skill system would already be groundbreaking on its own, and it certainly pulled me in to the world, but the care and attention to narrative harmony doesn't stop at the mechanics. The art and music in the game is all approached from this holistic viewpoint - portraits are layered with meaning and symbolism. And below the surface of this meaning lurks the unashamed political commentary at the core of the game. You are constantly questioned about your actions; even ones encouraged by the game. Choose too many racist dialogue options, the game asks if you're a fascist; too much working class sympathy asks if you're a commie. Even when the game agrees with you it offers you scathing critique, asking you to follow the character's thoughts and words to their extreme end points. Similar to the skill system above, these political choices impact the mechanics of the game as well as the narrative. A fascist protagonist is constantly demoralized by their rhetoric, a liberal turns gibberish into cash; each an investigation into the very heart of the political stance.

The result is a thing of absolute beauty. The end of the communist vision quest moved me to tears. The final skill checks in the church if you help everyone filled me with a stillness so profound I spoke of nothing else for a week. On your first playthrough, none of this is evident. The game feels sad and plotting, following a man with no past and no future through the worst week of his life - but if you engage with the game on its terms, if you look for the beauty in decay, find meaning when the world screams that there is none; you can see this game for the masterpiece it is.

Disco Elysium is not a good game, but it is a great one. It deserves to be played if only out of respect for the art that it is. This game has lodged itself in my heart and there it will stay until my dying day. Disco Elysium is about hope in suffering, failing forward, navigating darkness with only the light of your cigarette, the bonds between us, the nature of humanity, and maybe solving a murder along the way.

This game does not hold your hand. It will call you homophobic slurs. It has engrained racism, misogyny, and violence that reflects the worst of the real world as an unflinching mirror. For those willing to look into that mirror and face the disgusting visage contained within, Disco Elysium offers something not found anywhere else in gaming. And for those who don't like what they find, it asks deep and rightfully unsettling questions about how we engage in the world. That makes Disco Elysium special, and my favorite game of all time - even if it's not the best.

Do not buy this game it is frustrating and addictive and there is nothing else like it
It only runs properly because of mods and every update will break your mods
I love it
Do not buy

I wanted to like this DLC, I really did. I LOVE the concept and I hope it's a foundational part of Cities: Skylines 2; but honestly, the potential of what this expansion could have been is really let down by the limitations of the overall game engine. I appreciate the effort that has gone into adding quality of life features from the workshop into the game itself, but when encountering a district like this it becomes completely apparent where the fundamental core of the original game makes outside the box thinking impossible.

Main Complaints:

• Goods and Garbage teleport, once they leave a vehicle there is no Cim level logic to take over distribution
  
• Intersections between pedestrian streets are barren, and when mixing street sizes seem completely out of place
  
• Piggybacking off the park system means you can't mix pedestrian areas with Parks, Campuses, Airports, or other areas of the city using the same mechanic

I love the pedestrian streets and I can't wait for more in the next game - but it is *time* for the next game

echoing what others have said, there is no way to use this content in game without manually creating a theme using mods

edited review from no to yes: (but it's easier than ever to do so, and King Leno deserves the recognition for genuinely good assets)

I very much enjoyed Lesbian Pirate Simulator 3000 and recommend it for any wlw who enjoy acts of piracy and wanton slaughter while sexin' up beautiful women across the Aegean