I finished my second playthrough of Disco Elysium.

Now DE is one of my favorite games of all time. I could go so far as to say it's "perfect." But I was kind of... disappointed? in this playthrough. It was much more similar to my initial playthrough that I was expecting.

Now I'm not mad that the overall plot isn't really affected by your actions. That's something that I have known and actually really like about the game-- it's kind of the point. Part of the idea of the game is that what you do has very little effect on the world at large.

But. I was really expecting a lot more of a difference in this playthrough since I was going trying to pick different options and did a radically different stat build from my initial playthrough, but it did not feel like I had a really new experience. There's a few caveats/explanations, though.

First, I had a character idea/concept that I really did not commit to. In my head I wanted to be a drugged up, bone-headed jock cop. But I found myself putting points into stats that I would not normally because I was really concerned with passing certain white checks. So my stupid ass drug jock was putting points into things like Suggestion or Empathy because I really wanted to succeed at these things, even if they made no sense for this character. Near the end I course corrected a bit but it was too late.

Going off of that, I have a compulsive need to click and exhaust almost every dialogue option, so I was saying things that the character in my head probably wouldn't have said.

And I think the biggest thing is that the first playthrough of Disco Elysium is just so magical. There's nothing like it in the world. Nothing was ever going to top that experience.

(as an aside; I also did not feel like dealing with all of the reading in the game. It's very wordy at times. I found myself just clicking through long lines of dialogue without bothering to read them).

Oddly enough, I kind of feel like starting a new playthrough right away and manually making a new build. This time I'd stick more closely to the idea of this character in my head and I would have a good frame of reference between playthroughs to see what's different (the passive checks are the biggest thing).

But yeah if you have not play DE yet please do so. It's so good. It feels rewarding to experience.


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