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It's everything everyone has said before. I struggle to say something original or unique about Disco Elysium, but it is a great game if you enjoy reading and roleplaying, which can easily be compromised if you decide to save scum or become a completionist. You walk around, you decide how you want to behave in this world starting from a shell of a former character, and you basically exist while also trying to solve a murder case. The whole gameplay is dialogue, and deciding which thoughts and skills to invest your hard-earned points on for the chance to unlock different conversation paths.

And it is incredible at that. The writing is of course the highlight, but I could not forget the voice acting, which is probably the best I've seen in a videogame, or at least in the Top 3. I literally cannot get EGG HEAD yelling HARD-CORE from my head

Instead of focusing on the highlights, I'll just point out two things I thought worked pretty poorly. The first is the Skill Check Lock system, which prevented me from experiencing two storylines I was invested into. Basically if you fail a White Check, you can retry it after investing points on your skill. I failed a 97% Suggestion with Lilienne and already had reached my 6-point cap in that skill, making it impossible to progress in that storyline. Maybe I could have forgotten old Thoughts, learned a new one, and increased my cap, but I could not know which one until I've done so and I didn't have so much free time and points around. A similar thing happened when doing the nightclub quest, where I failed the Physical Instrument check to open the fridge and had already hit my learning cap, effectively locking me out of a very interesting quest. I was still able to beat the game, but it left me a sour taste that the game softlocked me out of these quests - either give me alternative routes to progress, or give me a permanent fail state, but don't give me this partial failure that I'm unable to act on.

The other poor thing was the whole clothing system. Dressing HDB was lots of fun, and the reaction I got from some NPCs with my outfit was always solid, but it felt really time-consuming and unfun to stop conversation with White Checks in order to browse through my entire outfit to find that one or two pieces of clothing that will give me a boost. It was a waste of time and a break in immersion. It would be much better to leave clothing only for self-expression and flavor dialogue, and instead, have stat boosts linked to items that were always on, and that could be pawned for cash (which could then be used to buy other items with other always on boosts). That requires some balancing, but of course, the clothing system also needed some, it was just poorly implemented.

In summary, great game, incredible VA, it's long but it really hooks you in, and it is a fantastique experience most gamers (and all readers) will enjoy

Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

Fine if you get it for free, but frankly, my computer can handle Elden Ring and RDR2 at 60 FPS but couldn't break 20 FPS with this retro baby. And of course there are no graphical settings I can adjust. The post-battle summary tells me I spent 13 minutes in the fight, my Steam Playtime says 25min because of course, lag

Just go watch an episode of Seinfeld instead

Please consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

It's been a year and a half since I played the first Figment, so I don't remember much of it, but I have the feeling this is more or less the same thing with very few changes.

The main gameplay elements are still here - some adventuring, a lot of puzzling (mostly good), a lot of combat (mostly bad and dare I say, entirely unnecessary). And while this time the game feels a bit more confident with the pacing, the visuals, and the songs, it falters a lot on the grating and insufferable banter between the two protagonists, and the heavy-handed emotional notes it tries to achieve throughout the story.

What's great here - in the first game, a lot of the areas felt very samey, differing only by the puzzle mechanic you were using to solve them. Here you have a lot of distinctive areas, with the Maze and the investigation bit my favorites. The way the game takes elements of mental health, neurology and psychology and conceptualizes into gameplay elements and story elements is quite frankly, incredible. The musical numbers are really catchy, and the payoff at the end of the game is really well done, particularly after the story dragged for the first 80% of the game.

What's not so great - combat is still a big part of the game, and is still as bad as it was in the first game. It overall feels shorter, probably because it is. Collectables are hidden in the level but not in a fun "let's get out of our way to find them" way, but rather on a "let's paint this collectable with the same color as the background" way, which is just dull. And the dialogue between Dusty and Piper, man, PLEASE, these should be an option to shut them up because they are the worst.

It's overall a shorter game that does very little to be a sequel rather than an expansion pack for the first game, but this is not entirely a bad thing. More confident on visuals and on metaphors, a bit lacking on pacing, combat, and dialogue, Figment 2 is still worth your time if bought on a discount