Metacritic: 92
Opencritic: 92
ACG - Buy
Everything is a strange uncanny valley of narrative and character here, it is utterly brilliant. It is difficult for games to surprise these days, but Disco not only surprised, it surprised at an incredibly high pace.
IGN - 9.6/10
Disco Elysium is a unique blend of noir-detective fiction, traditional pen-and-paper RPGs, and a large helping of existentialist theory. Its twisting plot, cast of memorable characters, and sheer depth of choice combine to create an experience that begs to be savoured. A few minor gripes aside, it hits on almost every single one of the marks it sets out to achieve and left me yearning to spend more time in its world.
USgamer - 4.5/5
Disco Elysium wants to get you in touch with the voices in your head. This detective RPG calls back to the old Infinity Engine games like Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate, but it put a unique spin on everything. With a beautiful oil painting aesthetic, it also features a system that treats your skill like additional party members, each with their own opinions on your actions. Ultimately, every lengthy run-though of Disco Elysium is about the consequences of your choices and actions, adding up to some fantastic stories. A great, surprising entry into RPG canon.
Fextralife - 8.5/10
In a day and age where social and political issues are subtly weaved into the very fabric of nearly every form of entertainment, Disco Elysium takes them head on without a hint of shyness. Disco Elysium is certainly not a game for those that are faint of heart, but if you have a sense of humor, and you're looking for a breath of fresh air then Disco Elysium is a must buy game. If it doesn't make you laugh out loud a time or three, I'll ride the Cock Carousel.
HaasGaming - 9/10
I think anyone can appreciate the sheer depth that the dialogue offers, and the comedic moments are simply stellar. Disco Elysium does handle some very real subjects, and handles them consistently with a lot of style and a lot of flavor. If you're not adverse to a lot of dialogue that can be a tad much, a tad too grandiloquent maybe, then I'm sure you'll love it.
Gaming on PC - 10/10
Aside from these two very minor tech issues, my time with the game has been pretty much perfect. Disco Elysium is an unforgettable journey that shouldn't just be experienced by all RPG fans, but by anyone who has ever played a videogame. I can't think of a single thing this game does wrong, and for all intents and purposes, ZA/UM's debut release has dethroned Planescape: Torment as the best RPG I've ever played. Don't sleep on this gem!
Ragequit GR - 90/100
It is one of the best-written RPGs in recent memory. It is a glimpse inside the mind of Hunter S. Thompson, combined with the best script that David Lynch never wrote. It is True Detective's Rust Cohle, drinking beer and smoking opium with Sherlock Holmes while Twin Peaks' Dale Cooper is in the next room brewing damn good coffee. Despite being the first title to be produced by the independent developers of ZA/UM Studio, Disco Elysium is undoubtedly an indie masterpiece that will be regarded as one of the benchmarks with which we compare all future endeavours in the isometric RPG genre.
Eurogamer IT - 9/10
Disco Elysium is a peculiar game, which should be carefully tasted in dialogues, nuances, artistic extremes and in general on absolute care infused in a mature and conscious product of all its creative power. Like all cultural products of great value, Disco Elysium touches the strings of the soul of those who use it, it also tells a little about our human condition while showing us miseries, excesses but also splendid virtues of the inhabitants of its world. This is an unmissable experience for anyone.
Millenium - 88/100
Disco Elysium is a real success, at least in its kind. The writing is intelligent and sought after, offering a breathtaking story and tasty dialogues to navigate. On the other hand, it is strongly discouraged for Anglophobes, the game uses a complex vocabulary which is not translated at all.
CanaardPC - 10/10
"It will never be as good as they say." This is what has been repeated for four years each time ZA / UM gives details of the Disco Elysium project. Ambitious, intelligent, beautiful, funny, crazy, the role-play we were being portrayed was above all too good to be true. Nobody really believed that Baltic developers with no video game experience were going to lay a masterpiece, without forcing it, as a front line on their resume. Today, we have to face the facts: an Estonian artists' collective created the best role-playing game ever to be installed on our PCs.
Jeuxvideo - 18/20
There is still so much to say about Disco Elysium. In many ways, it's a brilliant game. With a simply breathtaking writing, a high-level artistic direction and a principle, inherited from the very foundations of the paper role playing, terribly atypical, the title of ZA / UM is an incredible experience that will however leave on the diamonds are refractory to wordy games where the fights are settled with the throwing of dice, but also, and it is unfortunate, the public does not have a solid foundation of English. But the others, bubbled to the Planescape Torment and other Fallout old school will find there a modern RPG, by no means anachronistic, intelligent, of a rather new density, where to take bad decisions or simply to fail also remains a valid way to lead the way. 'investigation. Disco Elysium is undoubtedly essential in the niche in which it evolves and provides a feeling of exhilarating incarnation. We might be witnessing the birth of a very large future studio.
Wccftech - 9.5/10
It's impossible not to fall for Disco Elysium, from its intriguing murder detective work to the world it depicts, not to mention the voices inside your own head. It's an experience that could easily make the top of some Game of Year lists and for good reason...
... Whether you're racing the clock to catch that witness or having political conversations with the part of your brain that normally wants you to punch things, Disco Elysium is a unique gaming experience that should be attempted by everyone.
Rock Paper Shotgun
It does deserve to be compared to yer Planescapes, yer Fallouts, even if it hasn't stepped totally out from their long shadows. It's a great, bleak rumination on the failings of humanity on a macro and micro level. But not without hope. A masterpiece, but flawed, and proof positive that if ZA/UM can do flawed masterpiece for their first outing, they might already be chipping away the flaws in time for their next.
PC Gamer - 92/100
The thing about Disco Elysium is that my experience of it is completely unique to me, such is the dizzying variety of skills, stats, thoughts, and conversation options on offer. You could play through it five times and still not see everything, so there's no one experience to assess. But I can say with certainty that it's one of the finest RPGs on PC if you value depth, freedom, customization, and storytelling.
Critical Hit - 8.5/10
Above and beyond the excellent writing and unique role-playing aspects, what Disco Elysium achieves above everything else is the sense of freedom. Solving a case or a puzzle always feels authentic to the character as you're forced to approach things based on strength, empathy or intelligence. It's the first RPG in a long time that's truly elicited a feeling of embodiment, of conscious transference as I mentioned earlier.
Gamekult - 9/10
What a triumph. After months of drooling at promises of a new future for C-RPG, the verdict is clear: Disco Elysium is indeed an exceptional role-playing game. By his qualities of writing first, which supplant almost all that the genre has seen pass these last twenty.
GameCrate - 9.25/10
I've never laughed this much while playing a game. Well-read, nihilistic, dark, and intellectual, Disco Elysium is like your favorite poli-sci professor huffed paint and ran naked through the quad. Anyone who loves isometric RPGs, story games, walking simulators, or Telltale Games should moneyfist their monitor, cram some cocaine into their router, and download Disco Elysium immediately.
tuttoteK - 8.5/10
Disco Elysium is an exceptional title that has managed to find new and valid ideas for a type of game that has now seen everything. The title manages to remain interesting throughout its duration and overall the adventure is fairly balanced.
Daily Star - 5/5
This detective story is full of everything you'd want in an RPG. Slick writing, dice rolls, bundles of stats to ponder and some of the most beautiful visuals you'll see outside of the Tate Modern. There's depth, hundreds of hours of replayability and above all, an experience you won't forget. With humour, panache, wit and genuinely touching moments, this is a hell of a story.
Slant Magazing - 4.5/5
Playing Disco Elysium feels like having an angel and a devil on your shoulders, only you're not sure which one is which and there's so many of them that you don't have nearly enough shoulders to contain them all. Maybe they're all devils.
The places you visit in Revachol are still torn apart by a long-past war, ravaged until there's nothing left. The ideologies have fallen away and there are only disaffected people scrambling through the ruins of a society reticent to commit to anything anymore. It's a desolate maelstrom where you learn, slowly, to exist again among people and their flaws, searching for mutual understanding with voices outside your own head.
Mirror UK- 5/5
Disco is an absolute powerhouse of a game with strong writing, great performances and intriguing mechanics that meant I honestly struggled to stop playing. This game is destined to be a cult classic and deserves to be regarded as a peer of Planetscape, Baldur's Gate and Fallout, which is the highest praise I could offer..
If you love RPGs, reading or fancy something different - and I mean really damn different - then track down Disco Elysium.
Will update the OP when more reviews are coming.
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