Disco Elysium – The Final Cut Review

Summary

 
Picture the scene. You wake up after a series of really rather heavy nights in a strange town, in a pretty trashed bedroom of a strange hotel with absolutely no memory of who you are or how you got there, but with an urge to perform karaoke. We’ve all been there right?!

Unfortunately in this case you are sooooooo massively worse for wear that you can’t even remember you own name. All you have are the voices in your head which are generally not very complementary about you.

One wrong move, such as looking in a mirror at your drink and drug-ravaged face and you will quite literally die of shame. Try anything too energetic and you will die of low health. It really is quite the opening to a game and a pretty unique premise!

Over the next few days you figure out that you are in fact a cop, who has been sent to this pretty knackered old town to solve a murder, aided by the rather more sensible Kim Katsuragi from another station. Not to give too much away but you’ll also discover that you are not held in particularly high regard by anyone you come into contact with, and that you haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory since arriving in Revachol.

From there it’s up to you as to how you progress through the game – either trying desperately to stick to the straight and narrow or to give in to your urges, which interestingly gives you a boost in physical and mental capability…

As the days go by you’ll pick up lots of side missions, unlock new areas to explore and gradually progress the case through whichever shady means you fancy pursuing. Certain situations require you to meet certain criteria to progress through. The more skills you have in a certain area the higher the likelihood you have of successfully completing that particular ‘check’. For example, to make a successful jump in a particular early stage of the game you will need a decent Savoire Faire rating to inctease your chance of success. You can either increase this rating by allocating skill points to that area that you collect by completing tasks, or you can also boost that skill by adjusting what you choose to wear.

I know. It’s an interesting concept! Throughout your time in Revachol you will find new items of clothing to steal and wear, each of which will boost your skills in certain areas – so a string vest might boost your physicality rating for example. Some items of clothing, such as the manky, vomit-covered trousers you wake up in, actively reduce your ratings, so in some cases you could actually benefit from going trouserless. As mentioned, it’s a weird game…

Overall, there is a lot to do, and without spoiling the ending, you won’t know for definite who the killer is until really close to the end, even if you think you’ve solved it within the first hour of playing. Even once you have discovered the killer you’ll have a few WTF moments before all is done!

Throughout the game, there is a lot of adult language and content, so it’s best if you don’t play this with your younger family members – or anyone else for that matter. Some of the dialogue is rather ‘edgy’ in the extreme, and a good proportion of it is genuinely very amusing, so although there is a lot of dialogue to explore it’s generally worth digging into it – not least because learning new things can boost your XP, which in turns can give you a new skill point to allocate.

The other unique game dynamic is the Thought Cabinet. At various stages you will unlock a new thought by talking to someone or doing something, or even failing to successfully do something. You can then invest some time into researching that thought, which will give you some bonuses in certain areas. You can only store a certain number of thoughts though (you are a raging alcoholic after all) so you must carefully choose what to think about at various stages of the game to aid your progression.

It’s quite hard to pigeonhole this game. It’s a detective / adventure / RPG which is a bit open world in how you approach it and completely different to anything I’ve played before.

Most of all it’s WEIRD. Beautifully, wonderfully weird and something everyone should play at least once. Unless of course you are easily offended by alcoholic detectives, union bosses, adventurous language or mouthy Scouse children.

Just go play it. You PROBABLY won’t regret it. And even if you do regret it you’ll probably still enjoy it.

Reviewed on the PS5, with full voice acting and enhanced graphics – I assume.