Review for Elysium disk. PC game, the video game came out on 15/10/2019
Released exclusively on PC in October 2019 and landed on Mac last year, Elysium disk turned out to be one of the best games of the year as well one of the biggest WRPGs (as far as sui generis) of the generation which is now coming to an end. Fortunately, last December ZA / UM announced the final version of the game, with subtitles The Final Cut, released on March 30 for PC (base game owners can download the update for free), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Google Stadia.
Before analyzing the news brought by The Final Cut, let's see briefly what Disco Elysium is, referring you to the review of the original version for a more extensive discussion, since (almost) nothing has changed compared to two years ago; on the other hand, something has been added.
The work of the Estonians of ZA / UM is a third-person role-playing game with isometric view, set in an open world context (not vast) e heavily focused on dialogue, which replace the classic fights to which the genre has accustomed us over the years. As an investigator with psychotropic problems, the player explores the infamous district of Martinaise like in a point-and-click graphic adventure, interacting with people and objects highlighted by the cursor. The protagonist's parameters influence the outcome of the interactions, adding to the sum resulting from the roll of two dice, just like in the old paper role-playing games. At the start of the game the player can distribute the skill points at will among the four primary areas (each of which includes six different skills) or choose one of the predefined sets, and subsequently acquire one at each level up.
The predominant component of Disco Elysium is the textual one: all the interactions are, in fact, textual, and the dialogues are of fundamental importance, even the inner ones of the protagonist, enhanced by theaddition of a really good dubbing (in English only), which is one of the main innovations offered by this Final Cut edition. Of course, to truly enjoy the game a good knowledge of the English language is required, as the texts have been translated into all major European languages. Not that the English used is prohibitive (but it is certainly of an above average level), but the enormous amount of texts can end up tiring those who do not have an instant understanding of the Albion language.
The second addition made by the developers is the Political Vision Quest, four side quests discarded for Disco Elysium but recovered and reworked for this The Final Cut. Politics is one of the central themes of ZA / UM's work, which conceived a world in which four of the most influential ideologies of the twentieth century are in conflict: communism, fascism, ultraliberalism and moralism; unsurprisingly, each of these new missions is dedicated to one of the aforementioned political currents. The other additions are small things: a couple of more songs for the excellent soundtrack of the alternative rock group British Sea Power, some new artwork and some animations, which enrich an already exciting visual sector, as you can see from the images that accompany this article.
The Final Cut represents the debut of Disco Elysium on consoles: in March the version for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 was released, while in the coming months it will also debut on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S. The game has been tested on PlayStation 4, on which we have not found the technical defects highlighted by users in recent days; in any case the developers have already partially solved the problem and are working on a completely resolving patch. Relatively long loading times should also be noted.
But the main flaw of the console version is not of a technical nature: simply, Disco Elysium, in consideration of its point-and-click component, it is much better played with a mouse. Using the controller is not a terrible experience, but certainly more cumbersome, which is why those who have the possibility to choose the platform should focus on the computer.
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is the definitive version of a game that had already been universally recognized in 2019 as a masterpiece, so it is impossible not to recommend it, also due to the additions that make ZA / UM's work even more complete.
► Disco Elysium is an RPG-Adventure game developed and published by ZA / UM for PC, the video game was released on 15/10/2019
