Their first game after Disco Elysium. Can it deliver?

Comments · 959

• DI

  @dialectiks · 3 months ago

  Genuinely the only person I'd trust to review this game

  3.6K

• DA

  @davidd.6448 · 3 months ago

  Mr Hobo is helping me form my opinion

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• BR

  @BruckerHouse · 3 months ago

  Jamrock Hobo is helping me find my review

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• PO

  @polkjm · 3 months ago

  I couldn&apos;t agree more; anytime Zero Parades suffers, it&apos;s because they tried too hard to be Disco Elysium 2. There&apos;s a genuinely good game here, held back by its broken past, almost like some kind of ex-wife that keeps coming up in conversation, stuck in rose-tinted nostalgia for something that will never come back. What this leads me to believe is that if the original team was still on this, it would&apos;ve been a masterpiece.<br><br>The worst parts are when it tries too hard to have fancy writing even in mundane moments and descriptions. It&apos;s just jarring

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• GU

  @guysome3263 · 3 months ago

  The part of hitting your fatigue/anxiety/delirium threshold and it decaying your skills has to be one of the best representations of trauma I have seen in a game.

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• JP

  @jpc2384 · 3 months ago

  I don&apos;t have much to add but this was essentially my experience with the game. It doesn&apos;t reach the heights of Disco, but really, was anyone expecting it to? Disco itself was lightning in a bottle, and Zero Parades managed to, in the moment-to-moment experience, more or less scratch the same itch, even if it doesn&apos;t do so with the same richness as Disco does. For what it actually is (and not for what it isn&apos;t), I quite enjoyed it and think it&apos;s basically a success.

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• HE

  @HeronHero · 3 months ago

  I have to agree with you that when Zero Parades focuses on being an earnest spy thriller, its at its strongest. I got most strongly attached to the game when it was talking about the dark inner workings of the various spy agencies, how your gang got hung out to dry five years ago, skill checks around things like decoding encrypted signals, and the apathy of a world where History wasn&apos;t yet ended, like in Elysium, but frozen, and unable to thaw. It was most grating when Hershel, the communist spy, could never have an option to mount a defence of communism to others beyond memes. It was also weird that, as far as I remember, there also weren&apos;t any options around Hershel considering defection, since the Opera did not treat her or her assets well at all.

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• CD

  @CD_Culted · 3 months ago

  It&apos;s irrational that I keep comparing my new girlfriend to my ex-wife.<br>She&apos;s clearly someone else, but every now and again she does something that reminds me of her.<br>I clearly have a type; I miss her.<br>I&apos;m a communist now.

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• FL

  @fluffer324 · 3 months ago

  I have to give huge props for the actually genuine review. It would have been so easy to identify Zero Parades as merely a product of the studio that caused the fracture of disco elysium and simply paint it with that broad brush as negative. This honestly might be the most earnest review I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to when considering your entire online presence is the love and adoration for disco elysium. Much love

  293

• SH

  @Shingoenjoyer · 3 months ago

  The only person I trust to review this game.

  40

• AL

  @AlbinoHammer · 3 months ago (edited)

  You’re right about the writing being a bit purple prose-ish at times (there’s a description at the beginning of the game that made me go “huh???” When I first read it when all they needed to say was “You speak into the phone”). I feel Disco has these issues too at times but it feels more authentic I guess, whereas Zero Parades’ feels like it’s the result of trying to mimic Disco’s writing too hard, hence unnecessarily complicated descriptions for telephones or stuffed toys. <br><br>The art direction is pretty good tho.

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• UH

  @uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhok · 3 months ago

  150% agree with your point about the writing at large. after 60 hours of ZP, i started replaying disco - it’s counterintuitive to say this about such a verbose game, but i’m struck by how much ,,, restraint disco’s writing has. i think ZP would’ve been a lot better off if it had like, maybe 2-3 months more to cook and a team of merciless editors pruning the text. it’s basic stuff too like think about the images and metaphors you’re using in one para, do you really need more than one etc. this is esp. obvious in the scenic descriptions (i.e. the ZP equivalent of the shivers checks). the imagery in disco is lush, but sharp and pithy, so it just takes 2-3 images for me to imagine a whole neighbourhood in revachol, what it would be like to live and die there. felt like i could read paras and paras of the weather in portofiro and get nowhere.

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