Recent reviews by Princess Umbra

Game of the Year material. Sunk way more hours into this than many other games of its type.

This game is /weird/. Strange and oftentimes surreal. But at the same time it's one of the most actually real games I've ever played.

This is mostly all thanks to the core mechanic(s) of the game: The skills/traits system and the thorough integration of that into the dialogue system. There are many many skills/traits in this game, and you can invest in them for the most part freely, though limited by your core stats (which can be customized at game start). But here's where things get interesting. These skills/traits are used for both the traditional role of completing tasks... but also used almost as characters in and of themselves. Characters that are ever-present, constantly chiming in with their possibly helpful but often flawed advice.

You see, the main character is one of the strangest I've seen in a while. Not only is he not sure who he is, but he also tends to personify his own mental faculties. So when he gets the urge to go get a drink (He's an alcoholic), that's probably your Electrochemistry skill giving you sass. And if you pump up your Authority skill to the MAX, he's going to butt in quite often when people disrespect you (Which will happen a lot) and demand that you assert your dominance -- even if that's not exactly the best idea at the time. Each of these skills is a flawed, unreliable character, giving you very subjective information on the circumstances you come into contact with. However, this flawed information is often extremely important to navigating the game's core mystery. And so it falls on you as the player to figure out which bits of information are important, which are not, and which are actually traps.

Which brings me to my next point: The game works quite similar to real life, in that very often, your first impulse isn't actually the best one, not all choices lead to good outcomes, and often failures will provide tangible benefits which will help you overcome other obstacles. Saying the wrong thing to someone can make it harder to convince them to listen to you in the future. Or maybe something you do early on will have consequences later on down the road that you didn't even think were in the realm of possibility.

So prepare yourself. Trust your instincts, but temper them with common sense. Keep your wits about you, because you will need it. If Disco Elysium is anything, it's a roller coaster of a ride.

Fairly good Point and Click Adventure style game. The story is pretty interesting, but the advertised 'personality' system is extremely shallow and only really amounts to a few decisions you make that affects abilities you get which interact with very few of the game's puzzles. It's still worth playing, but for the story and Point and Click Adventure style gameplay rather than its advertised 'depth'.

Entering this in the 'haunts my dreams' category for the 2017 game nominations, because this game has been the game I consistently come back to month after month, update after update. I've played it since release, I own almost every DLC, I've played in almost every region you can, I've unlocked quite a lot of achievements, and it has the most hours played of any game in my huge library of games.

If any game has shown that I can't get it out of my soul, it's this one.

--2018 Update: This game is still an amazing play, and maybe I didn't play it nearly as much this year as last, but I still feel it's very amazing.

Despite what a lot of neg bombers would have you believe, this game is still very worth playing. An amazingly fun coop experience which is based on the style of Left 4 Dead. The addition of microtransactions which are completely optional don't change that. If you like coop games which require team coordination, and are objective-based, then you will like this game.

Amazing old game with a twist on traditional real time strategty elements. Instead of directly controlling your heroes, you have to entice them to do your bidding. One of my favorite classic games.