Game profile
Disco Elysium
An amnesiac detective investigates a case in a rundown city while trying to piece together his own shattered psyche. The sheer amount of text is staggering, yet the writing ranks among the smartest and funniest the medium has ever produced.
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What kind of game this is
At its core this is RPG / Adventure, set in the present day. Visually it is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic, and the overall tone stays dark throughout. The structure is guided rather than open, so you are moved along instead of dropped into a map. It rewards long uninterrupted stretches more than quick check-ins.
Difficulty stays forgiving, so progress rarely depends on your reflexes. The narrative carries the whole thing, and the mechanics serve it. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It sits in the mid price bracket.
What stands out
- Outstanding writing
- No traditional combat
- Deep character development
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- you can sit down for a proper long stretch without interruptions
- the writing matters more to you than the mechanics
- you want zero frustration and no difficulty wall
- you play alone and want a complete experience without other people
- you prefer a darker, heavier tone
Look elsewhere if
- you need real difficulty to stay interested
- you skip cutscenes and want to get to the gameplay
- you only ever get short bursts of play time
- you want something light and easy going
How long is Disco Elysium?
About 30 hours in total. At three evenings a week and two hours each, you will be busy for roughly 5 weeks, or 15 sessions.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 89 out of 100, which puts it above 82 percent of the 1276 games here and at rank 180 overall. That is a strong score, comfortably above what most releases manage.
For comparison, RPG averages 82 points across the database, so this one sits 7 points above its own genre. The figure rests on 1218 collected ratings.
Released in 2019, so it has 7 years behind it. Usually cheap by now and the rough edges are long fixed.
The facts
- Release year
- 2019
- Genres
- RPG, Adventure
- Playtime
- approx. 30 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Relaxed, forgiving
- Story weight
- Carries the whole game
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Present day
- Visual style
- Stylised
- Price bracket
- Mid price
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 89 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disco Elysium | 2019 | approx. 30 hrs. | 89 | Mid price |
| Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 | 2025 | approx. 30 hrs. | 73 | Full price |
| Back to the Dawn | 2025 | approx. 25 hrs. | n/a | Budget |
| To the Moon | 2011 | approx. 4 hrs. | 83 | Budget |
If you liked this, try these
- 73/100 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Shared: RPG, Adventure, Present day
- n/a Back to the Dawn Shared: RPG, Adventure, Present day
- 83/100 To the Moon Shared: RPG, Adventure, Present day, shorter
- 78/100 Zero Parades: For Dead Spies Shared: RPG, Adventure
- 88/100 Control Resonant Shared: RPG, Adventure, Present day
- 79/100 Unavowed Shared: RPG, Adventure, Present day, shorter