I bought (from Epic) & began Disco Elysium last night. I'm approximately a little over 2 hours into this.
This has some of the best writing, prose, and descriptions I've seen written in a game since any of these games - Shadowrun Returns; Shadowrun Dragonfall; Planescape: Torment (PS:T); and Torment: Tides of Numenera. If you're looking for a game that you can read, where it reads out like a good book, you'll love that aspect of the game. If those games were up your alley b/c of the writing, you'll love this.
The game is...bizarre. Your character that you play as, has the amnesia problem...similar to the Nameless One in PS:T. So, you don't remember who you are, what you're doing, what's your job, and other stuff of that sort. You wake up after a drunken stupor in a seedy hotel, where something really bad went down nearby. You're to investigate this incident, to find out what happened to this person was and "whodunnit"; and to also find our who you are and what has been going on with your character.
Of course, this all is just a part of everything Disco has going on, TBH. You'll be running, walking, and stumbling into other areas, side-quests, items, Lore, and whatnot everywhere. The game's loaded already with NPC's to talk to and things to do. If that isn't enough, you also....have conversations with yourself. Since your character's an alcoholic and an addict, you are constantly dealing w/ thoughts & visions in your head - and these can happen even while talking to a NPC that's really there.
These parts of you, your skills and stats that you "talk to", also feel like NPC's to talk to, as things like "Logic" and other skills talk to you and you have conversations & dialogues with them. It feels...often very meta and very weird, but also down-right shocking and/or hilarious at times, too. These parts of your personality - like Logic, Ego, etc - might even interject with you - and it does this a lot, too - while you're talking to a NPC. I really gives this feeling off of...something is really wrong w/ your character.
Based on your stats and whatnot (like most RPG's) and how you react to things, it feels like already...there's a few things I might've and could've done different. I literally talked my way out of - well, at least so far - from paying my hotel room bill for damages and for the room b/c...well, the place was trashed; supposedly by my character. There are constant checks from the game against your stats, which will pop-up and let you know if you failed or succeeded it too, letting you know if you have extra dialogue options, extra information the game will relay to you (about the game, its lore, the game-world, characters, areas, etc).
I haven't ran into any combat here, as...most of it supposedly happens as skill-checks and things while in Dialogue; and not in the old-school traditional sense of combat like you'd see in real-time basic games (like Baldur's Gate series or PS:T) or turn-based games (like say Shadowrun Returns; Fallout 1; and Fallout 2).
On my 10700KF; 16 GB RAM; and RTX 3070 PC at 1080p here: 60fps, no problem. Game isn't graphically special in the technical sense, but I do really like it's art-style. Looks like an oil painting in motion where pastels were used to make the graphics, to give this game its unique style and look here - which makes tons of sense here, given your characters issues here w/ drinking too much and doing way too many drugs.
Only a little over 2 hours in here and I've barely walked anywhere in this game-world and this game's already shining like gold, just from the interesting writing, prose, conversations, some of the odd side-quests, and the unique look of this game. I love the writing, the characters, the weirdness, the mystery, the comedy, and everything else this game has thrown at me, so far.
I really can't wait to play some more, sometime soon.
