Esoteric Ebb

The game looked fun and definitely hooked me in the beginning. Unfortunately upon reaching the underground area I experience crashes anywhere from instant to a few minutes of gameplay. I have tried a few tips suggested by the community, but no dice. This has made it impossible for me to play or recommend.

I went into this game expecting something pretty good, a Disco Elysium-like but not quite at the writing level of Disco. Something D&D-coded but not quite at the level of Planescape: Torment. I was NOT expecting brilliance. This game can proudly stand in the company of Planescape and Disco. While the games that inspired Esoteric Ebb had a lot of gravitas, but a few moments of levity, Ebb decided to make it more light-hearted, but certainly not afraid to be deep. It treats the political choices remarkably thoughtfully. Your internal dialogue pares down 24 voices from Disco to six "chimes," representing your D&D stats (and also parts of your body.) It allows for much more personality to shine through. If you don't want to speak to yourself, there's Snell, your goblin Kim-analogue. Snell and Kim are both there as foils to prevent you from getting too unhinged (at one point, Snell scolds you like you're a stupid dog for attempting to jump down a hole, in a hilarious exchange,) but Snell is different in that he serves a goblin tribe at odds with the group that sent you on your mission. Suffice to say, the characters and the writing are all incredible. The graphics paint a lovely world, and the dungeons are expertly drawn (you can actually miss passages that are drawn to be hidden.) The ruins give just enough of a hint about the history of the world to satisfy your world-building appetite without dropping into "telling instead of showing." Combat is reduced to a series of checks. You receive dice rolls for damage, but it doesn't appear as though your opponents do. Some may find that disappointing as it doesn't feel like D&D, but I feel it's a decent compromise between Disco (which only had one combat encounter of sorts,) and Planescape (which had WAY too much combat.) If I could nitpick at one thing I didn't like, it's how it handles death. If you drop below 0 hitpoints you get saving throws. If you fail them, it's game over. If you succeed them, you get a negative on all your rolls until your next long rest. On day 1 I ended up with 5 negative points and failed just about everything for the rest of the day. Dying and getting a game over is actually the preferable option, because you'd be save scumming! (There is a way to make succeeding a death saving throw a good thing, but I didn't receive it until late in the game.) Overall? I loved it. Maybe even a hair better than Disco. Still not quite as good as Planescape Torment, but your mileage may vary. I really hope this one stands the test of time... and the game does tease a sequel. I would buy that in an INSTANT if it came out, but Esoteric Ebb would work just as well if it's a franchise of one.

egoteric egg

VOICE. This game has an effervescent soul, now it needs voice acting

While it is inspired by Planescape: Torment and Disco Elysium it is not some fan fiction game with references all over the place. It does point to PT a bit tongue-in-cheek in the beginning and it has similar dialog mechanics as Disco but it's an original game that stands on its own. It uses known skills such as Dexterity and Charisma instead of whatever Disco was doing. I recently completed it and Steam says I played it for 25 hours, my actual playtime is probably closer to 21 hours but I know I left some loose ends. Short thoughts: It's a great game and well worth the price of admission. It has lovely and varied music, impeccable performance, it runs snappy, loads fast and I didn't encounter a single bug. It has massive world-building and most characters have a lot to say - well, a lot of text for you to read because PT had more VA than this game and it didn't have a lot. Longer thoughts: I'm constantly hitting my spell slots with my mouse when moving around, so the game stops to ask why the hell I want to use that spell right now. Annoying. The map can be confusing as to how to get from where you are to where you want to go. The map doesn't even tell you where you are, with a little red dot or something like that, you have to actually read the map each time. During a lot of slow sequences, the game takes control so you can only watch and wait, unsure if you have to click something or if the game is actually progressing. The game needs to tell you that TAB highlights interactable objects. There is a ton of lore in this game and most of it has no influence on gameplay. It feels as if the creator had 3+ years going on and then begrudgingly had to accept that he was making a game, not writing a book. The deal is the same with spells and special abilities, even a particular sidekick, a lot of them you get to use once or not at all before the game is over. Planescape did the same, it set up a huge world but you only interacted with a small part of it, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Still, I felt there was around 12 hours more game in here but that it had to be wrapped up and shipped. I really enjoyed a lot of the dialog, especially what it means to "glass" someone and how to talk to the Golden Horde. I hope to see (and play) more from this developer.

I was drawn by the art style and the D&D theme. While I've played Disco Elysium and I've liked it OK... I didn't expect this game to be so heavily influenced by it. The visual dialogue structure is pretty much a copy of it, which maybe is on me for expecting something unique just inspired by it. It also drags a lot. There is so much pointless dialogue. While it was kind of fun in the start, it started to get annoying pretty fast, because you are stuck in an internal monologue that neither moves the plot nor gives you information. I expected to be able to make choices but, for the time I played, there wasn't much I had any choice in. Perhaps I'll try going back to it after some time when I forget my initial disappointment from what I assumed would be a funny D&D campaign, choose your own adventure type of story/game.

Apolitical response...