ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

I am on my 5th playthrough of this, and can thoroughly recommend. Mechanically, it builds on and improves Disco Elysium's skill, thought, and damage systems. Some elements at first seem simplified relative to DE, but this is a cunning disguise. Mitigating damage, allocating skills, and balancing the benefits of thoughts with their downsides is very engaging to me. In particular, the risk of "violating" certain thoughts by acting "out of character"—temporarily deactivating the thought and providing a debuff—gives the thought system much-needed depth. I love the setting, the characters and world, and the tension at the heart of the story between being a good person or friend, and being a good spy. Without wanting to give away too many specific details (as it is best enjoyed blind), this is a game all about navigating the space between these two completing drives. Do I help this character I like, knowing that doing so may result in potentially failing my mission? Who do I treat like pieces on the board, and who do I treat like comrades? When do I compromise my humanity, and when do I compromise my role as a Spy? And if all of the above doesn't yet grab you, I will just add that, to me, this it is also a game about being a cool danger-lesbian spy, and I enjoy that.

One of the best-written games I've ever played, up there with Planescape: Torment, Thronebreaker and its spiritual predecessor, Disco Elysium. Funny, wistful and provacative.

I actually like this better than DE. The story is more straight forward in a good way and I feel less loss. Lots of interesting threads to pull at

Эта игра сплошное разочарование от пят до головы. Сразу чувствуется что из проекта ушло не мало людей. Это даже не игра, это просто продукт - пародия на Disco Elysium. Мне жаль этот проект. В особенности не хватает старых голосов для озвучки.

You are in a city where everything is watched and every word is overheard. You are Hershel Wilk, codename Cascade - an agent pulled into the dirty machinery of political warfare. Disguises. Reinventions. Chasing clues and secrets. Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts. In the background: brooding noir music, a deep double bass, and soft, unsettling rustles. Nothing can stop you from untangling this web. Nothing - except your own darkness, painfully clawing at the decisions you have to make. What price are you willing to pay for the truth? Are you ready? No matter who wins this fight, there will be no celebratory fireworks or confetti at the finish line. Zero parades. .ιllιlι.ιl. Вы в городе, где всё отслеживается и прослушивается. Вас зовут Хершел Уилк и вы агент с кодовым псевдонимом Каскад, втянутый в политические разборки. Маскировка, перевоплощение, поиск информации и улик. Мысли, мысли, мысли. И на фоне всего этого тревожная нуарная музыка, густой контрабас и легкие шорохи. Ничто не мешает мыслить и раскручивать запутанный клубок этой паутины. Только темное прошлое и собственное «я» становятся помехой, когда нужно быть просто инструментом, винтиком в этой системе. Какую цену ты готов заплатить за информацию? Готов ли ты? Кто бы ни победил в этой схватке, ни для кого в конце не будет ни фейерверков, ни конфетти. Ноль парадов.

Loved Disco Elysium and saw the 'same studio' made another game along the same vein as Disco. However the charm is not there and makes sense because a man convicted of fraud for building a pyramid scheme, illegally tookover the studio and axed the people who made Disco Elysium what it is. This game isn't bad but had I known ZA/UM's baggage and that the current owner is a fraudulent scumbag I never would have purchased

Meh, good start, good middle, terrible ending Fells like your choices don't matter, your character doesn't grow, I left the game with a sour taste in my mouth but not for what they intended. In Disco Elysium you had real enemies that you had to conquer, here is more like "yeah, you passed 1 test and now they are your best friends with no strings attatched, just ask the owner of the biggest enterprise on the region abou secret meetings and how they went, he will tell you everithing" PSEUDOPOD was the biggest dissapointment, I got everything back, every clue and had no chance to help him recover besides imprinting myself. Take that and the bugs, missing voicelines, jank controls and the price I wouldn't recommend the game.

I bet making this game was hard, with all the backlash coming from all sides, and still continue coming. Yet they prevailed, and it's an amazing game. As you can guess it has a lot of common things with Disco Elysium, the same painty vibrant art, another completely made-up world with its own politics, economics, technology, nations and religion, the same amount of heavy text, where everyone is a philosopher and a poet: a tailor, a drunkard on the floor, a harmless door and your 15 skills, all contradicting yourself. Disco Elysium is of course a unique novelty, an impossible project somehow manifesting and surviving, full of dreams and romanticized concepts. But I liked Zero Parades more, it's less ambiguous, more concrete, more fleshed-out somehow. Besides the idea of a retro sci-fi spy detective flick is just way cooler in my mind. It was probably just more of my vibe. I absolutely loved the voice acting, even though it had many issues on release, loved the weird, eccentric and loveable characters, with Dr. Gonza probably being the craziest and freakiest one. I loved the episodes of espionage action, even though it was still text and turn based. But I do feel that the game lacks any sort of memorable soundtrack, apart from some written tracks like Cover The Moon. That is a shame. It also runs really poorly on Steam Deck, which is strange, considering how simple the game looks. The skill checks could me logical or less punishing. Juggling clothes around like a clown feels off a second time around. I guess I got a semi-okay ending, although it could be better, or not - who know. But I'm really interested in replaying as a more cold-hearted calculating and sacrificing spy next time. I also want to revisit Disco Elysium now.

Last night I finished Zero Parades for Dead Spies, hands down the best game I’ve played this year. The stories, the dialogues that blend so seamlessly with the narrator’s interjections and descriptions, the characters I’m already missing — characters who made me laugh, cry, and think deeply — the genuine feeling that my choices are actually shaping the outcome of every conversation and event, the soundtrack, the art style… Absolutely everything about this game resonated with me so strongly that I have zero desire to play anything else right now. Disco Elysium remains an unmatched experience, yet Zero Parades comes incredibly close to that same level of brilliance. I never would have expected it, especially after all the team changes Za/Um went through in recent months. Eurogamer’s 5/5 review carries the subtitle “The RPG we don’t deserve” — and I couldn’t agree more, particularly after hearing that the game has sold very poorly. Do we deserve a masterpiece like this? Clearly not.

First off, I'd like to say this game isn't terrible. This is an okay game, but knowing what I know now I would not have paid $35 for it. This is a $20-$25 game that was bumped up because it was "brought to you by the makers of Disco Elysium". With that out of the way, lets go over why I believe this game isn't worth $35. I've played for around 7 (6.9) hours and I still constantly get lost. If I want to avoid circling the same area over and over, I have to fast travel. Then, after fast traveling I have to kind of hope I'll stumble in the right direction to get where I need to go. "But bippo, you're probably just an idiot. I never get lost and always know where I'm going" I hear you say. Well, lets go over something that isn't just up to the kind of player playing the game; bugs. When I was trying to meet the Doctor in party alley, I pressed tab to try and discover things in the area, and saw a lady standing off in the corner. Obviously intrigued by this mystery lady in the shadows, I walked over and began a conversation, only to realize the dialogue was built in a way that suggests you're already familiar with her. Uh oh, now I have a quest to meet some people I've never heard of and the immersion is almost completely gone. Okay, the game just came out not too long ago. Maybe it's too harsh to call out bugs right away before we get patches to fix them? Fair. Lets go over the "branding" around this game. "brought to you by the makers of Disco Elysium" might get you a few more downloads, but it also invites comparisons out the wazoo. In Disco Elysium, it was believable when harry would make odd choices or have weird things to say, because they set him up as that kind of character. You have no idea who he is, and neither does he. You and harry go on a journey of self discovery that could lead to any kind of interactions you could think of. In zero parades for dead spies, Cascade is already set up. In my opinion, there is no reason as to why cascade would have any of that ridiculous DE humor other than the developers saying "hey remember when you could do and say weird stuff in disco? Here some more of that" and often times it falls flat for me. It feels forced. I'd describe the game as comical, not funny. Disco Elysium did a lot of things well, but my favorite was how it made me forget I was following a script. There are characters you have to talk to drive the story forward and it feels rewarding to do so. When you click on them you never know if harry already talked to them before the game started and what kind of hijinks might ensue because of this. This game insists on you gathering irrelevant information for the sake of worldbuilding, which is boring. The best way to sum up my point here is that Disco feels player driven, whereas Zero parades feels author driven, which works well for books but not games. Disco feels like an insane adventure full of excitement and hilarity from start to finish. Zero Parades feels like talking to people on the train to work, or in the waiting room of a doctors office. It just fails to capture your imagination and continues to drone on and on That being said, I don't HATE this game. It does have a sense of charm to it and the writers are just as talented as they've always been. I just hope this game is taken as a learning experience and applied to future games. In conclusion, this game is 100% worth playing, but get it on sale... and when you do, forget disco entirely. Give it a chance on its own right. It can stand alone, just not well