ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

It's really good. Don't expect the story to hit nearly as close and personal as Disco Elysium, since the game is not about that. The soundtrack is also pretty mediocre, while Disco had probably one of the best soundtracks in gaming (I'd say soundtrack carried that the game in many respects). Other than that ZP is an improvement over Disco in every way imaginable. Firstly, Hershel doesn't come off nearly as solipsistic as Harry. A lot more attention is given to things that exist outside of Hershel's head compared to Disco and Harry: namely the world and other characters within it. Secondly, the story is good. It's both more interesting and much more focused than Disco. Most quests you do and most characters you interact with tie into the main plot somehow, there is almost no pointless filler and it also makes the story feel a lot less contrived. Characters and their relationships tie into the events and their consequences, which is not easy to do well with a large cast, but ZP is good at it. Thirdly, the game is humorous, but it can take itself seriously and it doesn't force you into being a lunatic unless that's what you want. You can play Hershel as a consummate professional, but you can also have fun, and make jokes that don't come off as you being mentally ill or attention-seeking. You can also play Hershel like a maniac manic if that's more up your alley. The fact that the game actually allows you to act normal and doesn't make fun of you for it is extremely welcome. When it comes to politics, even if you do not have the slightest interest in politics, have no interest in what some artsy commies have to say about them or hold views that are diametrically opposed to communism, you can still easily enjoy this game. The politics don't insist upon themselves and don't disrupt the pacing on the game (which is crazy because this is a game about spies and international shadowy plots that heavily alludes to the Cold War and the post-Soviet life in Eastern Europe immediately after the fall of USSR manages to come off less politics obsessed than something like Esoteric Ebb). Anyway, great game. I liked it more than Disco in almost every way (except the soundtrack). There are some rough edges for the devs to patch, but I suggest you buy it and play it, you will have fun.

Inicialmente, esclareço que essa análise não levará em conta todo o problema envolvendo os donos da ZA/UM e os criadores do antecessor, Disco Elysium. Em respeito aos programadores, artistas, dubladores, roteiristas, enfim, os trabalhadores do estúdio, Zero Parades merece uma apreciação honesta. Logo ao iniciar, o jogador já percebe que é claramente um jogo inspirado em Disco Elysium. A direção de arte é evidentemente influenciada por ele, mesmo assim possui a sua individualidade e características próprias. As ilustrações dos cartões de objetivos são lindíssimas e de um dos artistas que também trabalhou em algumas artes de Disco Elysium. As mecânicas de fadiga, ansiedade e delírio foram um acerto, sendo influenciadas por acontecimentos e escolhas da personagem principal nos diálogos. Elas podem subir ou reduzir, sendo também possível controlar os níveis utilizando substâncias. Alcançando certos níveis há punições temporárias em atributos, e se chegar o máximo perde-se um ponto de atributo, o que é uma consequência grande. Outra mecânica que foi aprimorada foi a das ações. Em Disco Elysium existe um apenas um momento na qual ela é usada de fato, no clímax da história. Já em Zero Parades, existem diversos momentos na qual as ações podem ocorrer e havendo opções de escolha por parte do jogador, por exemplo, beneficiando uma ação mais direta e violenta, ou uma ação mais furtiva. Os atributos em Zero Parades também conversam com a personagem, como em Disco Elysium, todavia são narrados sempre com a mesma voz e não possuem tanto carisma quanto os do jogo anterior da ZA/UM, o que achei uma pena, mas isto está ligado também ao nível da escrita. Falando no roteiro, a história é boa, engajante até o fim, mas a qualidade da escrita, embora ótima para padrões de jogos eletrônicos, claramente não está no mesmo patamar da do excepcional Disco Elysium, isso é bem perceptível avaliando a profundidade da construção de mundo, do desenvolvimento da personagem principal e dos aspectos políticos da história. Inclusive, essa comparação quase sempre será brutal com esses jogos inspirados no primeiro jogo da ZA/UM, por ter estabelecido um padrão muito alto de qualidade. Dito isso, Zero Parades é o segundo melhor jogo desse estilo. Quem gostou de Disco Elysium, provavelmente vai gostar de Zero Parades se der uma chance.

Чтобы увидеть слёзы фанов диско, достаточно просто купить эту игру

Очень интересная игра. В разы более проработана чем нудный диско. Диско не плохая игра, просто эта часть закрывает её слабые аспекты. Жаль что комьюнити засрало

I approached Zero Parades knowing it can't surpass DE, and hoping it will just be a good game. Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games of all time, and everything that has happened with its creators and ZA/UM is horrible for everyone. For me though, this is a game made by people who believed in it and poured their everything into it, and that's what matters. My partner actually played through first, and basically the minute she rolled credits, she insisted that I start my playthrough so she could watch. What's immediately apparent is that this is from people who made DE, but still very much its own thing. What hits you the longer you play is just how special it is. Trying to convince people who object to this game's existence is a fool's errand, but if you're on the fence, hopefully I can convince you to give it a shot. Rather than highlight all the ways ZP is similar to DE, I want to talk about the areas where it's different (and better, in some cases). There is a ton of climbing and jumping to reach new areas, and walking speed is faster - so getting around feels more dynamic than it did in DE. Rather than checks and rolls being dependent solely on your stats and equipment, ZP adds three status bars to manage: Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium. In addition, you can give yourself an extra die for checks, at the expense of increasing one of those statuses. For the most part, what this means for the player is that you might fail fewer checks than you would in DE, but you have to constantly manage those statuses to even give yourself a chance at succeeding those checks. The game gives you many different ways to do that - from consumables to interactive objects in the environment to sleeping, among others - and I appreciated the extra level of stress it added to the whole experience. There's also the thing I think ZP does that really makes it stand apart from DE, and that's the "boss battles." You will have several encounters throughout the game where you have to resolve a situation with another character (or characters), and every one of these encounters was just awesome. These feel like chapter endings or turning points in the story, and you have multiple ways to approach them and there are multiple outcomes. They're just great, and the final "boss battle" is one of my favorite gaming sequences in recent memory. While the music does not stand up to DE's brilliant soundtrack, it has some really excellent moments. Music is actually pretty core to the story, which I loved. There's also a more connected, coherent aspect to the game's characters and optional quests when compared to DE - this could be a pro or a con, depending on the player. The characters in ZP are excellent, and I was pretty sad to end the game and my time with them. I would absolutely take another game in this world. It's not perfect - you don't suffer the same dynamic consequences from failing a check that you do in DE, there are times when you wish they animated more of what's happening, other times where the scene has updated before the story gets to it (essentially spoiling what is going to happen), the time mechanic can be frustrating when you need to access someone/something and are in-game hours away from them being available with no great option for fast forwarding time - but honestly, if you loved DE, chances are you will love Zero Parades. I know there are very complicated feelings and issues around these games and this studio, but taken on its own, this is an excellent RPG and found a spot in my top 100 games of all time.

6.7 XD

Zero Parades surpasses Disco Elysium in some areas while falling short in others. Still, it would be disingenuous to say this isn't a very good game. Playing Disco Elysium felt like experiencing a work of art set in a unique world filled with political and philosophical depth. Zero Parades, on the other hand, feels more like reading a great spy novel. The game truly shines when it stops trying to imitate Disco Elysium's political discussions and instead focuses on telling a compelling espionage thriller. I really enjoyed the many twists and turns throughout the story, especially the ending, which changes depending on the choices you make. The remaining artists at ZA/UM, including Anton Vill, have done an excellent job creating beautiful environments, UI, portraits, and visual effects. From a gameplay perspective, Zero Parades improves on nearly every aspect of Disco Elysium's formula. The new Pressure and Exertion systems add meaningful risk-reward decisions to every skill check. I also appreciated the many scenes, similar to the Tribunal sequence in Disco Elysium, that force split-second decisions. Throughout the game you meet plenty of memorable and eccentric characters, but a few overstay their welcome by yapping a LOT without adding much to the story or worldbuilding (Un & Deux and Cardio Grampa being the biggest offenders.) I wish the game had spent less time on quirky side characters and more time developing its most compelling ones, such as Melita, Duchess, Goat Eye, Silhouette, and several others. The soundtrack does a solid job establishing the game's atmosphere, but it lacks tracks that are as memorable as Disco Elysium's Whirling-in-Rags themes. That said, "Superbloc, Baby" and "Luck and Skill" are standout tracks that stayed with me long after I finished the game. Overall, while Zero Parades doesn't quite reach the artistic highs of Disco Elysium, it succeeds in being a gripping spy thriller with stronger gameplay systems than its predecessor.

A beautifully bitter, sorrowfully sweet time. My excitement for this game was sealed with the title; I'm always a sucker for an interesting name, and Zero Parades For Dead Spies is one of the best I've heard for a long, long time. The more I learned about it, the more my interest grew- enough that I snatched access to the closed beta back at the start of the year. That taste ensured that this would be a day one purchase for me. Nearly half a year later, and I've finally finished it. Like so many things that transcend the bounds of 'content,' my thoughts concerning Zero Parades are difficult to parse, and harder still to express; almost impossible to do so really, without constant comparisons to another obvious game, yet still I'll try. Zero Parades is ambitious. It knows it's stuck in the shadow, and is far from content being there. It lashes out at some expectations while playing into others. It uses pity and self-loathing as masks to disguise its point, and while its pitches stray from the mark sometimes, I'm the type of person to applaud honest effort regardless of gain; there's so much of that here, but don't mistake it for artistic moonshine. Many, many moments in this game hit, and hit hard. Despite its nature, this is not an imitation. In some ways, that change results in things feeling more 'gamified.' Resource management is much more apparent, and if you're trying to play perfectly- like I do- that can result in long, tedious stretches of time where you're trying to push through debuffs without suffering anything of consequence. Likewise, the space of time immediately before the finale, where I'd wrapped most of the main plot threads and all of the side content, saw me repeating the same interaction over and over and over and over and over again to skip through time into the window where I could advance the story. As a Shenmue fan, it's a familiar dance for me, but I would definitely expect this to grate most people. There are other quibbles- none major, but some that aren't exactly minor. For a game that is almost entirely text and voice, it's bizarre when the two don't line up. This was an issue I had in the beta, and frankly, some three months and change from launch, it's a little annoying that there were still so many examples of it. It's far from constant, however, and perhaps somewhat understandable given the sheer heft of script that's here. Yet the biggest thorn in my experience was in regards to a specific quest; it was the one time I had to look up how to proceed, because, in the order of events as I'd done them, the game gave absolutely no hint as to how to do it. I despise hand holding in games, yet for a title that revels in you *not* making every dialogue choice just for the heck of it, finding out that you had to in this specific encounter did bother me a fair amount. Yet these scratches and dents served as a constant reminder of the authenticity behind the game. The best moments in Zero Parades are the quiet ones, either soft with sincerity or taut with tension; conversations can become games of bluff and draw, where characters that you may very well come to like are set to kill you, and vice versa, simply because that's the way life is. The sense of tragedy there, in events that you can prevent but fail to, and especially the pains you cannot salve, are memorable and full of meaning. It's a masquerade where even you can't keep track of which face is real, and which is painted on. Here, I'll acknowledge the controversy that marred this game, with an inexpressible amount of disdain. It's not my place to cast judgment on others, but I sorely, dearly wish that more people had given this game an honest chance, especially the journalists. Combing through discourse on this game without finding a comparison to Disco Elysium is next to impossible, and ditto for the splitting of ZA/UM. No, this isn't Disco Elysium's second coming, but I would argue that someone who hadn't experienced DE would have that same kind of singular experience with Zero Parades For Dead Spies. It simply can't be helped what we experience in life, or in what order, but approaching things and seeing them for what they are isn't a dream, but a responsibility, especially for those who are paid to critique. An inviolate recommendation from me, without reservation.

story and the voiceovers are engaging, and makes some really cool mechanical improvements over Disco