ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

WHAT WILL YOU SAY TO THAT CRUEL ANGEL WHO WAITS FOR YOU. WHEN THEY ASK WHAT YOU'VE DONE WITH YOUR HEART?

Bought this game because I loved Disco Elysium. It (obviously if you followed the drama surrounding Disco Elysium) has different writing and it shows. Overly pretentious, poorly worded nonsense. Disco Elysium let you make your own choices about how you choose to fit into the world and this game just kind of tells you how you fit in to it. The plot and characters are way less interesting. The music is way less interesting. This feels like the Temu knock-off version of it's predecessor. Requested refund.

ZA/UM Despite the drama, have made a VERY Compelling Story and World; Rather long-time die-hard DE fans would like to admit it or not. Take away the Drama and let's look at the actual gameplay and story- the stuff that matters. Portofiro is a vibrant yet desperate looking shadow of it's prior self. It's a city full of secrets and an alluring cast. There is culture seeping out of each district, different ideologies within each resident; all with their own problems for you to investigate. You can essentially build a spy in this CRPG game, Choosing to either build your Physical, Social, or Mental Skills as you investigate. Hershal or CASCADE is a blank slate- she's got room for you to be a Goofy Personable Detective, a Stiff To-The-Point Detective, or use Deceit, Lies, or any combination that works for the given situation. There is plenty of moments that lead to a dice roll where you really aren't sure if everything is going to be alright if you fail it. Some dice rolls are almost meaningless outside of some witty lore or dialogue but that's where a lot of the charm and immersion of world-building comes in. You start to learn more and more obscure things- potential clues in future investigations. The same oil painted art style of DE is portrayed very well in this game. The Gameplay to be brief, is upgraded from DE and the Fatigue/Anxiety/Delirium System works incredibly well here. You can smoke, Drink, or opt to go straight and try to kick the habits and just rest off your ailments. Despite the drama, I know the Team behind Zero Parades isn't the same as Disco Elysium, but they've done an incredible job if not succeeding in some aspects, like gameplay, casting, and the location. Rather the story is actually better than Disco Elysium's is a personal opinion, but I highly recommend playing this game if you've been holding back. There's still something special here and rather the OG Devs made it or not is honestly irrelevant. Great Job ZA/UM, Beautiful Game.

拙劣的模仿者

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

Yeah overall this game feels quite derivative of Disco Elysium and inferior in basically all aspects. That being said, whereas DE is a 10/10 masterpiece, this is still a 7/10 solid game if you can see past the capitalist thievery that shafted the original owners/creators behind ZA/UM.

The narrator VA doesn't know how to speak (or she got a horrible director). Cascade makes no sense. She isn't a drunk failure with amnesia but acts like one. There is no point in most of the world-building questions, because she is supposed to know it already. Any "fun" options are ruining her established serious spy character. The text is written way too pretentiously. Even the necktie from DE wasn't as bad as those "deep" descriptions. The game isn't immersive at all. But maybe it's just because I started it directly after DE.

can't end up with the hot woman who tortured me???? worst game ever