I picked up this game over the weekend, and it's all I can think about. The inner dialogues are just fantastic, and paring it down to just the 6 attributes definitely works in the game's favour....
I picked up this game over the weekend, and it's all I can think about. The inner dialogues are just fantastic, and paring it down to just the 6 attributes definitely works in the game's favour. There's clearly a lot of thought that has gone into the world building, and I wasn't at all surprised when I re-read the Steam store page and saw it was the developer's homebrew setting.
I'm playing the game relatively straightforward at the moment, but I definitely want to do two more playthroughs in the future. I'm currently about halfway through day 3, and now some of the threads are starting to come together. I feel like I'm still missing some important dialogue, but I'm sure I'll find it eventually. I also don't know where to explore next, I get the feeling there's more deeper underground, but I just don't know how to get there yet.
Non-spoiler update: I'm now at the beginning of day 4. I managed to find my way down, and met some important folks with some rather interesting conversations. There's still more for me to do down there, but I'll just have to do that later. I also think I have the final goal. There are still plenty of loose ends, am I even going to get to tie them up? I'll definitely see more in future playthroughs.
Non-spoiler update: Mid-afternoon on day 4. I think I have everything I need in order to do that final objective. I do have some quests I'd like to finish, and maybe get to level 6 for the extra health before proceeding. I have a few unstarted quests in my quest tree, and I have no idea what they even could be. I only realised too late that I had the opportunity to bring a particular person to a particular location which would have helped a lot with a particular event, but that's fine.
I am a sucker for this kind of art style, and the music builds just the right kind of atmosphere. I love that all of the weapons you find are useless, but still have the stat bonuses. I love the little bits of world building, like the theoretical debate of whether there are 4 or 8 pillars. I love that the game dunks on the "apolitical" stance at every opportunity it can. I love the little jokes and references like asking the potion seller for the strongest potions, or how someone in the developer's actual campaign clearly said "geez" in-character and then the group of them came up with a justification for why an IRL exclamation based on IRL religion makes sense in this setting. I just love how this game is so very clearly itself and not trying to be anything else.
Ok, you've sold me. I'll have to pick it up... as soon as I'm done with the pile of other fantastic games that have released in the last few months. I know the game development industry is having...
Ok, you've sold me. I'll have to pick it up... as soon as I'm done with the pile of other fantastic games that have released in the last few months. I know the game development industry is having its problems, but as a gamer, my major problem is lack of time to play all of the incredible things coming out.
Saw a Steam review that said "Terry Pratchett meets Disco Elysium in a D&D game. I honestly cannot sell it harder than that." and wow, that's... OK I'll get it.
Saw a Steam review that said "Terry Pratchett meets Disco Elysium in a D&D game. I honestly cannot sell it harder than that." and wow, that's... OK I'll get it.
I think Pratchett might be overselling it a bit, but I can certainly see why the comparison was made. The hallmarks are there; there are goofy solutions to mundane problems, mundane solutions to...
I think Pratchett might be overselling it a bit, but I can certainly see why the comparison was made. The hallmarks are there; there are goofy solutions to mundane problems, mundane solutions to goofy problems, and goofy solutions to absolutely weird situations. My character has died of literal embarrassment, awkwardly backed out of flirting, and experienced reality-bending events and followed them up with a simple thumbs up to who must be the most traumatised goblin in the city. But it manages to be its own thing, which I appreciate. Just straight up copying Pratchett would make it a lesser game.
I finished the game last night. I'll leave a spoiler and non-spoiler review here, but I'd also recommend reading @sparksbet's comment as well. Non-spoiler review Where to even start with this......
I finished the game last night. I'll leave a spoiler and non-spoiler review here, but I'd also recommend reading @sparksbet's comment as well.
Non-spoiler review
Where to even start with this... This game isn't Disco Elysium. It is its own game. I very much enjoyed it, but if you're looking for Disco 2 then this is not it. If you put Disco aside and treat it as its own game, then I think Esoteric Ebb is a lot more enjoyable.
I did have a few bugs on my save, mostly related to unlocking specific dialogue options on characters. Most of these were fixed in the most recent patch, but there's still one thing I think is still broken? It's not the end of the world, I'm sure that whatever was behind a particular secret door probably wasn't going to help me that much given what I had found already. There were alternate ways to find the information I needed, but I did feel lost for a while since I expected to learn certain things earlier.
As I mentioned in my first comment, only having the 6 attributes as the voices in your head was a good decision. It allows each of them to have a clear personality and set of values holding up each of their beliefs. They very much are their own characters. It also means you don't have to think about individual ability scores like in D&D, which are just more numbers. The numbers aren't the focus of this game.
Combat being entirely driven by the dialogue system was interesting. I feel like enemies sometimes got extra actions rather than it strictly following the initiative order. A top for anyone playing, when it's your turn you can cast spells from the spells area of the UI, you don't have to choose the dialogue options. I found this out while fighting something that has grappled me. I wanted to cast Grease, but there was no option in the dialogue, and only then did I realise that the icon in the bottom left of my screen was different, since I had been putting all of my attention on the right of the screen.
Speaking of, prepare Grease. Grease has always been one of my favourite utility spells in D&D, and it lives up its potential here.
Stat choices in character creation matter mostly at the beginning. My character started with high DEX and WIS, but over the course of the game I ended up having good modifiers on almost everything. And if I needed something in particular, then I could just swap items around and try again. I'd still be fifty-fifty on some rolls, but most would go in my favour.
Be prepared for acronyms/initialisms. As the developer has stated, this is based on their homebrew, and clearly their players abbreviate and acronym things a lot. It's both a rough edge and a bit of charm. Not every acronym is important, but you'll remember the important ones. Really, the main one is NoF. It comes up a few times in context, so you'll remember it for sure.
Overall, this is a good game. I think a good number of people on Tildes would enjoy what it has to offer. It's definitely not a recommendation to my entire friend group, but to enough of them that I will talk about it.
Spoiler review
EAT THE APPLE, APPLEBOY.
I completed most of the quests. There were still 3 unstarted quests at the end of my game, and I have no idea what they are. I think I have a good grasp on what the game has to offer.
Our cleric is an interesting character. They clearly have a lot of backstory that is revealed over time. Almost all of the skills have some hook into the backstory, which was a really nice touch. I don't know why I don't want to talk about them in the section specifically labelled for spoilers, but they really are best experienced rather than told.
Does the ending stick the landing? I say yeah. It's not world-shattering or life-changing in any way, but I think it does a good job of thing everything together. I enjoyed the Big Bad's monologue and motivation, despite being completely against it. I listened to Urth as he explained why goblin genocide and assimilation was, in his view, necessary, before being the backup to Snell who is probably the only goblin who will ever get anything approaching closure for the crimes committed against his people. I cried a little as The Cleric opened up about his prayer to the one person who fulfilled it as we stood alone in front of the ballot boxes. I watched the credits, sad it was over but glad to have played it.
It's not all roses (apples?). Parts of the final confrontation sequence felt like they came out of the blue and didn't have the right amount of foreshadowing. As far as I can tell, there isn't any other mention of "the smoking invisible man" than one witness, and there's absolutely no hint at all about it being Lord Gorm. Perhaps this information is made more obvious if you side with Ever-glad, but I was not doing that when I could go with the option of the Sphinx instead.
There weren't really any hints to the grand conspiracy either, with that mostly being told (in the pillar sequence) rather than shown. It all makes sense in-universe of course, with the freestriders being involved in everything as this world succumbs to capitalism, but there's no way to put that together except in that sequence.
I found that I didn't need to rest that often, my exhaustion got up to 3 on one day when I was pushing it, but then an esoteric event happened and I was given the effects of a long rest for a slightly shorter time period. Apart from the exhaustion, there's really no reason not to stay awake as long as possible before heading to the tower.
I thought the story the game wove was fun and engaging, and the political lean was of benefit to the game. It had a nuanced take on nationalism vs fascism, which isn't something you see often. It showed the corruptive influences of a capital-based system, and how it can be used as a vehicle for other ideals. It had... one confrontation about extremism in social revolutions that was a bit awkwardly done and maybe needs some work. But overall, the style and actual text provided was very good, which is important for a game whose main, and really only, narative vehicle is text.
So yeah, I really enjoyed my time with Esoteric Ebb. It gets a thumbs up from me.
As an aside, is there anything that actually explains what the Esoteric Ebb actually is? The demi-lich skull says Jor is alive and the strings something something, Isk talks about how Power Word: Ebb simply must be involved in wars that happened while he was in stasis prison (unless I misunderstood the timeline, which is entirely possible), and Ever-glad name drops it but doesn't say anything (and I doubt it would even if you become its warlock). For something that is important enough to be the title of the game and is only name dropped by the most powerful magical users you encounter, it plays such a minor part in the story and world. Not that the title has to mean anything, but having it mentioned the way it was makes me feel like there should have been more.
If you go to bed early (when this happened to me I'd gone to bed around 22:00 or something), you get the well-rested bonus which gives you advantage on almost every check until you gain exhaustion...
Apart from the exhaustion, there's really no reason not to stay awake as long as possible before heading to the tower.
If you go to bed early (when this happened to me I'd gone to bed around 22:00 or something), you get the well-rested bonus which gives you advantage on almost every check until you gain exhaustion the next day. Which is honestly really good and I'd have done it over and over if I hadn't only accidentally discovered it was a thing on the night of day 4.
Overall my general impressions align with yours really well in both the spoiler-free and spoiler-y sections here, and you addressed some details that I didn't put in my comment bc I didn't want to bother with a spoiler box lol. It's not Disco Elysium, despite being a "disco-like" mechanically, and it's occasionally a little clumsy with its politics and philosophy, but if you enjoy it for what it is rather than constantly comparing it to Disco (which is going for a very different tone entirely anyway imo!), it's a very good game that deserves all the praise.
Also, just to call out some of my favorite characters: shoutout to Snurre, aka halfling Jung. Love that fucker even though I'm not s huge Jung fan irl. He's like my third favorite character. (#1 is Meek, #2 is Isk) I also weirdly really love Visken, even though I don't think you're supposed to lmao. Solid characters and good character writing is the bread and butter of a game like this and I think Esoteric Ebb definitely really shines there. They did a really phenomenal job filling the world with a lot of fun to interact with, likeable characters that differed a lot from each other.
spoilery bit
I think "Ebb" describes a general weakening of magic, a decrease in how easy it is to access it or how readily available it is, like how they describe higher-level spells being rare these days and spells above a certain level being very rare to cast. I actually feel like I got bits and pieces mentioning it in once or twice in descriptions of the world history much earlier in the game than the conversations in the snail prison, but I suspect how much info like that you get is influenced by your stats in addition to your choices, so that might've been the root cause there.
Solid picks for best characters, I'd put Snell somewhere up high because he is precious and I want him to live a happy life (though it's easy to put Snell highly given how much character time he...
Solid picks for best characters, I'd put Snell somewhere up high because he is precious and I want him to live a happy life (though it's easy to put Snell highly given how much character time he gets). Meek stayed with me until the end after unlocking them. There's also a particular sentient sword that I kept around after receiving it.
I also really appreciated Visken's characterisation and writing, even if I wanted to never have to deal with him. I say that, but curiosity led me to have the dangerous chat with him. It did not go well the first time (failed the DC by 1. The second time I met the DC). I think he was appropriately built up through his dealings more so than in direct dialogue, which made him feel more a part of the world and that's always a positive. That chat also led to a really fun minor reveal, which I appreciated.
oh see I totally did the oath thing in that chat with Visken lmao. I think you're right about how they build him up through his dealings well, but I also think his dry responses to the way you...
oh see I totally did the oath thing in that chat with Visken lmao. I think you're right about how they build him up through his dealings well, but I also think his dry responses to the way you interact with him, especially if you pick some dumber options, just entertained me specifically a lot lol
Snell is also great, and would be up there were it not for the stiff competition. I didn't get a chance at that sword until it was too late this run unfortunately, but I'll look forward to it whenever I replay it.
Crying that this is out when I'm too broke to buy it. Wishlisting the hell out of it though. Anything that inspires such glowing comparisons to Disco has got to at least be good enough to enjoy....
Crying that this is out when I'm too broke to buy it. Wishlisting the hell out of it though. Anything that inspires such glowing comparisons to Disco has got to at least be good enough to enjoy.
EDIT: Thank you to the generous people who offered to gift it to me! Legit so sweet. I'll be starting the game today 😊
Alright leaving my longwinded review here now that I've played through the game -- thanks once again to those who bought it for me as well as those who offered! Generous-ass website. The writing...
Alright leaving my longwinded review here now that I've played through the game -- thanks once again to those who bought it for me as well as those who offered! Generous-ass website.
The writing isn't Disco-level good, but that's an absurdly high bar to meet, and it's consistently very solid. I think the worldbuilding is also about as good as you can get while including the standard fixtures of a modern D&D setting, and I thought the world's history and structure were well-done. I think the characters other than your main character were by and large very well done -- none are Kim Kitsuragi level but they're generally well-written and enjoyable. The main character has very similar energy to Harry Dubois (spoiler for Disco Elysium ig), but I think the differences in execution make Ragn feel a bit more like a blank slate than Harry does, despite them clearly making similar efforts to establish him as having personality and a past that exist outside of the game/the player's control. The result is perfectly serviceable for this game, but fails to hit quite as hard as Disco. The ending is definitely trying to go for the ideological/philosophical jugular in the same way as the ending to Disco Elysium does, and while it pales in comparison, as its own thing and the climax to this game, it definitely succeeds. I think if anything I would have preferred some tweaking to which things got foreshadowed in which places to better set up the ending confrontation, but that both starts to pass into nitpicking and almost certainly depends in large part on the ideosyncracies of a given playthrough. This game is very good with a solid story and a lot of choices, and I'll definitely be recommending it to people.
Mechanically, the game borrows so heavily from Disco Elysium that it's most notable, I think, where it differs. Using the classic 6 skills makes sense and it felt like they chimed in no less frequently than your skills did in Disco even though you had so many more of them. You definitely feel the increased "swinginess" from rolling a d20 for checks instead of 2d6 as in Disco, but they also give you more tools to weigh things in your favor -- some of the feats can have massive effects on this, but even the bonuses from equipment felt both more necessary and more powerful than Disco. This makes a lot of sense, though, given the swingier dice and the fact that directly increasing your abilities happens much more rarely. Your limited number of slots also made selecting my equipment feel a lot more tactical than the clothes in Disco did -- ymmv on whether that's better or worse. Unlike Disco they don't show you your percentage chance of success. This would be harder for them to calculate with the rules they use for adding modifiers like proficiency, especially with the various feats that can tweak how things work, and I suspect it may also have been a deliberate design choice for narrative reasons, but I did definitely miss having it when trying to pick which to attempt between different checks. The mechanics to reroll failed checks is also a lot more generous than in Disco, and this is one of the places where I do just see it as a straight QoL upgrade over Disco. I didn't even actually do it that often, but it helped counteract the RNG a lot too.
Spells were cool and I liked the variety of utility spells available and how you found them along your journey. I wish the UI was more obvious about when you could cast some of the more opportunistic ones, but that's something that they could always improve in patches. Resources to replenish HP and spell slots and rerolls were extremely abundant, but in my playthrough I tended to lose a lot of HP at once so I still ended up making a lot of death saving throws. I usually survived those, though, to the extent that I wondered if they were adding my CON to them. I definitely made a double digit number of them during my playthrough and I only died from failing them once. Speaking of saving throws though, I don't think the game does a very good job tutorializing its D&D elements. Disco does a mostly good job tutorializing you on its basic mechanics without an explicit tutorial in its opening, and this game has something equivalent, but it is mechanically more complex than Disco is on this front bc of its 5e inclusions. I didn't struggle much with most of this because I've played 5e and have hundreds of hours in Baldur's Gate 3, which is more than enough transfer knowledge, but I don't think the game really does a good job tutorializing many of the mechanics it borrows from 5e for someone without this experience. Some of the info about this stuff appears in tool tips on loading screens, but not all of it. That said, I don't think it's opaque enough that someone would properly struggle to pick up the basics to play. But there definitely feels like there's an assumption that players will already be familiar with D&D 5e when playing this.
When it comes to its political and philosophical commentary, this game definitely wants to be peers with Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment. I liked the way they engaged with alignment, though I haven't played Planescape: Torment yet so I can't compare it to how that game discussed it. D&D alignment has frustrated me for a while in the ttrpg itself and I think they handled it in a way that's had more thought put into it than the average 5e table. The engagement with politics definitely feels less subtle and nuanced than Disco, and Disco is not exactly what I'd call subtle in its politics. In Disco, I could probably guess that the writers were leftists, but I otherwise would need to work pretty hard to analyze the writing in how they frame the various political ideologies, especially to the degree of detail needed to coherently respond critically or in agreement. The political statements here felt much more straightforward, which was mostly fine but rubbed me the wrong way a few times when I couldn't help but feel like the writer's perspective was bleeding through a bit in ways I disagreed with. The general framing was most often "in-character", since like in Disco the political alignments are associated with certain skills. Nothing held the nuance and poignancy of the political vision quests in Disco, but I think the result was still fine and the fact that I'm thinking about particular things I'd criticize after completing the game is already something that puts it above like 90% of other games in terms of how it engages with political philosophy. As with the writing, it's solid in its own right and suffers only by comparison to Disco, but I think the increased straightforwardness when discussing politics in this game may lead it to grate on some people -- especially people who dislike Disco for being "too political", but those people probably just aren't the target audience here.
I picked up this game over the weekend, and it's all I can think about. The inner dialogues are just fantastic, and paring it down to just the 6 attributes definitely works in the game's favour. There's clearly a lot of thought that has gone into the world building, and I wasn't at all surprised when I re-read the Steam store page and saw it was the developer's homebrew setting.
I'm playing the game relatively straightforward at the moment, but I definitely want to do two more playthroughs in the future. I'm currently about halfway through day 3, and now some of the threads are starting to come together. I feel like I'm still missing some important dialogue, but I'm sure I'll find it eventually. I also don't know where to explore next, I get the feeling there's more deeper underground, but I just don't know how to get there yet.
Non-spoiler update: I'm now at the beginning of day 4. I managed to find my way down, and met some important folks with some rather interesting conversations. There's still more for me to do down there, but I'll just have to do that later. I also think I have the final goal. There are still plenty of loose ends, am I even going to get to tie them up? I'll definitely see more in future playthroughs.
Non-spoiler update: Mid-afternoon on day 4. I think I have everything I need in order to do that final objective. I do have some quests I'd like to finish, and maybe get to level 6 for the extra health before proceeding. I have a few unstarted quests in my quest tree, and I have no idea what they even could be. I only realised too late that I had the opportunity to bring a particular person to a particular location which would have helped a lot with a particular event, but that's fine.
I am a sucker for this kind of art style, and the music builds just the right kind of atmosphere. I love that all of the weapons you find are useless, but still have the stat bonuses. I love the little bits of world building, like the theoretical debate of whether there are 4 or 8 pillars. I love that the game dunks on the "apolitical" stance at every opportunity it can. I love the little jokes and references like asking the potion seller for the strongest potions, or how someone in the developer's actual campaign clearly said "geez" in-character and then the group of them came up with a justification for why an IRL exclamation based on IRL religion makes sense in this setting. I just love how this game is so very clearly itself and not trying to be anything else.
Ok, you've sold me. I'll have to pick it up... as soon as I'm done with the pile of other fantastic games that have released in the last few months. I know the game development industry is having its problems, but as a gamer, my major problem is lack of time to play all of the incredible things coming out.
Saw a Steam review that said "Terry Pratchett meets Disco Elysium in a D&D game. I honestly cannot sell it harder than that." and wow, that's... OK I'll get it.
I think Pratchett might be overselling it a bit, but I can certainly see why the comparison was made. The hallmarks are there; there are goofy solutions to mundane problems, mundane solutions to goofy problems, and goofy solutions to absolutely weird situations. My character has died of literal embarrassment, awkwardly backed out of flirting, and experienced reality-bending events and followed them up with a simple thumbs up to who must be the most traumatised goblin in the city. But it manages to be its own thing, which I appreciate. Just straight up copying Pratchett would make it a lesser game.
GNU Terry Pratchett
That's what I saw and exactly what I thought!
You had me at Disco
I finished the game last night. I'll leave a spoiler and non-spoiler review here, but I'd also recommend reading @sparksbet's comment as well.
Non-spoiler review
Where to even start with this... This game isn't Disco Elysium. It is its own game. I very much enjoyed it, but if you're looking for Disco 2 then this is not it. If you put Disco aside and treat it as its own game, then I think Esoteric Ebb is a lot more enjoyable.
I did have a few bugs on my save, mostly related to unlocking specific dialogue options on characters. Most of these were fixed in the most recent patch, but there's still one thing I think is still broken? It's not the end of the world, I'm sure that whatever was behind a particular secret door probably wasn't going to help me that much given what I had found already. There were alternate ways to find the information I needed, but I did feel lost for a while since I expected to learn certain things earlier.
As I mentioned in my first comment, only having the 6 attributes as the voices in your head was a good decision. It allows each of them to have a clear personality and set of values holding up each of their beliefs. They very much are their own characters. It also means you don't have to think about individual ability scores like in D&D, which are just more numbers. The numbers aren't the focus of this game.
Combat being entirely driven by the dialogue system was interesting. I feel like enemies sometimes got extra actions rather than it strictly following the initiative order. A top for anyone playing, when it's your turn you can cast spells from the spells area of the UI, you don't have to choose the dialogue options. I found this out while fighting something that has grappled me. I wanted to cast Grease, but there was no option in the dialogue, and only then did I realise that the icon in the bottom left of my screen was different, since I had been putting all of my attention on the right of the screen.
Speaking of, prepare Grease. Grease has always been one of my favourite utility spells in D&D, and it lives up its potential here.
Stat choices in character creation matter mostly at the beginning. My character started with high DEX and WIS, but over the course of the game I ended up having good modifiers on almost everything. And if I needed something in particular, then I could just swap items around and try again. I'd still be fifty-fifty on some rolls, but most would go in my favour.
Be prepared for acronyms/initialisms. As the developer has stated, this is based on their homebrew, and clearly their players abbreviate and acronym things a lot. It's both a rough edge and a bit of charm. Not every acronym is important, but you'll remember the important ones. Really, the main one is NoF. It comes up a few times in context, so you'll remember it for sure.
Overall, this is a good game. I think a good number of people on Tildes would enjoy what it has to offer. It's definitely not a recommendation to my entire friend group, but to enough of them that I will talk about it.
Spoiler review
EAT THE APPLE, APPLEBOY.
I completed most of the quests. There were still 3 unstarted quests at the end of my game, and I have no idea what they are. I think I have a good grasp on what the game has to offer.
Our cleric is an interesting character. They clearly have a lot of backstory that is revealed over time. Almost all of the skills have some hook into the backstory, which was a really nice touch. I don't know why I don't want to talk about them in the section specifically labelled for spoilers, but they really are best experienced rather than told.
Does the ending stick the landing? I say yeah. It's not world-shattering or life-changing in any way, but I think it does a good job of thing everything together. I enjoyed the Big Bad's monologue and motivation, despite being completely against it. I listened to Urth as he explained why goblin genocide and assimilation was, in his view, necessary, before being the backup to Snell who is probably the only goblin who will ever get anything approaching closure for the crimes committed against his people. I cried a little as The Cleric opened up about his prayer to the one person who fulfilled it as we stood alone in front of the ballot boxes. I watched the credits, sad it was over but glad to have played it.
It's not all roses (apples?). Parts of the final confrontation sequence felt like they came out of the blue and didn't have the right amount of foreshadowing. As far as I can tell, there isn't any other mention of "the smoking invisible man" than one witness, and there's absolutely no hint at all about it being Lord Gorm. Perhaps this information is made more obvious if you side with Ever-glad, but I was not doing that when I could go with the option of the Sphinx instead.
There weren't really any hints to the grand conspiracy either, with that mostly being told (in the pillar sequence) rather than shown. It all makes sense in-universe of course, with the freestriders being involved in everything as this world succumbs to capitalism, but there's no way to put that together except in that sequence.
I found that I didn't need to rest that often, my exhaustion got up to 3 on one day when I was pushing it, but then an esoteric event happened and I was given the effects of a long rest for a slightly shorter time period. Apart from the exhaustion, there's really no reason not to stay awake as long as possible before heading to the tower.
I thought the story the game wove was fun and engaging, and the political lean was of benefit to the game. It had a nuanced take on nationalism vs fascism, which isn't something you see often. It showed the corruptive influences of a capital-based system, and how it can be used as a vehicle for other ideals. It had... one confrontation about extremism in social revolutions that was a bit awkwardly done and maybe needs some work. But overall, the style and actual text provided was very good, which is important for a game whose main, and really only, narative vehicle is text.
So yeah, I really enjoyed my time with Esoteric Ebb. It gets a thumbs up from me.
As an aside, is there anything that actually explains what the Esoteric Ebb actually is? The demi-lich skull says Jor is alive and the strings something something, Isk talks about how Power Word: Ebb simply must be involved in wars that happened while he was in stasis prison (unless I misunderstood the timeline, which is entirely possible), and Ever-glad name drops it but doesn't say anything (and I doubt it would even if you become its warlock). For something that is important enough to be the title of the game and is only name dropped by the most powerful magical users you encounter, it plays such a minor part in the story and world. Not that the title has to mean anything, but having it mentioned the way it was makes me feel like there should have been more.
If you go to bed early (when this happened to me I'd gone to bed around 22:00 or something), you get the well-rested bonus which gives you advantage on almost every check until you gain exhaustion the next day. Which is honestly really good and I'd have done it over and over if I hadn't only accidentally discovered it was a thing on the night of day 4.
Overall my general impressions align with yours really well in both the spoiler-free and spoiler-y sections here, and you addressed some details that I didn't put in my comment bc I didn't want to bother with a spoiler box lol. It's not Disco Elysium, despite being a "disco-like" mechanically, and it's occasionally a little clumsy with its politics and philosophy, but if you enjoy it for what it is rather than constantly comparing it to Disco (which is going for a very different tone entirely anyway imo!), it's a very good game that deserves all the praise.
Also, just to call out some of my favorite characters: shoutout to Snurre, aka halfling Jung. Love that fucker even though I'm not s huge Jung fan irl. He's like my third favorite character. (#1 is Meek, #2 is Isk) I also weirdly really love Visken, even though I don't think you're supposed to lmao. Solid characters and good character writing is the bread and butter of a game like this and I think Esoteric Ebb definitely really shines there. They did a really phenomenal job filling the world with a lot of fun to interact with, likeable characters that differed a lot from each other.
spoilery bit
I think "Ebb" describes a general weakening of magic, a decrease in how easy it is to access it or how readily available it is, like how they describe higher-level spells being rare these days and spells above a certain level being very rare to cast. I actually feel like I got bits and pieces mentioning it in once or twice in descriptions of the world history much earlier in the game than the conversations in the snail prison, but I suspect how much info like that you get is influenced by your stats in addition to your choices, so that might've been the root cause there.
Solid picks for best characters, I'd put Snell somewhere up high because he is precious and I want him to live a happy life (though it's easy to put Snell highly given how much character time he gets). Meek stayed with me until the end after unlocking them. There's also a particular sentient sword that I kept around after receiving it.
I also really appreciated Visken's characterisation and writing, even if I wanted to never have to deal with him. I say that, but curiosity led me to have the dangerous chat with him. It did not go well the first time (failed the DC by 1. The second time I met the DC). I think he was appropriately built up through his dealings more so than in direct dialogue, which made him feel more a part of the world and that's always a positive. That chat also led to a really fun minor reveal, which I appreciated.
oh see I totally did the oath thing in that chat with Visken lmao. I think you're right about how they build him up through his dealings well, but I also think his dry responses to the way you interact with him, especially if you pick some dumber options, just entertained me specifically a lot lol
Snell is also great, and would be up there were it not for the stiff competition. I didn't get a chance at that sword until it was too late this run unfortunately, but I'll look forward to it whenever I replay it.
Crying that this is out when I'm too broke to buy it. Wishlisting the hell out of it though. Anything that inspires such glowing comparisons to Disco has got to at least be good enough to enjoy.
EDIT: Thank you to the generous people who offered to gift it to me! Legit so sweet. I'll be starting the game today 😊
Alright leaving my longwinded review here now that I've played through the game -- thanks once again to those who bought it for me as well as those who offered! Generous-ass website.
The writing isn't Disco-level good, but that's an absurdly high bar to meet, and it's consistently very solid. I think the worldbuilding is also about as good as you can get while including the standard fixtures of a modern D&D setting, and I thought the world's history and structure were well-done. I think the characters other than your main character were by and large very well done -- none are Kim Kitsuragi level but they're generally well-written and enjoyable. The main character has very similar energy to Harry Dubois (spoiler for Disco Elysium ig), but I think the differences in execution make Ragn feel a bit more like a blank slate than Harry does, despite them clearly making similar efforts to establish him as having personality and a past that exist outside of the game/the player's control. The result is perfectly serviceable for this game, but fails to hit quite as hard as Disco. The ending is definitely trying to go for the ideological/philosophical jugular in the same way as the ending to Disco Elysium does, and while it pales in comparison, as its own thing and the climax to this game, it definitely succeeds. I think if anything I would have preferred some tweaking to which things got foreshadowed in which places to better set up the ending confrontation, but that both starts to pass into nitpicking and almost certainly depends in large part on the ideosyncracies of a given playthrough. This game is very good with a solid story and a lot of choices, and I'll definitely be recommending it to people.
Mechanically, the game borrows so heavily from Disco Elysium that it's most notable, I think, where it differs. Using the classic 6 skills makes sense and it felt like they chimed in no less frequently than your skills did in Disco even though you had so many more of them. You definitely feel the increased "swinginess" from rolling a d20 for checks instead of 2d6 as in Disco, but they also give you more tools to weigh things in your favor -- some of the feats can have massive effects on this, but even the bonuses from equipment felt both more necessary and more powerful than Disco. This makes a lot of sense, though, given the swingier dice and the fact that directly increasing your abilities happens much more rarely. Your limited number of slots also made selecting my equipment feel a lot more tactical than the clothes in Disco did -- ymmv on whether that's better or worse. Unlike Disco they don't show you your percentage chance of success. This would be harder for them to calculate with the rules they use for adding modifiers like proficiency, especially with the various feats that can tweak how things work, and I suspect it may also have been a deliberate design choice for narrative reasons, but I did definitely miss having it when trying to pick which to attempt between different checks. The mechanics to reroll failed checks is also a lot more generous than in Disco, and this is one of the places where I do just see it as a straight QoL upgrade over Disco. I didn't even actually do it that often, but it helped counteract the RNG a lot too.
Spells were cool and I liked the variety of utility spells available and how you found them along your journey. I wish the UI was more obvious about when you could cast some of the more opportunistic ones, but that's something that they could always improve in patches. Resources to replenish HP and spell slots and rerolls were extremely abundant, but in my playthrough I tended to lose a lot of HP at once so I still ended up making a lot of death saving throws. I usually survived those, though, to the extent that I wondered if they were adding my CON to them. I definitely made a double digit number of them during my playthrough and I only died from failing them once. Speaking of saving throws though, I don't think the game does a very good job tutorializing its D&D elements. Disco does a mostly good job tutorializing you on its basic mechanics without an explicit tutorial in its opening, and this game has something equivalent, but it is mechanically more complex than Disco is on this front bc of its 5e inclusions. I didn't struggle much with most of this because I've played 5e and have hundreds of hours in Baldur's Gate 3, which is more than enough transfer knowledge, but I don't think the game really does a good job tutorializing many of the mechanics it borrows from 5e for someone without this experience. Some of the info about this stuff appears in tool tips on loading screens, but not all of it. That said, I don't think it's opaque enough that someone would properly struggle to pick up the basics to play. But there definitely feels like there's an assumption that players will already be familiar with D&D 5e when playing this.
When it comes to its political and philosophical commentary, this game definitely wants to be peers with Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment. I liked the way they engaged with alignment, though I haven't played Planescape: Torment yet so I can't compare it to how that game discussed it. D&D alignment has frustrated me for a while in the ttrpg itself and I think they handled it in a way that's had more thought put into it than the average 5e table. The engagement with politics definitely feels less subtle and nuanced than Disco, and Disco is not exactly what I'd call subtle in its politics. In Disco, I could probably guess that the writers were leftists, but I otherwise would need to work pretty hard to analyze the writing in how they frame the various political ideologies, especially to the degree of detail needed to coherently respond critically or in agreement. The political statements here felt much more straightforward, which was mostly fine but rubbed me the wrong way a few times when I couldn't help but feel like the writer's perspective was bleeding through a bit in ways I disagreed with. The general framing was most often "in-character", since like in Disco the political alignments are associated with certain skills. Nothing held the nuance and poignancy of the political vision quests in Disco, but I think the result was still fine and the fact that I'm thinking about particular things I'd criticize after completing the game is already something that puts it above like 90% of other games in terms of how it engages with political philosophy. As with the writing, it's solid in its own right and suffers only by comparison to Disco, but I think the increased straightforwardness when discussing politics in this game may lead it to grate on some people -- especially people who dislike Disco for being "too political", but those people probably just aren't the target audience here.