TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,971
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
If you like RPGs, you owe it to yourself to play Esoteric Ebb.
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
Esoteric Ebb is the best game like Disco Elysium that anybody's made since Disco Elysium, an RPG with a focus on exploration over combat, a literary, political bent, where your skills attributes talk to you. But it's not some rehash of the things Disco did well and few have managed to replicate: Esoteric Ebb has a charm all its own, and it's an impressively reactive RPG with an innovative approach to combat.
What is it? Disco Elysium by way of D&D, or D&D by way of Disco Elysium? But way more surprising and imaginative than that sounds.
Expect to pay: $25/£21
Release date March 3, 2026
Developer Christoffer Bodegård
Publisher Raw Fury
Reviewed on: Steam Deck, also Windows 11, Core i5 12600K, RX 9070 XT, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Verified
Link Official site
Where Disco was all surreal noir with a grounding in Twin Peaks, True Detective, and post-Soviet melancholy, Esoteric Ebb is more classically fantasy, approaching Dungeons & Dragons with a sensibility to Shrek. Disco Elysium is one of the funniest games ever made, and Esoteric Ebb is even more madcap. Not funnier per se—I can't pit two queens against each other—but it boasts a greater density of laughs per minute, while still telling an affecting, dramatic story.
The humor and grounding in familiar D&D elements—attributes, classes, races, alignment, etc.—belie a shockingly confident, weird fantasy setting, something closer to Planescape or Spelljammer than the comforting (yet vanilla) Forgotten Realms. Mechanically, this game is capital-R Reactive, with seemingly minor items and choices reverberating throughout the story, and multiple dialogue-based "fights" whose complexity and variables rival Disco Elysium's climactic Tribunal.
With Disco by way of D&D, we've kinda come full circle back to Planescape: Torment, one of Elysium's big inspirations. Our brave, bumbling cleric protagonist wakes up in a mysterious morgue, already threatened with a low-level zombie encounter. One big break with the talky RPGs of yesteryear: This guy remembers exactly who he is, he just didn't see who pushed him into the river. Getting The Cleric to open up about his past sometimes requires harder skill checks than persuading NPCs.
The often-underappreciated divine spellcasting class feels like a perfect fit for this story. You're an "Urthguard," a cleric of the once-living god who founded your home city of Norvik. He's been dead for 30 years, but the power and faith remains. We're rocking with a modified version of D&D 5th edition rules: Spell memorization, short and long rests, six attributes, you know the drill.
It's been streamlined in service of Esoteric Ebb's more focused premise, though. Instead of discrete skills, every check is pitted against your raw ability bonus (plus a proficiency in two of your choosing). It's significantly simpler than Disco Elysium's spread of 24 skills, but that comes with its own advantages.
You really could get through Disco Elysium specializing in any combination of its skills, but you may not have had the most fun time: There were clear winners and losers, your beloved Inland Empires and your replacement-level Composures. Esoteric Ebb's Constitution is pulling triple duty as the equivalent of Disco's Endurance, Shivers, and Half-Light, making it not only more versatile than any of the three alone, but also a more well-rounded character you'll hear from more often.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
I jacked up Wisdom and Dexterity, but I was surprised at how much I wound up loving Strength. When you put points into it, Strength talks like a stern, unimaginative, but well-meaning paternal figure who loves quests. It's ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
Esoteric Ebb is the best game like Disco Elysium that anybody's made since Disco Elysium, an RPG with a focus on exploration over combat, a literary, political bent, where your skills attributes talk to you. But it's not some rehash of the things Disco did well and few have managed to replicate: Esoteric Ebb has a charm all its own, and it's an impressively reactive RPG with an innovative approach to combat.
What is it? Disco Elysium by way of D&D, or D&D by way of Disco Elysium? But way more surprising and imaginative than that sounds.
Expect to pay: $25/£21
Release date March 3, 2026
Developer Christoffer Bodegård
Publisher Raw Fury
Reviewed on: Steam Deck, also Windows 11, Core i5 12600K, RX 9070 XT, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Verified
Link Official site
Where Disco was all surreal noir with a grounding in Twin Peaks, True Detective, and post-Soviet melancholy, Esoteric Ebb is more classically fantasy, approaching Dungeons & Dragons with a sensibility to Shrek. Disco Elysium is one of the funniest games ever made, and Esoteric Ebb is even more madcap. Not funnier per se—I can't pit two queens against each other—but it boasts a greater density of laughs per minute, while still telling an affecting, dramatic story.
The humor and grounding in familiar D&D elements—attributes, classes, races, alignment, etc.—belie a shockingly confident, weird fantasy setting, something closer to Planescape or Spelljammer than the comforting (yet vanilla) Forgotten Realms. Mechanically, this game is capital-R Reactive, with seemingly minor items and choices reverberating throughout the story, and multiple dialogue-based "fights" whose complexity and variables rival Disco Elysium's climactic Tribunal.
With Disco by way of D&D, we've kinda come full circle back to Planescape: Torment, one of Elysium's big inspirations. Our brave, bumbling cleric protagonist wakes up in a mysterious morgue, already threatened with a low-level zombie encounter. One big break with the talky RPGs of yesteryear: This guy remembers exactly who he is, he just didn't see who pushed him into the river. Getting The Cleric to open up about his past sometimes requires harder skill checks than persuading NPCs.
The often-underappreciated divine spellcasting class feels like a perfect fit for this story. You're an "Urthguard," a cleric of the once-living god who founded your home city of Norvik. He's been dead for 30 years, but the power and faith remains. We're rocking with a modified version of D&D 5th edition rules: Spell memorization, short and long rests, six attributes, you know the drill.
It's been streamlined in service of Esoteric Ebb's more focused premise, though. Instead of discrete skills, every check is pitted against your raw ability bonus (plus a proficiency in two of your choosing). It's significantly simpler than Disco Elysium's spread of 24 skills, but that comes with its own advantages.
You really could get through Disco Elysium specializing in any combination of its skills, but you may not have had the most fun time: There were clear winners and losers, your beloved Inland Empires and your replacement-level Composures. Esoteric Ebb's Constitution is pulling triple duty as the equivalent of Disco's Endurance, Shivers, and Half-Light, making it not only more versatile than any of the three alone, but also a more well-rounded character you'll hear from more often.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
I jacked up Wisdom and Dexterity, but I was surprised at how much I wound up loving Strength. When you put points into it, Strength talks like a stern, unimaginative, but well-meaning paternal figure who loves quests. It's ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?