It’s hard to know whether to recommend this or not. On one hand, it could be a near perfect game, based on the review scores it received (97 average at time of writing).On the other, the company that produced it has some seriously unethical to say the least, legal issues at the moment. There was rumoured to be a fraudulent takeover of the studio (ZA/UM) who develop and produce this, using money stolen from them in the first place, and following this, writer and lead designer, Robert Kurvitz, and art director, Alexander Rostov, were sacked, and another employee, Kaur Kender, Estonian novelist and executive producer of Disco Elysium, filed a lawsuit against the company who fraudulently took over ZA/UM, only to withdraw this when the stolen money was paid back. More on this below

Robert Kurvitz says repayment of €4.8 million to ZA/UM changes nothing, still considers his legal options | Game World Observer [gameworldobserver.com]

With this in mind, I could list all of what is great about the game, but I can’t recommend it when the company that publishes it, cannot be trusted.

There are some people complaining about the fact that they changed voice actors from the original ones, but as I never heard these, I can’t comment on that, but from the ones that are in the game as of now, they are all really well done.

A lot of script for the characters is pure gold, and when I started playing this, not 5 minutes went by without me laughing out loud. But that faded after about 7 hours and at times was replaced by the feeling of pure boredom with what was being said. That said, there is still some intrigue in the story and figuring out how to solve the case. The voice acting is still very good and there are still dialogue that make me laugh and lots of funny choices for you to select for your character. I just feel a lot of the dialogue tends to be very log winded and boring at times.

It was a little daunting at first when I started playing and then the tasks started piling up, the many menu screens with no real explanation on what each card or attribute is for. I played for near 10 hours, no achievements popped, and I wasn’t sure if I was even getting anywhere. I followed instructions in my tasks list and proceeded to buy some alcohol and drink it to cure the hangover, but then my moral plummeted and then I died!

I’d never played a point and click game where I could die by doing what I thought was following the tasks required, or by just inspecting an item in my inventory. This game is different. Sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes frustrating at how you can spend a whole day, in game and in real life, and not feel like you have gotten hardly anywhere. The game feels very unrewarding and when it is, this comes in small rations.

I can’t say if I will complete this game or if it will get better the further I progress.
But it doesn’t really matter, thanks to the publisher, it’s all a big waste of time anyway. Don’t buy, don’t support the publisher as those who created this will never see any royalties for this. Don’t buy the sequel (if it’s made by ZA/UM).

I’m seriously sceptical of the metacritic score this has been given as well, 97? It doesn’t feel like a 97/100 game but then I haven’t finished it so what do I know
I could give it a score in the 70’s maybe.