08.09.2026: ESOTERIC EBB
Quite some time ago, I played through Disco Elysium and enjoyed it tremendously - I thought about that game for a long time, and desperately wanted more of the same kind of thing. I'm glad to say, I wasn't the only one, as this sort of desire clearly drove the developers of Esoteric Ebb.
That is not to say that the game is a pale immitation of Disco Elysium. Sure, the main character is a 'cop', who's there to conduct an investigation in an incident, in a small district of the bigger city, where the cops of his kind aren't common, where different ideologies are at odds for the future of the city, and the cop himself is quite a quirky character, living in the world with unusual geography caused by unusual metaphysics, all while the basic building blocks of your personality talk to you and each have their own political leanings (the red one is a nationalist, the yellow one is a hustler and...). Well, alright, the set up really does sound very familiar, but that's, mostly, where the similarities end.
Esoteric Ebb has plenty of its own identity. It uses its setting - and mechanical basis of a D&D system - in ways that, perhaps not the most innovative, but are nonetheless quite interesting. The framing of the game is very much that of a TTRPG campaign, with the Dungeon Master addressing you, personally, at the start and end of the game, as well as the start and end of each day. You deal with angels, devils, orcs, goblins and far stranger things, while casting spells and dungeon-delving, and all of it feels very much like a natural fit for the format.
Esoteric Ebb is at its weakest, when it's trying to be exactly like Disco Elysium - I personally found its political dimension rather uninteresting and unengaging, but your mileage may vary. It definitely lacks the same bite in its politics, which come off as rather heavy-handed commentary, which is a shame, because the parts of politics that serve as the 'campaign' background is interesting!
Esoteric Ebb also features the system of Encounters, which are round-based, short bouts of combat, and I found them to be pretty engaging. Although, I also found that I wished for them to be maybe twice as long, as they actually are - most of them are over in 2 or 3 rounds, and, with the exception of a few, are more or less completely avoidable.
Presentation-wise, Esoteric Ebb is very pleasing - it's got the same isometric perspective that it shares with Planescape: Torment and Disco Elysium, with rare breaks into more cinematic view that takes advantage of the world being rendered in 3D. There's, however, a visible lack of polish, in a few places, that isn't terribly critical. Animations playing in the wrong direction, or at wrong times, or characters you've talked to once before saying that you're 'on their side', despite you have never done anything for them, that's sort of thing. It didn't take me out of the moment, much.
As for the plot and characters, I loathe to compare Esoteric Ebb to Disco Elysium once again, but EB's characters are definitely less defined, than DE's. Certain quirks of vocabulary are shared among characters that, perhaps, oughtn't share them, which makes several characters sound like they're being 'played' by the same guy - but, I wouldn't consider that a major flaw. After all, the framing of the story is that it's all a 'real' TTRPG campaign! They ARE being played by the same guy - the Dungeon Master! So, whether it's intentional or not, it sort of blends into the overall presentation. The story itself caught me off-guard a few times, and even though I was able to predict who the real culprit behind the Tea Shop That Blew Up was, the actual reveal had me at the edge of my seat, as I connected the dots. The last stretch, after the Point of No Return, even got me a little bit emotional!
This paragraph is a small theory and contains some very minor spoilers. Watch out! Now, I was definitely sure that Ragn is Urth, Reincarnated, but that's not true. What is true, or so it seems to me, is that Ragn IS a new Walking God. The repeated mentions of him having a great connection to many of Jor's Strands, Ragn's unique ability to memorize any spell in seconds, the fact that we can see probability (the checks, with their difficulty classes!), not unlike Urth describes, and the fact that the Ever-Glad is quite confident in us being a key to a new Esoteric Era, all does make it seem like Ragn is QUITE special. I doubt we're ever going to find out for sure, but if there's a sequel, I'd bet good money on this being a reveal.
Okay, no more spoilers.
All in all, I highly recommend Esoteric Ebb to everyone with a love for TTRPGs (D&D), and people yearning for another Disco experience. It's not the same thing, and shines best when it leans on its own unique identity, but maybe it'll scratch the same itch for you, that it did for me.
