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The award-winning RPG, Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, received its Nintendo Switch release date during the latest Nintendo Direct. The game was originally released in 2019 on PC, and was then re-released earlier this year on PS4/PS5 with complete voice acting for nearly every line of dialogue. The player is an amnesiac detective who must attempt to solve a recent murder with the help of their twenty-four different skills, each represented as another voice in the player's head.
While Disco Elysium is typically regarded as an RPG due to its many skill-checks and branching paths, it is also a visual novel. That genre in particular seems especially well-fitted for a Nintendo Switch experience. Being able to take Disco Elysium anywhere like a more traditional book or e-book is an incredible convenience and seems to fit the gameplay very well. This is due to the unique way the game is split up, which also helps to separate it from its RPG contemporaries. The relatively short length of the game also lends itself to gaming-on-the-go more so than other RPGs on Switch like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Disco Elysium on the Go
In Disco Elysium, the player wakes up one morning with a massive hangover and is unable to remember crucial details of their life, including their own name. After some brief tutorials and exposition, the player is set loose on the city of Revachol, and day one of the investigation begins. The game is played in accelerated real-time which means that talking to people and walking around will burn daylight. Each new day will bring unique challenges, events, and encounters as the narrative slowly unfolds. Depending on dialogue choices, the player can be a redeemed genius detective, a drunk stumbling around clues, or somewhere in between.
The Nintendo Switch is the perfect home for this kind of unique gaming experience. Each day can last anywhere from under an hour, to several, which themselves are natural stopping points like chapters in a more traditional novel. At the end of every day, the player must go back to their motel room to sleep and reflect on recent events as the streets become empty.
Aside from the natural stopping points each day, there are also several large over-arching quests and goals for the player to accomplish. These can range from crucial cop-duties like questioning witnesses to basic human tasks such as finding the player's missing shoe. Some of these tasks are standalone while others are part of a line. Most also tell a unique story or tease the larger story which makes them all feel important.
Finally, the overall brevity of Disco Elysium's narrative makes it worthwhile to pick up on the Nintendo Switch. Average playthroughs are around twenty hours, depending on how much of the side content the player engages with. Subsequent playthroughs are a must in order to see and hear absolutely everything the game has to offer and these playthroughs are often shorter than the first. This stands out among other RPGs like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which can take a first-time player upwards of fifty hours before seeing the credits which makes it ideal for binge-playing, but not ideal for shorter game sessions.
Few third-party games released on the Nintendo Switch feel like they actually belong on the platform, and even fewer RPGs such as The Outer Worlds. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut should be a rare exception to that track record. The game's bite-sized sessions due to the in-game days and tasks to track progress makes it easy to hop into Revachol for 30 minutes to an hour. In addition to that is the very short game length which makes it easy to finish the game in a few shorter sessions. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is a huge game with well over 350,000 words neatly placed into a very small and compact package.
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut releases on October 12, 2021 for Nintendo Switch.