Psst, here’s a secret. I have fooled my friends these past few years. They’ve spent hundreds of hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with me, while being unaware that I’ve struggled to get past page two of the players handbook. Who’s actually reading all of that? Anyway, what they don’t know can’t hurt them. And they’ll never need to know this. I’ve now played the 2026 game, Esoteric Ebb, and that has taught me everything about D&D, the way nothing else successfully could.
Esoteric Ebb (EE) is a single-player role-playing-game that calls itself a “disco-like”. You must definitely play Disco Elysium (DE) first, which is what EE is inspired from. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that you can just skip this review if you’ve tried DE and didn’t really like it. These two games are quite similar.
You see, in EE, when the main character Ragn “woke up”, realised he might have lost his memories, and learnt that he was put in charge of solving a crime, I was already bored. I quite recently finished playing DE and didn’t want to sit through a high-fantasy fanfiction edition of it. But my jaw dropped after just a few more interactions into the game, when I realised the possibilities extended by a very significant gameplay component. Unlike in Disco, Esoteric Ebb brings in the concept of Spellcasting! This changes a lot of things.
Before I get to spells, a little about the story itself. A game like this, first and foremost, relies on you enjoying reading. It’s incredibly funny, and very Terry Pratchett-coded — if you’re someone who loves fantasy stories set in an entirely made up universe. The story is also inherently political, with the entire plotline leading up to an election day. It’s the first Norvikian democratic election! A lot of elements of the game made me yearn for an unfussy and simplified idea of democracy, with parties composed of distinct ideologies. As the cleric, I actively took sides and had long political conversations about Azgalism (which is the socialist model in this game) and Freestriderism. You can choose not to play this way too, and simply go around spreading chaos by campaigning for multiple political entities. It could get you in trouble, though.
Now, let’s discuss spells. In EE, Spellcasting abilities could change the game entirely, depending on your playstyle. I for one, wanted to play as what I call, a rizz cleric (a detective-soldier with high charisma). So I used the “Charm person” spell quite liberally to get information from people. I also learnt a few druidic abilities, and eventually spoke to lobsters, birds, and even trees to learn more about the world around me.
This is an important thing to understand if you’re a D&D faker like me. Spells that you discover and choose to learn can actually unlock large chunks of the plotline. The game can still reach completion if you skip some of these, but you might be left with a feeling that several things are still sort of unexplained. This is the one place where EE significantly improves on Disco Elysium. DE expects you to explore every single interaction before you solve the mystery. But a “good ending” in EE isn’t conditional purely on multiple strings of the story and plotlines being completed. You can just speed run to the end if you want to. But that’s no fun.
Like most RPG side-missions, all of them are mostly useless in the big picture. But nobody plays D&D to actually defeat the “dragons”. We’re here to do fun, silly little things. Early in the game I discovered a Mimic called Meek, which did nothing for me in terms of combat or story progression, but was a kind of entertaining companion that I wore around my neck as a scarf. I did also waste a lot of spell slots speaking to random skulls, to learn nothing of value except what their favourite colour was when they lived. It’s almost worth doing another elaborate playthrough of the game just so I can read all of the colourful books within the game’s libraries too!
Reader, if you’re currently rushing to buy the game, then my spell worked! I placed an “Encode Thoughts” enchantment on this article to convince you to get the game. The game is currently available only on PC.