Esoteric Ebb, A Review
I love writing snappy reviews of ttrpgs products I engage with, but I realized I can do that with all kinds of media...like video games! Yeah, that thing I spend all my other extra time on and my day-to-day job.
The presentation and artstyle of the game imply a cozy and benign setting, something akin to Legends & Lattes, but it's not. It tries to stay a bit in the middle between tongue-and-check D&D references alongside harrowing lore and tragic character endings. In this, it did a good job.
Much of what can be discovered is familiar, to some degree, if you know D&D, and I had a great time bumbling into traps!
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead, Mostly Mechanical
Voices? What voices?
The attributes you have speak to you throughout the game, but the voices don't seem distinct enough for me beyond Intelligence (elitist asshole) and Strength (zealous brute). The writing could be a little punchier in making each attribute more distinct. They are the primary avenue for feeding lore to the player, and it wasn't until I chose a feat regarding gender that I started to question/realize the attributes were meant to be distinct from each other. However, the art is GORGEOUS for each attribute, and I love them.
Lore Drop of the Century
The Worldbuilding in Esoteric Ebb is cool. It's rich and spans eras. Even after 14 hours in, I'm still confused on a few points, but I have been going too fast with my eagerness to dungeon delve. I found myself torn between wanting to engage in long conversations while also wanting to cast spells to find hidden items.
There's a multitude of history in the environment that players can engage in and if their Intelligence is high enough, they can glean cool facts to further their knowledge. I loved this unraveling of the lore. It was like eating lil' lore treats throughout play.
On the other hand, something I disliked was how when I did click a highlighted term, it gave me a new dialogue that pushed my conversation up. This meant if you encountered enough glossary terms and then clicked Continue, the conversation would pick up exactly where you left off regardless of how many glossary/lore explanation moments occurred. This was a disorienting experience in game for two reasons. The first was it super messed up the flow of conversation with NPCs. On top of that, the lore was difficult to follow, especially with no map to reference back to of the land and its surroundings in relation to those terms. There is a spot in the game much later that you can interact with that's a large map of the world, but why is it so far in the game and not one of the early/immediate things you find?
Hate Yourself More
It's hard to not compare this game to Disco Elysium when many of its core systems are near carbon copies. Instead of a Thought Cabinet, you have a Questing Tree. Instead of emotional characteristics talking at you, it's the standard attributes found in D&D. What makes those sytems super strong in DE, for me, is the rebuilding of your character (or not) into something palpable.
At the beginning of DE, your character is a piece of shit. You're bad at your job, you're bad at interacting with people. You're depressed and uncaring about anything until you, the player, intercede (if you want). In Esoteric Ebb, this is not the case. Sure, you don't remember some recent events, and this is teased out through interactions with the world and characters just like in DE but nothing horrific.
Still, no one outright hates you for being a cleric and working with the Urthguard. They all continue to work with you. Even in the quests, the narartive choice is not a real one, because when the quest is complete, you still have all possible Feats at the end, which I kind of disliked. The bottom line is, the protagonist isn't hated enough to stir me, as a player, to better them.
Go Scum Yourself!
I found myself save scumming, and I never did that in Disco Elysium. In that game, I accepted the consequences, whatever they may be, because I knew I had a wide variety of endings possible. Yet, in this one, especially when I was trying to pickpocket NPCs, I kept save scumming. I did it 6 times just to get the crypt key, because I kept wanting to delve yet didn't know how to do that organically. Turns out, the crypt key was a location I had already discovered early on and didn't even need the key. Jor was laughing at me.
Ruminating on this a bit more, and my conclusion as to why I did this is due to the linearity of the game that's hidden behind illusion. There aren't redos or variation when it comes to the game, so if you fail to pickpocket an item, it's locked out (unsure if it's locked out for the day or the game). Either way, this hard lock on top on top of how often you can die - I really want to see a montage video of all the ways you die in this game - signal to me as a player that reloading and trying again is required. When you die, you're returned to the main menu to simply load up your last save or roll a new character.
There was an opportunity for some cool design in the death cycle. You die, you start up a new character, but your old character is dead on a slab. You can cast Speak With Dead on them to get extra starting info that you didn't have on your last run. It becomes more of a rogue lite in that regard, but what's the threat/point of death if it isn't permanent like in most ttrpgs?
There's a similar friction point with this in regards to the shards of Jor you can find around that allow you to re-roll on checks, but this is only for specific checks in the world or with NPCs. You cannot do this in a combat situation which are narrative driven, so it's unclear to the player when you can risk a stat check to simply redo and when you cannot.
BEHOLD INFORMATION?
One of the COOLEST mechanics I discovered 15 hours into the game was that when you view a NPC, you get their character sheet. It's not readable when you first look at it, so I assumed it filled in as I spoke to NPCs and interacted with them. Nope.
If you click the BEHOLD button that does not look like a button, you make a specific stat check based on the NPC and discover all kinds of cool information about their motives, what your character thinks of them, etc. You can only BEHOLD an NPC once until you rest, so if you don't succeed and unlock all DC checks listed, then you have to take a rest. I discovered this mechanic on Day 4! I was pissed!
Now before I speak to any NPC, I do a BEHOLD check on them, and I discovered that this mechanic ties into your DC checks, lowering them for future rolls! Very cool, but wow I wish I had known about it from the beginning.
Illusion School for Figments
The game presents the player with options to use different stats to solve problems. Yet, I think the end result is always the same. For example, when you delve far enough, you encounter a frost troll, and it's asleep. Great! You have many options at your disposal to engage with the troll.
WRONG.
The troll is asleep. A challenging Dexterity check allows you to get closer without waking it up. The only benefit to this is it will allow you to place the immovable rod under its foot, causing some pain, and providing you with reduced DC throughout the engage. Cool! What's next?
The troll is awake. It's angry. It attacks you. If you have both Ettir and Snell with you, they will attack the troll without any hesitation. You cannot stop or change their behavior in any way. Boo, what if I wanted to reason with it. Yes, yes! That's an option. In the first round of combat, you can de-escalate the situation either through a successful Intelligence or Charisma check, but it doesn't matter! At the end of it all, you still kill the frost troll (he tumbles off the cliff into the gravity flip). I save scummed and did this in every configuration I could to yield a different result. Nothing.
Now you're thinking, OK...maybe that's like a keystone moment and has to happen like that. Well, I've gone to a variety of other quests on the questing tree, and they're all the same in the process of having a singular conclusion.
There is a level of replayability in the game if you're interested in the how rather than the end result, and this appears to be the largest set of narrative deviation I can find.
Delight in Discoverability
What Esoteric Ebb lacks in narrative outcomes, it more than makes up for in discoverability of the world. It's rich in lore and in the ways it reacts to your engagement. Cast spells, look for traps, and speak to everyone. In this, it almost feels like you're at the table.
Once I shifted my framework from expecting narrative impact to what can I find in this location, the game became way more fun. It's important to utilize your spells and think more like you're playing a tabletop game rather than a Disco Elysium clone.
While I wish there was slightly more information - a simple quest log - about the quests you have active and/or where you left off on the ones you started, there's a lot to uncover in Norvik. It took me back to classic point-and-click adventure games where I needed to keep hand written notes on puzzles. That's how much there is to do in this game.
QOL Ideas
Going to give quick highlight ideas for some QOL improvements that would make me love the game even more.
- Multiple character sheets/save slots for different types of runs
- Distinct UI for minor/major quests (this was a thing in an earlier version)
- Even after completing a major quest and selecting a feat, I should still be able to see the quest information similar to when minor quests are completed
- Sorting inventory by type would be nice. I hated the inventory system in Disco Elysium once I accrued enough items, and Esoteric Ebb has even more.
- Mark active Feats in the Questing Tree
- Better format the Glossary to be more usable
- Choices in the quests should determine the Feat available at the end
Words of Advice from a Bard
Having spent 30 hours and completed every quest on the Questing Tree, I find that I enjoyed the game with some reservations. The writing didn't always have me enraptured, but the discovery of the world did. There were many moments of delightful surprises in mechanics that would have been less enjoyable had they been told to me from the start (not the BEHOLD button). The characters are charming, and there are clues to everything littered in the world, in conversations, in audio cues, and in your character's reactions.
Esoteric Ebb is a narrative experience centered around the importance of elections and how differing groups of people live together in a fictional world, sitting on top of an investigation. You start the game with a voting card with every party selected, and you end it submitting your choice of vote. Its message couldn't be clearer. Become the God-Wizard-King you want to see in the world.