You invite direct comparisons and scrutiny to whatever game you create when you wear your inspirations on your sleeve. It immediately makes the player think about how a game measures up to what came before it rather than judge it on its own merits. It is only when a game can roll up its sleeves, moving past those inspirations to reveal what separates it from the pack, that those thoughts slip away, allowing the player to appreciate it as its own unique piece of art. For the first few hours of Esoteric Ebb, I was worried that it would fail to move out of the shadows of its obvious influences, Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment. By the time I rolled credits, however, Esoteric Ebb had emerged from those shadows, rising to stand as another pillar of the genre.
Countdown to Election Day
The beginning of Esoteric Ebb is familiar enough for those with experience in its genre. You awake in the basement of a mortuary with no memory of how you got there and who you are. By talking with the inhabitants of the world, you quickly piece together that you are a cleric sent to investigate an explosion at a local tea shop, believed to be politically motivated to disrupt the first-ever democratic election. Your investigation will have you encountering a wide range of eccentric characters, a couple of which can join your party, and bizarre situations that require you to use your cleric spells or quick wits to navigate. Esoteric Ebb presents a ton of options for you to take on these encounters however you want, and discovering the more out-of-the-box solutions to the game’s puzzles always feels rewarding to find.
Your investigation takes place over the five days leading up to the election, and you have until then to solve the grand mystery. Time passes as you progress through dialogue options, complete esoteric events, and while resting. Long rests take up eight precious hours, but you will restore all your spell slots, heal to max HP, and get rid of any levels of exhaustion you may have accumulated. Short rests only take an hour, healing you marginally with a small chance to restore a spell slot, but you only have a limited amount before you have to long rest. This means you have to strategically plan your long and short rests to take advantage of the time allotted to you. At first, I expected to feel rushed with this ticking clock element, but thankfully, five days is more than enough time.
Your investigation into the tea shop explosion is only part of how you will be spending your time in Esoteric Ebb. The city of Tolstad is filled with small substories and quests to sink your teeth into. Each of these quests sheds light on the inner workings of the city or unveils details about the relationships of its inhabitants. Why does the local goblin faction employ a Bugbear? How did you end up in the mortuary? Which party should you vote for in the election? All of these questions have answers and help flesh out Esoteric Ebb in unexpected ways. The amount of worldbuilding in the game allows Tolstad to come to life and feel like a real city with thousands of little moving parts.
Clerical Classes
Besides Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment, Esoteric Ebb draws a large amount of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons. The game is framed from the very beginning as a campaign with some friends, even having a short bit of text introducing you to the game’s narrator as the DM for your session. You even get to customize your cleric’s stats, using the six classic ability scores (each with its own personality, much like Disco Elysium) from Dungeons & Dragons, to try and shape their personality and playstyle to your liking. These stats will greatly influence how you progress through dialogue and solve puzzles, as you will have constant ability checks thrown at you throughout the game.
As a cleric, you also have access to a wide range of spells to use in your investigation. These spells include basic healing spells expected of a cleric, to necromancy spells to speak with the dead. A lot of these spells have obvious uses at first, but Esoteric Ebb manages to find creative ways to use them as well. I was shocked at how often I was able to get out of a sticky situation with a simple grease spell, causing it to be a mainstay in my kit throughout the game. And I don’t say that lightly, as you really have to commit to what spells you bring with you on your adventure. There are a limited number of spells you can have equipped and only so many slots to cast your spells in, so you have to think carefully about which spells to take with you before venturing off.
I really enjoyed the DnD spin on the Disco-style gameplay, and giving each ability score its own personality, a la Disco Elysium’s inner monologues, works surprisingly well. I do think that the occasional interjections from the DM during certain moments in the game were unnecessary, however. The fact that I kept getting reminded that I was playing a game within a game would draw me out of the experience. It wasn’t enough to fully break my immersion, but I think the game would have worked better without it.
Shape Your Destiny
The storytelling and decision-making in Esoteric Ebb are some of the best I can remember in years. Every small decision you make will send ripples through your playthrough, affecting decisions and actions from NPCs throughout the game. This isn’t limited to just dialogue choices or actions, either. Items that you find through exploration can pay off in huge ways, making a seemingly impossible ability check or encounter manageable, or by just bypassing the check altogether. It is masterful game design that makes every little choice matter. Esoteric Ebb is a victim of its own brilliance, however. Because there are so many options available in most encounters, it becomes way more frustrating when you do have to rely on just luck.
You see, there are a fair number of combat encounters throughout Esoteric Ebb, and they can end fatally for you. Combat initiative is decided by dexterity checks at the beginning of an encounter, and if you roll poorly, you are all but guaranteed to take some hits, meaning you can die before even getting a turn. Dying forces you back to the title screen in hopes that you remembered to save recently, or got lucky with a recent autosave. These combat encounters can be completed or avoided through pacifist means, but if you happen to roll horribly in your initiative, you not only will have to hope to survive the opening attacks, but you also will sometimes be penalized in your dice rolls for it. This was only an issue a couple of times throughout the game, but it never felt good to have to reload a save, over and over again, in hopes that I would roll a decent initiative and then nail a check or die. Maybe there are ways I could have avoided some of these combat encounters, or perhaps I missed a dialogue option or item that could have made things easier for me, but it just sucks dying over and over again due to bad dice rolls.
That being said, the story is well worth seeing through, despite these frustrations. Esoteric Ebb balances its humor with some genuinely touching moments sprinkled throughout that I would find myself laughing one minute while wiping away a tear just moments later at a revelation. One particular moment early on between my cleric and Snell, a goblin local who can assist you on your journey, where they decided to take a short rest while exploring a dungeon, is one of my favorite moments I’ve had in gaming in recent memory. Not due to any massive revelation or set piece, but just because it actually felt like two real people having a personal conversation. It was the first time Snell had really opened up to me about his life, and I genuinely felt a friendship forming between the two of us. The writing in Esoteric Ebb is second to none during these character moments.
Rising to the Challenge
After my initial worries were put to rest, Esoteric Ebb took me on a journey through politics, friendship, and love that I won’t soon forget. There are a couple of small frustrations and a couple of bugs I experienced along the way, but shortly after, I would find myself fully engrossed in the world once again, eager to see what would come next. Esoteric Ebb may borrow heavily from some of the greatest games in its genre, but it takes what it borrows and shapes it, creating something that still feels unique and fresh in its own right.
Disclaimer: Raw Fury provided a PC (Steam) copy of Esoteric Ebb for review purposes.
