ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Review - Disco Amnesia‑ium

Barely Magic Mike
12 minutes ago
7 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlicbgvYuMk

There is a conspicuous irony to the lack of hype I've had for Zero Parades. Disco Elysium, the game's spiritual predecessor, at least in theory, is one of my favorite games of all time, and quite possibly the most expertly written piece of media I've ever had the pleasure to engage with. Every conversation, every story beat and every offbeat character had me fully enraptured in the world of Revachol and the various conflicts both within and outside of it.

And yet, as news emerged that three core creators of Disco Elysium were forced out of the studio at the end of 2021 in one of the messiest and most complicated dramas I've heard within the gaming industry, my excitement for a follow-up was downgraded to skepticism. If the key creatives behind the original game are gone, what artistic merit could Zero Parades have as a successor?

I'm not here to recap the controversy surrounding the creators of Disco Elysium and ZA/UM as a whole. Chances are that if you're watching this, you already have a good enough sense of it to perhaps have formed a preliminary opinion of the existence of Zero Parades. But I firmly believe it is a critic’s job to separate the artist from the art. Whatever Zero Parades is and whoever made it - it is here and deserves to be evaluated on its own merits. That's how I went into Zero Parades, and at the risk of sounding intentionally provocative, I could not have been more surprised at what was delivered.

Zero Parades centers on Hershel, codenamed Cascade—a spy who finds herself back in the field after a prior job went awry for reasons we're not yet privy to. Unfortunately, her new assignment is starting out no better as she arrives in the city of Portofiro to find her partner, Pseudopod, “zeroed out”—alive, yet mysteriously unresponsive. It's now Hershel's job to find out what happened to him, learn the secrets hiding in the city and surrounding world, and discover why she's on assignment in Portofiro to begin with.

Structurally speaking, Zero Parades could be rightly accused of hugging Disco Elysium's roots like a clingy toddler, but I hardly view this as a problem. You'll explore the far corners of the city, interacting with residents through deep dialogue trees and dice-rolled skill checks to convince them to give you information. As you do so, your journal of mysteries both small and large begins to grow, presenting an abundance of leads to fill your time.

As in its predecessor, many of Zero Parades’ quests and interactions are not only optional diversions that further build out the lore of the city, which is complex, obtuse, and fascinating in equal measure, but also present confidently weird moments like the investigation of a phone sex hotline or an unexpectedly heated fight with a vending machine. Every dialogue in the game is astonishingly detailed, with trees of options that go so deep as to boggle the mind when considering just how much dialogue is in this script. I will add some extra emphasis to the “obtuse” part though—this might be a me thing, but Zero Parades is so full of mysterious proper nouns that I occasionally got lost in the details. The story that unfolds is deep and multi-layered but knowing everyone’s allegiances at any given moment is something I’d probably fail a pop quiz on.

That is a great transition for me to talk about what Disco Elysium fans care most about, and that is the writing. I’m delighted to say that when it comes to this game's most important quality, the results are nothing short of exceptional. Much like its predecessor, Zero Parades unfolds in massive, enormously detailed conversations that give the feel of reading through a compelling novel. Each character is written to be quirky, funny, discomforting, frightening, or any strange combination thereof, and all of them are fantastically memorable in their own right. Dialogue options feel clever and organic, and the way your skills literally speak to you and comment on the various goings-on is just as compelling as it has ever been. If there's any difference in the writing between Zero Parades and Disco Elysium, it's that Zero Parades has arguably less philosophical depth to it, touching upon topics like capitalism and imperialism, but with a slight bit less nuance than its predecessor was arguably famous for. On the flip side, Zero Parades largely forgoes much of Disco Elysium’s equally infamous pretentiousness, for better or worse. I also missed just how much comedy there was in the original game’s dialogue options, but in fairness, casting our protagonist as a traumatized and cautious spy has less comedic potential than Disco’s bumbling alcoholic drinking himself into amnesia. There will be naysayers who claim this game is a shadow of ZA/UM’s former glory, but I'll say right here and now that such a point would be more than a little dramatic.

For those less familiar, allow me to briefly explain the whole “talking skill” deal. Despite the abundance of dialogue and lack of combat, Zero Parades and Disco Elysium are both very much RPGs, and allow you to build out a variety of skills that determine your proficiency in various dice-rolled skill checks when interacting with the world or the characters in it. Zero Parades cuts the total number of skills from the original game's 24 to 15 but is no worse off for it. These skills are separated into groups of 5 that cover various aspects of what it calls Action, Relation, and Intellect. Actions are more physically oriented and govern a stat called Fatigue; Relations are more interpersonal and govern Anxiety, and Intellect is pretty self-explanatory and governs Delusion. Certain dialogue options may increase or lower your Fatigue, Anxiety, or Delusion in accordance with the skill type they correspond to. Passing skill checks and progressing the story will provide experience that grants skill points, allowing you to further improve any skills of your choosing.

If you want to have better odds for a given skill check, you can also choose to roll 3 dice instead of 2 through a feature called Exertion, which will add significant Fatigue, Anxiety, or Delusion depending on the check in question, but increases your odds of passing the check. Doing this in combination with manipulating these stats through consumable items like alcohol, cigarettes, or pot helps balance things out in moments of need, albeit in ways that must be relied upon sparingly, as the lowering of each stat often comes at the cost of raising another. Items can even impart physiological afflictions upon Hershel when used, like smoking pot, which grants her a status effect called “Stone Age Mentality,” lowering all Intellect stats by 2 points for the duration of the high and increasing Delusion when choosing conspiratorial dialogue options. Neat stuff, if perhaps a tad judgy.

Other collectible items like clothing can alter your skills directly, often granting additional perks to one at the expense of another. Characters may also comment on your clothing or treat you differently because of it, making the very act of dressing yourself something to consider when interacting with the various denizens of Portofiro.

This all sounds like it could get incredibly messy, but Zero Parades’ interface is thankfully fantastic. I never ran out of storage space for items and could easily sort through them by type, it's easy to see at a moment's glance what afflictions currently impact you, and the journal does a great job of tracking leads you could be pursuing. I do wish it was a little easier to track what skill checks have been left unexplored and which skills are necessary to pursue them, but given the relatively compact game world, it's a minor gripe.

On the visual front, Zero Parades’ art style is very reminiscent of its predecessor but ups the ante with a knack for color that's a feast for the eyes. Portofiro feels like an abstract graffiti artist’s work come to life and has such a robust set of unique landmarks that navigating its neighborhoods on instinct alone is surprisingly easy. Even so, there is a map provided to ensure you're never too far from your intended destination. Some of the in-game artwork illustrating your internalized thoughts or bizarre characters is stunningly grotesque, as is tradition for this studio.

Zero Parades also works well on Steam Deck, at least for the type of slow-paced, dialogue-heavy game that this is. I found that locking it to 45 fps resulted in the most consistently smooth experience, though there were still plenty of frame drops in busy parts of the city where lighting or weather effects were especially active. It's a bit distracting, but easily playable and how I spent a large chunk of my playtime.

Voice acting is fantastic wherever it exists, but there's an unfortunate inconsistency that makes it feel, to some degree, unfinished. Many characters are fully voiced with a fervor that brings them fantastically to life, while others are either completely silent or mysteriously missing lines. I do hope this is addressed in a patch, since a more comprehensive set of voice work would help in those cases where the silence can break some immersion. The narrator is a standout performance, speaking her lines with a cadence and tone eerie and sultry in equal measure, bringing an appropriate level of discomfort to this setting filled with paranoia, beauty, and despair. The music feels like more of a vibe than anything melodic enough to be noticed but does a fantastic job of punctuating the atmosphere and building tension.

So overall, how does Zero Parades compare to its seminal predecessor? Frankly, much better than expected. I unfairly anticipated a game serving as a hollow shell of Disco Elysium's former glory. And what I was instead confronted with is a game that, while perhaps lacking in Disco's initial novelty and philosophical depth, nevertheless emerges as one of the best games of 2026. It is somehow both ironically and unironically one of the best Disco-likes to release since Disco Elysium itself. And while some players are inevitably so opinionated about the drama surrounding its studio that their opinion of this game will be tarnished before they even play it, I have to give ZA/UM props - Zero Parades is fantastic. Is it a match for one of my favorite games of all time? That’s an absurdly high bar, so it shouldn’t mean much when I say Zero Parades falls just shy of it. Multiple playthroughs with a variety of builds will be necessary to truly understand everything it has to offer, but based on what I did experience, this is a fantastic sophomore effort from the studio, if arguably not a groundbreaking one. With that said, what's here is exceptional and shows that the prowess of ZA/UM’s writers, art directors, and game designers spans far wider than just the few key creatives that were dismissed. And for those who hold the original game in as high regard as I do, that win is far less bitter than it is sweet.

GOLD/ESSENTIAL

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