Esoteric Ebb Review | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these RPG Cara Ellison, senior narrative designer on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 before Paradox switched developers, discusses her love of Troika’s original RPG: ‘Everyone on the team helped really make that maximum goth’ RPG You’ve never heard of it, but a Russian studio made a fantasy take on original Fallout way back in 2001, and it honestly kind of rules RPG Avowed was always great, but now that it costs what it should have at launch and nobody’s being weird about it online, it’s kinda perfect RPG It’s only March, but I’m calling it: Esoteric Ebb is 2026’s best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium Roguelike Two of Mewgenics’ most memorable areas were directly inspired by a brutal and brilliant tabletop RPG The Witcher Reigns The Witcher review: Pick a path Puzzle Obsidian Moon is a Lovecraftian noir detective game about moving bits of paper around your desk and making sure you’ve got enough money for whiskey and beans Roguelike Balatro meets Scrabble in this new roguelike from the creators of TimeSplitters—and I’m just thrilled to finally find a word game that lets me score with swear words Strategy Heart of the Machine review: A fascinating grand strategy RPG that starts to buckle under its own ambitions MMO Project: Gorgon has recaptured the old-school MMO magic I thought was dead and gone by letting me ask a pig about its mother so hard it dies RPG The OG Baldur’s Gates are freshly patched, and you can pick them up with 500+ hours of other CRPGs for $23 right now RPG The best RPGs on PC Action Styx: Blades of Greed review: Engaging, challenging stealth in dizzyingly vertical puzzle boxes RPG Divinity: everything we know about Larian’s ‘most ambitious RPG yet’ Action The Awaysis demo has taught me what Diablo always needed was a crumb of Gang Beasts slapstick PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Resident EvilArc RaidersBest PC gearGame Quizzes Games RPG Esoteric Ebb When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. 90 Esoteric Ebb Review Maybe the best RPG of 2026? Reviews By Ted Litchfield published 4 March 2026 0 Comments Join the conversation (Image: © Christoffer Bodegård) Our Verdict If you like RPGs, you owe it to yourself to play Esoteric Ebb. PC Gamer’s got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. Esoteric Ebb is the best game like Disco Elysium that anybody’s made since Disco Elysium, an RPG with a focus on exploration over combat, a literary, political bent, where your skills attributes talk to you. But it’s not some rehash of the things Disco did well and few have managed to replicate: Esoteric Ebb has a charm all its own, and it’s an impressively reactive RPG with an innovative approach to combat.Need to knowWhat is it? Disco Elysium by way of D&D, or D&D by way of Disco Elysium? But way more surprising and imaginative than that sounds.Expect to pay: $25/£21Release date March 3, 2026Developer Christoffer BodegårdPublisher Raw FuryReviewed on: Steam Deck, also Windows 11, Core i5 12600K, RX 9070 XT, 32GB RAMSteam Deck VerifiedLink Official siteWhere Disco was all surreal noir with a grounding in Twin Peaks, True Detective, and post-Soviet melancholy, Esoteric Ebb is more classically fantasy, approaching Dungeons & Dragons with a sensibility close to Shrek. Disco Elysium is one of the funniest games ever made, and Esoteric Ebb is even more madcap. Not funnier per se—I can’t pit two queens against each other—but it boasts a greater density of laughs per minute, while still telling an affecting, dramatic story.The humor and grounding in familiar D&D elements—attributes, classes, races, alignment, etc.—belie a shockingly confident, weird fantasy setting, something closer to Planescape or Spelljammer than the comforting (yet vanilla) Forgotten Realms. Mechanically, this game is capital-R Reactive, with seemingly minor items and choices reverberating throughout the story, and multiple dialogue-based “fights” whose complexity and variables rival Disco Elysium’s climactic Tribunal. Related articles It’s only March, but I’m calling it: Esoteric Ebb is 2026’s best RPG and the first worthy successor to Disco Elysium The upcoming Disco Elysium for D&D nerds just dropped a 90-minute supercut of its weirdly beautiful soundtrack The only CRPG using D&D’s original setting is finally on Steam, with fan patches and quality-of-life fixes pre-installed RevivifyWith Disco by way of D&D, we’ve kinda come full circle back to Planescape: Torment, one of Elysium’s big inspirations. Our brave, bumbling cleric protagonist wakes up in a mysterious morgue, already threatened with a low-level zombie encounter. One big break with the talky RPGs of yesteryear: This guy remembers exactly who he is, he just didn’t see who pushed him into the river. Getting The Cleric to open up about his past sometimes requires harder skill checks than persuading NPCs.The often-underappreciated divine spellcasting class feels like a perfect fit for this story. You’re an “Urthguard,” a cleric of the once-living god who founded your home city of Norvik. He’s been dead for 30 years, but the power and faith remains. We’re rocking with a modified version of D&D 5th edition rules: Spell memorization, short and long rests, six attributes, you know the drill.Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Raw Fury, Christoffer Bodegård)(Image credit: Raw Fury, Christoffer Bodegård)(Image credit: Raw Fury, Christoffer Bodegård)It’s been streamlined in service of Esoteric Ebb’s more focused premise, though. Instead of discrete skills, every check is pitted against your raw ability bonus (plus a proficiency in two of your choosing). It’s significantly simpler than Disco Elysium’s spread of 24 skills, but that comes with its own advantages.You really could get through Disco Elysium specializing in any combination of its skills, but you may not have had the most fun time: There were clear winners and losers, your beloved Inland Empires and your replacement-level Composures. Esoteric Ebb’s Constitution is pulling triple duty as the equivalent of Disco’s Endurance, Shive
