I really liked the game, it's the kind of game I can recommend to my more enlightened friends who don't actually play games due to the fact that it's great noir, possibly more than it's a great game.
I was not surprised or put off by the appearance of The Deserter, as the game being so inspired by Kentucky Route Zero and PS: T led me to believe that the game would ultimately be a tragedy, a trait shared by both games but especially apparent in KRZ. The player is still rewarded by having the case be solvable, and the appearance of the character does help the last few pieces fall into place (like the flower and the Inland Empire stuff). If the game takes a misstep it is in the obviously artificial restriction of preventing the player from going to the Island before the tribunal. Obviously this would have worked against the tragic character of the plot (as the tribunal would have been avoided entirely, robbing the story of a climax) but it may also be that ZA/UM simply didn't have the resources to consider an alternative resolution to the story.
That said, I feel like most people are misinterpreting the existence of the mid-game Shivers check. It is not a skill-gate as people are assuming. I passed it with a Shivers of 1, but I did every other task so that the chance was like, 83% or something. It is the game's way of telling you to keep exploring the area. However if your Harry has an exceptional intuition and city sense the game is gracious enough to let you skip the whole segment. It's a case where your intuition is so strong that it overrides the entirely reasonable objections of your partner.
I should reiterate that I really enjoyed the myriad Kentucky Route Zero influences. Perhaps it is me reading too much into it but it appears to me that ZA/UM did their homework well. The Doomed Commercial Area, the retro computer technology, the references to games and game development, the notion of pale-driving and Motorway South, and more generally the the overarching theme of surface appearances hinting at a greater, less comprehensible reality are nods towards KRZ. In a sense Disco Elysium is a game of excavation much like Kentucky Route Zero is. It's an excavation of a character, a city, and then a world framed around a murder mystery. The city aspect of this doesn't always work, as its backstory is often swamped by an encyclopedic deluge of names, places and information; it works best during the exploration of the game environments and when the player is forced to voice a (non-)opinion.
The character studies and the metaphysical aspects are fantastic, though. Besides Harry, nearly every character in the game is memorable, Ruby being an exception -- it seems her name refers to the fact that she ends up being a COLOSSAL (tm) red herring. I would single out Cunoesse as my favorite, as I don't run into many pure psychopaths in games.
Also, I need the dice maker theme in my life.
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