DE is how I think story-heavy and focused games should be. It doesn’t need gimmicks, it doesn’t need any “gameplay” at all, really. It just needs to have the branching narrative. The reason to play through it again, and again, and again because each time you actually get something new, something different. It’s all about your choices and stat distribution. The only choices that feel meaningless are literally the ones that straight up tell you in the game that they are, in fact, meaningless. Which is also fun, when it’s being used humorously as Disco does.

That said, I have mentioned it would be nice to have combat; but the last time I played through, I found the combat. Literally got a scene I had never seen before because I always actually tried to solve the murder before and only needed the first 3 days to do so. This last time I went for the total loser run and didn’t do shit. Which led to a really great action sequence.