Depersonalization is an RPG out of China that feels like it never stops getting deeper, once you figure out how to set it to English
We're checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.
You ever play one of those games that seems like it never stops revealing new stuff? New mechanics, new locations, new rabbits out of new hats? Baldur's Gate 3 is probably the ur-example of that kind of thing in the past few years, but I've got one you might not have heard of to add to the list: Depersonalization, a Cthulhu-flavoured and tabletop-inspired RPG from MeowNature that just seems to keep unfolding the more you play it.
What's it about? I'll let the store page description do the talking: "Dice! Tabletop role-playing games! Cthulhu! Diverse story modules! Rich branching narratives! We are prisoners of fate, but sometimes we also roll the dice and create miracles!"
So that's that cleared up. But if you still can't quite picture it, imagine an RPGMaker-style game with simple, 2D pixel-art presentation. Imagine a lot of choices and many potential bad ends. Imagine a lot of skill checks, a layered and creepy world, and a whole load of ambition which is sometimes constrained by rough translation—but the devs promise fixes are coming. And hey, if you've got it as part of a sub to Game Pass, it's easy and (more or less) free to try it out.
Taking it depersonally
The game kicks off by putting you in the shoes of Anan, a beautiful blond detective—of some sort—in a vaguely 19th-century fantasy town. There are strange goings on afoot, and investigating them means roaming from location to location around town, picking up clues, and subjecting everything clickable to a merciless array of skill checks.
The strangest going on, though, is Anan himself. He turned up in town as a child about a decade ago after his ailing mother was abducted by a bizarre, loping monster, an incident that sent the stately home he grew up in collapsing to the ground and destroyed any trace of Anan's family.
None of which he remembers, mind you. This is a proper RPG, amnesiac protagonist and all, so actually piecing all this stuff together as a grown-up means a lot of investigation.
If that sounds like Disco Elysium to you, it does to me as well, right down to the bit where you get to decide just what kind of a detective your charming bishonen protagonist is going to be. Almost no skill checks restrict you to single abilities. For instance, to eavesdrop on a conversation I could try to use my Observe skill, my Perception, or just rely on Luck, much in the same way that DE lets both a genius and meathead detective find their own paths through problems.
The game launched in Chinese, and it was only by sheer luck that I—a stupid Englishman—managed to click my way into the options menu and change that
If that sounds great, it is, and I found myself constantly surprised by just how many new skills and uses for them Depersonalization unveiled even in my jaunt with its prologue. On top of that, there are puzzle elements (combining items to overcome problems or, in my case, just set fire to your mother's rugs), dialogue choices, and a turn-based combat system that hardly ever insists you engage with it—I never came across a fight I couldn't hide or flee from in my time with the game.
The caveat to it all is the translation. Depersonalization comes from a Chinese studio, and quite a bit of the dialogue veers between 'a little off' and 'bordering on incomprehensible' in English. In fact, the game launched in Chinese, and it was only by sheer luck that I—a stupid Englishman—managed to click my way into the options menu and change that (for reference, you want the second option on the main menu, then click to the right on the very first option in the list it gives you).
On the one hand, it kind of makes the entire thing feel even deeper and more beautiful than it already is. On the other, I had to work pretty hard to understand what was happening in a lot of scenes.
The good news is that the devs have heard our anglophone cries and promise a better, professional translation is close at hand, with a new batch of English writing for the game coming as soon as this month. You might want to wait for that, but honestly? I recommend firing it up—or its demo—right now anyway. Depersonalization is already a special, incredibly deep RPG even if I do have to re-read the odd line of dialogue a few times. If you want to dip a toe in yourself, you can find it on Game Pass and Steam.