Esoteric Ebb Review: A Weirdly Wonderful Journey

Esoteric Ebb is a super weird, new CRPG that looks to really shake up the scene with some fresh ideas. In some ways, it's reminiscent of Baldur's Gate 3 with the amount of freedom and choice there is in terms of the story. There's no denying how odd this game is, though, but despite that, it's still a very solid experience.

At first, I wasn't sure there was much to enjoy here, but after a couple of hours, I started to see what the developer Christopher Bodegård was going for. Clearly, the publisher, Raw Fury, publisher of games like Routine and Blue Prince, also saw their vision and decided it needed to be made a reality.

The game isn't perfect, but it is incredibly interesting with a lot of deep lore and a story that has tons of options for how you handle almost every situation you'll find yourself in. It's based on Dungeons and Dragons obviously, but weirdly, it sort of feels like sitting down to play a TTRPG with just you and the DM. Whether or not that's something you'd enjoy is up to you, but I'll give you the breakdown of my time with Esoteric Ebb.

What is Esoteric Ebb?

This CRPG is a bit different from most others you've probably played. This is mostly because the game is almost entirely text-based. You have control over where you go and what you do, but every interaction will turn into a decently long conversation between you and the voices in your head.

Each voice represents one of your abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They'll pretty much always have something to say and will provide you with extra information about what you're doing or who you're talking to, though you'll almost always have to pass some kind of skill check. If you know the tomato cheat sheet, you'll feel right at home, because apparently, so do all the people of this world.

You don't have any say in your class since you're playing as a Cleric, but you can change what kind of Cleric you are by distributing your ability points however you'd like. Maybe you like being strong enough to punch down doors, or you'd like to be the smartest one in the room. There are plenty of choices there, and you don't have to pick the perfect build, since the game is fairly forgiving in providing lots of paths to completion.

Basically, the game starts with you waking up as a level one Cleric who has lost all of their gear and spells, leaving you with only the most basic items, your helmet, and the Cure Wounds spell. Your goal isn't to just figure out what happened to you, but to figure out what happened to the Tea Shop in Tolstad that was apparently blown up.

You'll talk to people and try to uncover the mystery while discovering that the world you inhabit isn't a particularly high fantasy game; there's a reason for that, but the world is instead a political nightmarescape filled with people who have their own agendas and factions who all seem to hate each other for inane reasons.

A Weirdly Beautiful Game

I'm not entirely sure what to call the art style here in Esoteric Ebb, but I do know that it fits the game incredibly well. It's a little rough, but colorful in a way that isn't simply bright. It's reminiscent of the old school computer games where things were a bit more blocky, but it's fairly sharp and defined.

I'm usually not a huge fan of having 2D art sprites for conversations when the actual models are right there, but the 2D sprites actually provide a lot more detail than the 3D models; not that the 3D models are bad either. They do a good job of portraying not just how the characters look, but their overall personality.

Snell looks competent and confident in himself. Visken looks almost normal, but the more you look, the more off-putting he is. Lady Sageleaf looks sort of like a goblin, but something is definitely a bit weird. And that's just a few of the people you can talk to. Everyone with a 2D sprite provides some extra detail that adds just a little more to them.

The environments are also stunning, which was a bit surprising given the art direction I imagined the game would take. There are always tinges of color everywhere and plenty of eye-catching things like the broken Pillar of Jor, or sometimes a giant seagull. It really made me want to explore the areas provided, not just because I'm a loot goblin at heart, but because the environment was good-looking enough to warrant it, even the creepy underground places.

Become the Cleric Your Own Way

One of the many things that Esoteric Ebb gets right is giving the player an immense amount of freedom to explore and do as they'd like. While you technically do have a main story quest to complete, you could actually totally ignore it and go off to do whatever you want. There's just one problem: you only have five days to get everything sorted out before there's an election, and your bosses want this solved and swept under the rug to keep things running smoothly.

As you do everything in the game, even just standing around, time will march onward, giving you the needed tension to keep you moving. How you go about solving the many mysteries and quests in the game is entirely up to you and how you'd like to play. You can set out on your own path alone or bring your goblin companion Snell with you as you delve into the dungeon below the city in search of answers.

The freedom you have to explore and do as you please is fantastic and used to perfection. Every choice you make will have some sort of consequences, both good and bad. The voices in your head will try to offer some explanation of what will potentially happen, but they aren't the most trustworthy of narrators. This really starts to show once you get through the first day and start diving into the mystery of the Tea Shop, along with what seems to be going on in the seedy underbelly of the town.

Unlike in regular DnD, there are a lot of ways to improve your stats besides leveling up. Pretty much every item you gather (and there are a lot) can be equipped in one way or another. These grant you bonus points or have special effects that can improve your build in certain spots while weakening it in others. Deciding what you're going to equip can make all the difference in the next encounter.

Theater of the Mind Combat

Combat in this game is beyond strange. I've never really seen combat be so different and yet similar to what I imagined it would be. That's a weird statement to make, so let me explain a bit. When you enter into combat, you roll initiative, a traditional DnD thing, but when it comes to your turn, it's significantly more like talking through things with a DM about what your options might be.

The game will run through explanations of what's going on, and sometimes you'll take damage, seemingly randomly, when something happens that isn't necessarily an attack. On your turn, you can ask some questions in an attempt to get the DC of any roll down a little, and you can also cast at least one spell a turn; most times it's Cure Wounds to keep yourself from biting the big one.

You'll end up in some situations that feel impossible to win, and after a few deaths, you'll realize that your main goal is simple: survive. Some of the checks will feel a bit cheesy because, well, they are. You're going to fail those rolls and then get the DC down on the next round if you can manage to survive.

If you're hoping for something with some more tactile and controllable combat, then you may not enjoy the chaotic encounters that Esoteric Ebb has to offer. There's no positioning, no setups, and no way to manipulate the chaos of battle. It's just you, the dice, and the choices you make.

This can lead to some really fun and tense moments during combat as you narrowly avoid catastrophe, but on the flip side, it also takes a bit of control out of the players' hands. One place this felt incredibly apparent was while fighting a hidden enemy, who ambushes you and can get a surprise round if you aren't careful. Then it basically grabs you and hijinks ensue, while dealing some significant damage to you that you'll barely survive.

Weirdly, combat is fun and engaging but also incredibly frustrating, especially when the dice gods are against you. It's a perfect facsimile of actual TTRPG combat in some ways. While it can feel a little more punishing, that sort of push and pull between players and DMs feels present in a way that doesn't come across in many other CRPGs.

A Politically Purposeful Story

Yes, you read that right; this game gets super political. Or well, at least in terms of the setting and some broader strokes overall. Each faction, and by extension, each Stat Ability, represents a political ideology up to a certain point. They're filtered through the lens of the world, making them a bit easier to swallow, but there's no denying this game gets political, literally.

While not the main quest, there is an election going on that fuels a lot of what happens in the story. Luckily, for the most part, you can choose not to engage with the politics of it all and instead opt to be apolitical. That's a legitimate choice that the game honors, which was fun. While you can choose to ignore the politics, the story itself sort of revolves around how all the factions are involved in various parts of the mystery at the Tea Shop.

When the first few moments of politics popped up, I thought I was going to want to rip my eyes out, but much to my surprise, the game takes a more humorous approach to the political landscape. It takes the time to poke fun at the more serious topics while offering some genuine criticism of the way politics works. Video games should usually avoid getting political, but in this case, there's a bit of leeway.

Overall, the story is pretty good and surprisingly pretty short if you know the path of least resistance. You could probably get it all done in under 10 hours if you really pushed yourself, but you'd miss out on a ton of great writing. All the characters feel real, up to a point. They all have wants and needs, and you're stuck between them all trying to figure out who to help. It's a good thing, because it basically means you could play this game at least 10 or more different ways and see lots of new and interesting things.

Play the Game Again and Again

In just one playthrough, I made so many choices that determined where I would end up, and I absolutely could not tell you what would happen if I made different choices. This goes beyond the choices you make in dialogue, and dives deeper into the choices you make for the directions you travel, the people you talk to, and the rolls you succeed or fail.

At first, I thought things would be relatively linear, but as I continued to even just walk around and interact with things, I realized I was probably already missing a ton of stuff. I didn't let it stop me from pressing onward, but it was certainly something in the back of my mind. What if I had talked to this person first? What if I asked this person about it instead? These kinds of questions bounced around my mind the whole time I played.

Even with knowing the ending, and even knowing a lot of the mysteries of Esoteric Ebb, it doesn't stop being an interesting game with lots of freedom to choose in subsequent runs. Much like Baldur's Gate 3, you might know where the story will take you, but the journey there can be pretty different each time. People who enjoy the world of Esoteric Ebb will find themselves easily gearing up for another playthrough just to see things they didn't get to see at first. But even with that, the game isn't exactly free of problems.

To Handhold or Not to Handhold

For some gamers, handholding (or the lack thereof) can be a big deal, and here in Esoteric Ebb, I think it's important to address what could potentially be a major issue for some players. The game does not hold your hand at all; you either take notes, memorize things, or try your luck using the very general terminology in the Questing Tree.

This was where I found some difficulty with the game. For some, this sort of approach will be a blessing, while for others it'll be another hurdle to climb. The wording in the Questing Tree menu is ambiguous at best most of the time, and since you don't have any objective markers or anything, you're pretty much on your own to figure it out.

I'm happy to do some of the work to get my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but this felt almost intentionally obtuse. Perhaps it's because the Questing Tree has a secondary function – unlocking feats. These feats give you bonuses just like in regular DnD and some bonus health for healing, while others increase your percent chance to roll a ten for every ability check.

It's a pretty big aspect of the game that you won't see for a while, at least until you complete a few side quests or some investigations. That's not a huge problem since they aren't necessary, but the real issue lies in the lack of readily available information. What's there is helpful, but you'll have to pretty explicitly remember what was said during a conversation to have a chance, which is tough when most of the game is conversations.

At the end of the day, Esoteric Ebb is a weird game in the best way possible. It's a bit of a slow start, but once it gets you hooked, you'll want to see it through to the end. While it doesn't offer up information on completing quests, it does give you the freedom to explore the world and characters. If you're a fan of DnD looking for something unique with some solid writing and good humor, then you won't find a better game to play than Esoteric Ebb.