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NO PARADES: For Dead Spies is a haunting political RPG full of espionage, sharp writing, and bold ideas, but it’s not without its flaws.
A Spy Story That Doesn’t Play by Genre Rules
The immediate comparison people are going to make when they see ZERO PARADES? For Dead Spies on the move. The hand-painted visuals, the dialogue-heavy design, the emotionally damaged protagonist, yes, the DNA is plain. But look at Portofiro and you’ll see immediately that this isn’t just another Disco Elysium re-imagining.
Not even remotely.
Where one game explored broken detectives and philosophical despair, ZERO PARADES takes those literary RPG roots and rockets them into the murky world of espionage, ideological warfare, and urban paranoia. The result is a game that is often brilliant, sometimes exhausting, and almost always interesting even when it trips over its own ambition.
And make no mistake, it stumbles a fair amount.
6 Portofiro Is The Real Star Of The Show
Before we dig into mechanics, characters, or story twists, Portofiro deserves its own spotlight.
This once penal colony, now transformed by so-called stabilization programs by EMTERR, feels like a city constantly gasping for air in its own history. Towers festooned with wires. Surveillance screens gleam in impossible corners. Street grafitti competes with political propaganda. You feel watched in every alley.
And then there’s Bagman.
It shouldn’t work as worldbuilding, a bizarre TV host doling out “truth” with nothing but a paper bag on his head – but somehow it absolutely does. Characters like this make Portofiro less a setting and more a fever dream built around political trauma.
It’s not just the atmosphere the city has to offer.
It actively questions you.
Is Hershel a Worthwhile Lead to Follow?
At the heart of the chaos is Hershel, codenamed CASCADE.
When she awakens, she finds only a strange red disk and her companion, Pseudopod, utterly incapacitated, with no clue as to what went wrong. It’s an intriguing opener but the mystery is more than espionage.
Five years ago Hershel had led the “Whole Sick Crew” into disaster. Her team broke up. Her reputation fell apart. Her confidence was broken.
Now her operator, Mel, gives her one last assignment.
One last opportunity.
It’s the game’s ability to organically weave that trauma into dialogue, decision-making, even the pauses between words that makes her work, not just Hershel’s trauma. She’s not written as an action heroine. She is composed as a woman held together by momentum, caffeine, and unanswered guilt.
And that is far more interesting.
The Opening Hours Nearly Ruin the Entire Experience
This is where ZERO PARADES almost loses you.
As a mystery game, it’s creepily scared of letting players figure things out on their own. The opening hours bombard you with political history, faction relationships, personal backstory and mission details with almost reckless enthusiasm.
Sitting in your cramped apartment above Foto 24, you discover at some point a red folder that might as well be labeled:
Everything You Were Supposed to Learn on Your Own.
It’s unwieldy. That’s a bit heavy-handed. And for several hours it threatens to bury what is actually a compelling narrative under layers of exposition.
Thank goodness…
If you fight through, the game changes.
Once It Opens Up, The Investigation Becomes Addictive
Portofiro finally stops talking to you and leaves you to work.
This is the time that ZERO PARADES is difficult to put down.
The various strands – economic disputes, ideological movements, missing persons, propaganda networks – start to intertwine into something far more nuanced than the opening suggests.
There is another secret in every district.
All the NPCs seem to know something that they shouldn’t.
And every answer brings two more questions.
It’s when the spy fantasy finally pays off.
RPG Systems That Feel Approachable… Perhaps Too Accessible
Building of character centers itself around three great faculties:
Mind Activity Relation
Each one breaks down into specific skills that affect dialogue checks, investigations, movement, technology interactions, and social manipulation.
It works.
But when stacked up against genre titans like Baldur’s Gate 3, or even Tyranny, it never quite reaches the same role-playing heights.
That accessibility makes the game easier to get into, but also makes it harder to feel like your version of Hershel is radically different.
There is flexibility.
There’s just not enough unpredictability.
The Status System has some great ideas….and some weak consequences
One of the more interesting systems in the game tracks:
Tiredness Worry Confusion
Push any of them too far and your skills take a hit.
In theory, it generates meaningful tension.
In reality? XP is handed out so liberally that by the late game it often feels easier to take penalties than to actually manage your mental state.
And that’s a shame, because mechanically and thematically, it’s one of the smartest ideas in the game.
It doesn’t bite hard enough.
Dramatic Encounters are great… and criminally rare
Some of the game’s best moments come in what it calls Dramatic Encounters.
Time slows down.
Options shrink.
Suddenly skill checks are life or death.
Maybe you’re running away from a predator inside a market.
Maybe you’re trying to take down a dangerous suspect.
Perhaps you are wondering if WORDS or VIOLENCE will end the confrontation.
These are wonderful moments.
That makes it all the more frustrating that the game barely uses them.
It’s one of the strongest systems in ZERO PARADES – and it often feels like the developers forgot it was there.
Time Management Makes Every Choice a Strategic Choice
Perhaps the most original mechanism here is time itself.
Every single conversation.
Every. Mission.
All of them.
The clock makes everything move.
NPCs have routines. Opportunities are fleeting. Some objectives are only available at certain times of the day.
This makes Portofiro more of a developing intelligence puzzle.
Planning your day is as important as solving your mission.
But there’s a hitch.
The game doesn’t always make it clear where people are – or when they’re going to be there.
That realism adds to the immersion.
And it breeds frustration.
Especially when one lost conversation can cost an entire in-game evening.
The writing is sharp, dirty, funny — and sometimes too much.
It’s in the dialogue that ZERO PARADES gets its fame.
The joke works.
The political debates seem real.
The stranger’s side characters make a strong impression.
And Hershel herself has some wonderfully chaotic dialogue options that really reward experimentation.
But the screenplay also relies heavily on profanity.
Sometimes it fits.
It’s as if every character learned to swear for the first time and they all agreed to never stop.
It doesn’t spoil the experience.”
Sometimes it just takes you out of it.
- It’s Haunting to Look At Even When It’s Not Groundbreaking
Artistically ZERO PARADES knows what kind of mood it wants.
Dark interiors.
Oppressive architecture.
Neon screens through urban decay.
The city always feels like it’s crumbling in real time.
The soundtrack works beautifully with that mood, never taking over scenes but always adding to the tension.
The voice acting is solid throughout as well, especially Hershel who sells vulnerability and sarcasm in equal measures.
No, it’s not quite the painterly magic of Disco Elysium.
But it doesn’t have to.
It has its own identity.”
And that identity remains.
What about replayability?
High surprisingly.
Several recruits.
Branching mission strategies.
End game decisions.
Alternate Endings.
Some of the story lines come back together later but there is enough variety here for a second (or third) playthrough.
So, there’s even more reason for the completionists to come back, with some genuinely clever achievement design.
Final Thoughts: A Beautiful Mess for the Experience
ZERO PARADES: Dead Spies isn’t a slick masterpiece.
It’s not consistent.
It is written over.
It’s occasionally awkward.
And its pacing can drive you crazy.
But it’s also bold, smart, funny, political, and packed with ideas that stay with you long after the credits roll.
Some RPGs are safe.
ZERO PARADES doesn’t do that exactly.
And what do I mean?
Perhaps that is its greatest strength.
Summary
8/10 – An espionage RPG not perfect but unforgettable
If you can survive the overwhelming opening hours, ZERO PARADES rewards patience with one of the year’s most distinctive narrative RPG experiences, rough edges, strange humor, and political chaos and all.