• Publisher: ZA/UM
  • Release Date: May 21, 2026
ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Image
Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 55 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: Brilliant, burnt-out, possibly cursed – you play as operant Hershel Wilk, alias CASCADE. Five years ago you led your team into the abyss and have been haunted by your failures ever since. Now you've been recalled for a mysterious assignment that may give you a chance to prove yourself again.Brilliant, burnt-out, possibly cursed – you play as operant Hershel Wilk, alias CASCADE. Five years ago you led your team into the abyss and have been haunted by your failures ever since. Now you've been recalled for a mysterious assignment that may give you a chance to prove yourself again.

    Find yourself thrown into a three-way struggle for cultural and ideological power, played out across an unforgettable new city. In ZERO PARADES, the world itself is a character with its own secrets, traumas, and miracles for you to discover.

    To get anywhere in this world, you'll need friends. Unfortunately, you don't have any. Instead, you'll go up against international bankers, foreign techno-fascists, psychic doppelgängers, a paranoid TV presenter, a man with a box for a heart, and dozens more. Everyone you meet has their own agendas, beliefs, and secrets for you to uncover and turn to your own ends.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 47 out of 55
  2. Negative: 0 out of 55
  1. Jun 19, 2026
    100
    Zero Parades is a spy masterpiece with a literary sensibility that borrows fropm the work of Thomas Pynchon, John le Carré and Philip K. Dick. The studio behind the celebrated Disco Elysium again sends a fallible professional through a complex world.
  2. May 20, 2026
    90
    ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is a fantastic RPG with great writing, a phenomenal cast of characters, and an interesting setting.
  3. Jun 2, 2026
    90
    Yet once again, ZA/UM Nouvelle Version delivers a genuinely staggering adventure, where the depths of a soul seeking redemption intertwine with the Invisible Hand, expanding empires, and spies fighting to survive amid it all. Making a brilliant game is one thing; avoiding the sophomore slump and doing it twice in a row is something else entirely.
  4. May 21, 2026
    85
    Disco Elysium may be impossible to replicate, but Zero Parades: For Dead Spies successfully carries over some of its most compelling qualities and turns them into a genuinely strong experience of its own. At times, it can feel a little too trapped within the framework established by Disco Elysium, yet the sheer amount of high quality writing and a fairly engaging story are more than enough to make fans of this genre feel like they have finally been given something they have been starving for.
  5. Jun 5, 2026
    80
    Zero Parades: For Dead Spies can’t escape comparisons to Disco Elysium, but even so, ZA/UM has managed to infuse its new game with a lot of personality, proving that there’s still plenty of talent out there and many stories left to tell.
  6. May 18, 2026
    80
    Ultimately, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies does manage what looked unthinkable: it stands on its own, turbulent development cycle aside. It was never going to completely step out from the monolith that is Disco Elysium, but viewed strictly on its own merits, it emerges as a very intricate, atmospheric espionage RPG.
  7. May 20, 2026
    65
    Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is crushed under the weight of its spiritual predecessor. In a desperate attempt to replicate the brilliance of Disco Elysium, the game confuses profound writing with exhausting, baroque verbosity, burying a potentially good espionage thriller under an avalanche of unearned infodumps and out-of-place philosophical digressions. Mechanically, unbalanced systems like 'Exert' and illogical stat checks actively encourage save-scumming, ruining the role-playing experience. It is ultimately saved from total failure by its gorgeous, oil-painted art direction and a few brilliant mechanical flashes like the Dramatic Encounters. A passable but soulless imitation that completely fails to carve out its own identity.

See all 59 Critic Reviews