Pathologic 2 [Review]
By: Thunderheavyarm
Our friends over atTinybuild have sent us a new video game published by them, anddeveloped by a new developer-- to me at any rate-- Ice-pick Lodge,Pathologic 2. An open world thriller adventure where the choices thatyou make have immediate and long term effects on the people aroundyou. How does it hold up against other titles? That’s the questionthat I asked when I delved into a journey of myself in the game.
The game is centeredaround a small rural town in the middle of nowhere in a fictionalworld. The game itself starts in media res, at the end of a journeythat you the player didn’t get to experience. Seeing the pooroutcome, the main character asks a mysterious figure to restart theworld the day he rode in to town on a train. After a briefintroduction, that teaches the player how to interact with objectsand people, you’re thrown into the meat of everything. Havingkilled three people while defending yourself it’s a race againsttime to not only clear your name, but to also prevent the dark futureyou were sent back from.
Gameplay
The game itselfcomes off as much more of a survival game. Going into the player menuthere are six different meters that the player has direct controlover: health, immunity, exhaustion, hunger, thirst and stamina. Thereare also similar reputation bars for each of the small districts ofthe village, so doing good things in one district may only impactthat one. However, doing bad things in any of them will get a rumorstarted causing your reputation to dive. Normally, something likethis wouldn’t be that much of an issue to deal with since mostgames at least let you get a good start before cranking up thedifficutly of the game. Not so with this one, the second the gamestarts it doesn’t take long before you’re notified that a rumoryou murdered your father begins spreading, and not much long afterthat before you’re being actively hunted.
And it’s at thispoint that I had to start looking for a guide that could actually getme past the first few minutes of the game. I’m all for a games thatpresent a challenge, like Dark Souls or even some of the farmer sims.But those gradually increase in difficulty, letting you at leastlearn some basic techniques or show you the correct way to do thingsfirst. I think that I can see how they’re trying to make it so thatyou’re actually living out the two weeks of game time that actuallyhappens. But the trouble here is that they’ve set it up so thatyou’re going back with previous knowledge so it doesn’t makesense for everything to keep happening the way that they do.
The world
The game clearly hasa very diverse and well built world. Including some new races andhuman sub cultures. Most impressive but at the same time incrediblyfrustrating to try and figure out what’s happening. Especially whenthey slip in another language. Everything is overwhelming to thepoint that I just want to get through most of the dialogue ratherthan try and pick through it for a chance of tidbits that I need tofigure it out. I can see that the game has a lot of foundation thatit’s trying to build up on. And it’s apparent with what they’vebuilt. But the walls and the structure of everything doesn’t holdup well past that.
Final Thoughts
I genuinely wanted to like this game, not just from the fact that I’ma big fan of the games that come out by Tinybuild, but it’s been awhile since I’d played a game that advertised to be a thriller. ButI had so much trouble just getting past the first few minutes of thegame that I quickly lost interest. And just to clarify this hasnothing to do with a gating mechanic that I’m stuck behind, ifyou’ve read my review of Graveyard Keeper, you’ll know that Ienjoy games like that. This game has gigantic walls and no way foryou to know how to scale it without getting outside help. I can’tin all honesty recommend this game as I didn't’ find it enjoyable.If you found it enjoyable, it is on Steam and if you’re looking fora serious challenge then this game might be of interest to you. Untilnext time everyone.