The Pathless (2020)

The Pathless is a visually striking action-adventure game, developed by the same studio behind Abzû, it emphasizes exploration and movement over traditional combat-heavy gameplay. The MC is Hunter, accompanied by an eagle companion, as they traverse a cursed island to restore its light. The game is built around fluid traversal mechanics, sprinting and gliding across vast landscapes while hitting targets with a bow to maintain momentum creates a unique sense of flow and freedom.

One of the game’s strongest aspects is its presentation. The stylized art direction gives the world a painterly, almost mythical feel, and the OST adds emotional depth to both quiet exploration and intense boss encounters. The bond with the eagle companion also enhances the atmosphere, making traversal and puzzle-solving more engaging while adding a touch of warmth to an otherwise desolate world. It is clearly inspired by games such as Shadow of The Colossus when it comes to the MC and his companion animal, though not with the same level of depth.

However, The Pathless does show its limitations over time, the core puzzles and activities, while elegant at first, repeat often and don’t evolve much as the game progresses. My biggest complain is the side-quests, which are just "side-puzzles", they are too numerous, which can be somewhat tedious if you try to do them all like I did. The open world, though beautiful, can feel sparse and lacking in meaningful variety, this makes the journey feel less rewarding for people who prefer more intricate mechanics or denser environments, similar to what we can see with the already mentioned SOTC.

Overall, The Pathless succeeds as a meditative and graceful adventure, it's strengths lie in movement, mood, and presentation rather than complexity or depth. At first, the standout for me was the OST and the visuals, but I stayed playing this until the end solely because of it's amazing movement mechanics, it is truly one of the most satisfying ones I've ever experienced. For people seeking a short, atmospheric experience that blends exploration with light puzzle-solving, it offers a memorable journey even if it doesn’t quite sustain its magic throughout.

It's a good open world game with limited scope. Unfortunately, I didn't know that achievements were missable and the 100% completion only counts if all were gotten on the same save file. This didn't affect my star rating, I'm just complaining.

It was quite annoying that the "required for 100%" and the other things showed up on your scan as looking the same, so you will spend a lot of extra time doing puzzles that aren't required unless you already know the game. Good game with some frustrations.

Blew my mind that THE Laura Bailey voiced the protag. And the music was good, very unique.

a true marvel. an astoundingly brilliant game that excels in art direction and music composition. that maybe was a tad too long but powerful all the same with its set piece finale. would recommend to any fan of any genre , but this is the puzzle adventure fantasy game made for game lovers. one thing that blew me away each time was the boss fights , these huge epic cinematic set pieces. It reminded me a little of SotC.

the only notable cons I can agree on is the slight annoyances in the puzzles , the lightstones were fine and collecting them was made easy enough for anyone to do but the bizarre placement ways of unlocking those strangely placed talismans was not my favourite. the only flaw I can think of in an otherwise perfect game littered with subtext. one that grips you as a deep red storm creeps in and engulfs you. 9/10.

My first couple of hours with The Pathless, it felt like a solid three-star game. The world was lovely, the puzzles were nice, but I found the movement finicky and I hated getting caught in the storm.

By the time I entered the last plateau, I was up to four stars. I figured out how to avoid the storm most of the time, I was getting better with the arrows, and I'd earned enough "flaps" (which feel oddly and delightfully similar to A Short Hike) that I was really enjoying traversal now. Plus, this eagle and I were really bonding, y'know?

When I finally cleared the storms and was able to explore everywhere with reckless abandon, some switch flipped and I just had to find every lightstone and earn every achievement. I looked forward to scanning the landscape, picking a direction, solving a few puzzles and stumbling on unclaimed secrets.

And somewhere along the way I became a fan of the game's straightforward but unambiguous moral. The Pathless isn't as polished or distinctive as Shadow of the Colossus or Breath of the Wild (two games it's frequently compared to), and its first impressions aren't nearly as impressive, but it is more concise and, I'd argue, clearer in its message.

So as with Giant Squid's previous game, I've got to rate this one quite a bit higher than the current average. I had a wonderful time.

This game is just short of great, and it could have been amazing. I think all it would have taken is more time and thought... it's a bit of a shame.

This is a BotW-like that incorporates some of its own mechanics such as flight (not JUST paragliding) and speed boosting around cell-shaded terrain a la Vanquish. These are pretty fun and work well. And for once, we've got a companion animal that controls well. Where it falls short, in my opinion, is particularly in lack of terrain variety. The final area was the only one I found interesting to explore, and for a game based on world exploration, I find it disappointing that the other areas of the game are so same-y. I felt very little motivation to keep exploring each area beyond what it took to progress the story.

Some smaller things... puzzles lack in creativity. The world is huge but you cannot fast travel, not even between beacons. A toggleable mini-map would have been amazing to keep track of where you are, what you've finished, and what you still need to explore. Your character is also invincible (as far as I know(?)) and there are no enemies other than bosses. In other words, it doesn't go very deep. But it could have, and that is what's most regrettable.

Still worth a play. Can't forget to mention the soundtrack's amazing (bravo, Austin Wintory). What's there is good. What isn't there holds it back.

The Pathless is quite a decent game. It has some fun aspects, however its flaws bring it down a lot and it ends up with an underwhelming feeling that it's a missed opportunity.

Story is simple good vs evil story but it's done right so if you like such simple and relaxing stuff you'll enjoy it. There's some lore to the world you can search for if you want to. Story isn't the main focus here though.

The game loop focuses on solving several puzzles in each region of the open world to get the chance to face the boss fight of such area, there's no other combat or enemies in the game, just puzzles then boss fights, and after you clear each area, you move on to the next to do exactly the same things, again and again, 4 times in a row, before facing the final boss in an ultimately 5-6 hours campaign if you just do the number of puzzles required to progress only, and not the optional ones.

This could have been more fun, but the puzzles don't improve that much, they're mostly very simple and very basic. Repetitiveness starts to become more and more clear once you hit the 3rd area. The world is completely empty and dead, and for such game, it's weirdly big. You will do nothing in it bar moving long distances using speed boosts searching on your own for the puzzles places. Do this 6 times each area (as you mostly need to do 6 puzzles a least in each area) then go chase the boss and fight it. If you're making your world empty, with nothing to do in between objectives, don't make it big then ? It's easy to get lost in this while searching for another basic puzzle to progress. It becomes tedious the more you progress, when you realize you have to do exactly the same thing in 4 different areas.

There is honestly no reason for this to be open world. It should have been a pretty small and tight world so that you can get to puzzles quickly and focus on solving them. I get it they made the world big just for the speed movement mechanic which is supposedly the main selling point of the game, but the novelty of it grows old pretty fast after the first 1.5 hours or so. It's a fun mechanic, but it absolutely can't hold a game on its own, especially when you're required to keep searching for the puzzles area at least 6 times in 4 different areas with nothing else to do. Beside, it's not really helped by the fact most puzzles aren't really that hard or challenging either as I said earlier.

Alongside the big empty open world, they made the boss of each area patrol it in something like a big red tornado that if it finds you, you'll get separated from your eagle and trapped in an obligatory stealth segment trying to stay away from the boss's vision till you get to your bird again. These segments are really tedious. There's absolutely no reward for getting through them, and no punishment for failing them either except of the possibility of losing some of the "currency" you collect to upgrade your eagle (which isn't really a big deal losing them anyway). They just making traversing the world even more tedious when you have just found a puzzle place in front of you and while moving towards it, the boss's red tornado appears close to it meaning you can't go there to avoid the awful stealth segment and you'll have to change direction.

Boss fights are great though, definitely the best aspect of the game. They provide epic atmosphere and tense fights that are very enjoyable. I enjoyed doing all of them, but the main character seems immortal regardless. She doesn't have health bar but the screen seems to flash red on getting damage, however, she also kind of regenerates health on every hit she does to the boss so she's basically impossible to die. You'll never see the game over screen in this and I'm honestly curious how it looks like.

Art direction and graphics design are beautiful and great to look at, and the soundtracks were really well done, especially the bosses' soundtracks. The soundtrack of the whole last boss segment was just awesome, epic as hell.

Overall, this could have a lot better game with better design of the gameplay loop, but it felt they focused on the speed movement mechanic and completely neglected the rest. It's shame. A huge missed opportunity for me.

Story : 6/10

Gameplay : 5/10.

Art direction and graphics : 8/10.

Soundtracks : 7/10.

Overall : 6/10.