Pathologic 2 (2019)

Pathologic 2 is an intense and unrelenting survival experience, but for those who stick with its world will find an incredibly rich and engaging adventure that everyone has to experience.

Pathologic 2 starts as a remake of one of the routes of the original Pathologic - the Haruspex, a doctor and surgeon known as Artemy Burakh, returns to his hometown and finds a mysterious plague ravaging the town at an alarming rate. While maintaining hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and immunity/infection levels the player will seek to cure townsfolk, gather supplies, follow mysterious visions, trade with children, and fight for their lives in a dark alley.

The town is comprised of 12 days in several districts - the first couple of days are fairly normal, and subsequent days the districts will cycle between infection, a ravaged post-infection period and back to normal. The player has a "thoughts" tab instead of a quest list, which entertains various places/people to interact with in a thoughtfully modern manner. Instead of quests the player feels they are forced to do the player may entertain their curiosity and see where it will lead them. This is important as the game (especially its "intended difficulty") will make it impossible to do everything and manage supplies, which may result in death (which permanently reduces stats for ALL saves - be careful!) and saving every important character may become a fool's errand.

For the Haruspex-specific version of Pathologic, 2 is very focused on brewing tinctures/serums, giving out medication, and doing surgery. Organs pay a high price in certain markets, herbs brew powerful immunity tinctures, and managing pain is critical to treating the diseased. The mechanics don't feel vague or poorly explained, which is what makes it a wonder that the game is still so tough to manage even as you don't feel like the game is hiding any core mechanics from you.

Why play such a game that feels cryptically designed to subvert your chances of mastery? Without spoiling too much, the dialogue and narrative is the meat of Pathologic 2's game and what makes the game incredibly satisfying to play. Characters are fully fleshed out and have their own arcs which may flexibly be cut short by death, and as the player grapples with plot developments and other discoveries your own quest may also push in a radically different direction.

The visuals are incredible, a higher fidelity boost to the dusty and oppressive Steppe from the first game. Characters feel just as bizarre and intriguing as the original and every drop of blood and dingy brick makes for a very engaging atmosphere. The only thing I would knock Pathologic 2 for (compared to 1) is the soundtrack. After the masterwork of the first game's soundtrack the second takes a much more muted and ambient approach. This makes areas feel less distinct and hides the more impressive tracks deeper in the game.

Pathologic 2 is a game that begs to be played with its difficulty in mind, though settings exist to tone down various survival aspects to be less antagonistic. Pay no mind to the "intended experience" button though, as even the easier difficulties will not give the player enough time to do everything or master the game. It's an enchanting experience with deep mythology and meaningful themes behind the surface-level misery that people will often associate with these kind of games. Even if you can't do a perfect run, the game will still be an amazing trip.

There is not a ton I can say about this. I attempted to write a traditional review and it morphed into some kind of impressionist piece (I'll link below). I don't think a traditional review would be possible with how deeply this game affected me (nor would it do the game justice). All I can really say is that if you are willing to dive deeply into some of the most artistic, bleakest, and most relevant themes that any video game has ever explored, you must play this. It is avant-garde and it is high art. No game I've played has been brave enough to delve so far into the postmodern and experimental realms of fiction. The game won't be for everyone. You have to like experimental art and be willing to suffer through one of the most grueling video games on the market. But if you come out on the other end, I can guarantee your perception of the world will have been changed.

If you want to read my longer piece on the game, check it out at this link, just be warned that it could verge on spoiler territory, but the game isn't really that spoilable: Link

5.00/5.00

My first contact with Pathologic was through hbomberguy's 2 hour long review/analysis of Pathologic 1 (as one may have guessed from the title and if you have seen the video). He insists that, while he can't in good conscience recommend that anyone play Pathologic 1, he highly recommends Pathologic 2. While the whole thing intrigued me, I never got round to playing Pathologic 2 until now since it was included this January's Humble Choice.

Even with the expectations build up, I have to say that I was really impressed. On paper, the game sounds somewhat like a punishment. You play as a surgeon returning to his hometown when a deadly epidemic breaks out. It mainly involves a lot of walking between objectives while managing your time and resources to survive and combat the "sand pest". Playing on the intended (hardest) difficulty level, the survival mechanics constantly keep you on the edge of death and/or infection. The game instills a sense of dread and hopelessness from the very start that builds through the days. I generally go into games wanting to every quest but I had to come to terms after a few days of game time that this time it would not be possible. You can't save everyone... you can barely survive yourself (at least on one's first attempt... I am sure that there are people who have somehow pulled it off). But, even if it is punishing, it all feels very well balanced. You basically have to make diffcult choices in regards to what quests to pursue and who you can and can't save. Even between gaming sessions I would be worried about how I would survive the latest problem presented by the game.

One mechanic worth noting is what happens when you die. It plays into the themes of the meta-game, but every time you die you acquire penalties that persist even when realoading previous saves. Typically these involve lowering your maximum health after each death but there are others. These penalties can only be completely removed by starting a new playthrough. While this seems harsh, it is not quite as bad as it sounds. The penalties are fairly light and manageble to begin with. They only really get bad if one stacks a very large number of deaths. However this adds a certain degree of extra tension since it is technically possible to stack up enough deaths that one can not feasibly progress further.

The writing, characters and story are really interesting. It is very well written but done so in a weird non-conventional way that keeps the whole thing somewhat mysterious and up to interpretation. I can't say that I followed all of it in my single playthrough, though it seems that this is mostly intended. Since it is very difficult to resolve all questlines and still "win" in a single playthrough so repeat playthroughs can reveal more about the world of Pathologic. There are many subplots and themes involved that all fit together with some meta-narrative that, at least for now, is sadly incomplete. The game was originally intended to have the original 3 playable characters from Pathologic 1. However it is unclear if the developer will be able to complete development of these. Don't get me wrong. This not in early access. It is a complete game and fascinating experience. It is just that the developer wanted to do so much more and I just hope they get the chance to do so.

All in all... highly recommended. Very punishing, very hard, but a really fascinating game. I can't wait for the developer to add "Danil Dankovsky's fun steppe vacation"!

thank god. it's finally over.

☑️ completed on hardest difficult

☑️ it took 51 hours in total

☑️ completely blind, didn't look at any guides/hints

☑️ pretty sure i got the worst possible ending

☑️ basically everyone in the town died, including all of the important main quest NPCs who i failed to save

☑️ i died about 20 times (each death increases difficulty. my save file was almost bricked)

☑️ toward the very end i was almost dead with no food, no water, no equipment, and 1% health

☑️ i failed to complete any main purpose of the game (solving the mystery of the town, finding my father's murderer, finding a cure to the plague)

☑️ i'm uninstalling this abomination off my computer. this game is horrible. i'm going to need years of therapy to undo the trauma of playing this game.

☑️ 10/10, this is one of the most profound and rewarding things i've ever experienced. intensely compelling and glorious and disturbing, mysterious, horrible, unrelenting and beautiful.

☑️ don't ever play this game

I started playing this having no idea what it was or what it was about but after a VERY confusing and odd """tutorial""" I realised it was a one of those survival games, I am not into, mixed with the narrative of a walking simulator, which is a genre I really enoy, mixed together in a morass that I guess I did not "get".

Again, not for me but at least I gave it a few hours and a couple of (in-game) days. I was just frustrated at death and ambiguous direction and uninteresting narrative.

From an update email I just received:

Difficulty Adjustment Update is Here:

To put it mildly, Pathologic 2 is a tough game. And rightly so: for being the game about a catastrophe, it was always intended to be grueling, stressful, and bleak.

However, we heard your feedback and decided to make an update that would allow you to adjust the experience. But instead of making a simple slider to offer a range from Story Mode to Hardcore, we are giving players the way to make lots of fine tweaks to control hunger, fatigue, immunity, thirst and so on.

Use this tool to make the world of Pathologic a bit more forgiving or turn on the absolute hardcore survival mode -- the choice is yours to make now. Enjoy!