Pathologic

Review

Pathologic can be played through three different characters: the Bachelor, the Haruspex and the Changeling (the latter one only available if you complete the game with the other two). Each character visits the same remote town, but their stories and motivations differ, and allegedly, only when you play with all three, are you able to make full sense of the story. For reasons I explain below, I only played with the Bachelor, aka Danyl Dankovsky.

Danyl is a thanatologist (a researcher of death) invited to an isolated Russian town to investigate rumours that a man named Simon Kain may have achieved immortality. Upon arrival, however, Danyl discovers that Simon has died under mysterious circumstances. Determined to find cause, he gradually learns that a deadly plague is decimating much of the town’s population. Tasked with protecting key individuals, collectively known as the Bound, Danyl must survive 12 gruesome days in an increasingly inhospitable environment while attempting to develop a vaccine for the devastating disease.

I have to say this was an utterly confusing game.

On the one hand, there were certain characteristics which I definitely found appealing. For instance, the game establishes an eerie mood right from the beginning, with ominous background music, dim washed-out colours and strange, detached passersby. Most supporting characters had interesting personalities, well-developed backstories and were all mysterious in their own right. I also appreciated how they all somehow connected with one another. For example, the missions involving Peter Stamatin and Maria Kaina seem unrelated at first, so you would never suspect those two characters are actually linked via a political and perhaps even romantic history. These kinds of unexpected relationships are not uncommon throughout the game, ultimately creating an intricately interwoven narrative where the characters’ stories are deeply entwined.

Despite these positive aspects, there was a looooot I didn’t like.

For starters, I often found myself wondering if I was playing the game correctly. For example, during one of the initial missions, Rubin went silent, and no one seemed to know where he was hiding. Yet, on the map, there’s a place marked “Rubin’s Prosectorium”. Sure enough, when I went there, there he was – alive and well, and ready to talk. But speaking to other characters afterward, they all acted as if he had vanished without a trace… including my own character!

What’s more, you can interact with NPCs even if they have never been properly introduced in the game, which is really confusing. So, from mission 1 with the Bachelor, Bad Lair is shown on the map for reasons you have no idea why. Some places are also shown on the map which you never ever are required to go (e.g., The Castle of the Soul-and-a-Halves” (the warehouse where the urchins under Chieftain Notkin resides). Though it could be that these places are available from the start for when you select a different playable character at the beginning of the game (I only played with the Bachelor).

There were also situations in which I was supposed to track someone to get information out of him/her, but then, somehow, the information was suddenly available to me without ever having met the person in question.

Overall, I’m not entirely sure these moments were bugs, oversights, or intentional. In either case, they made it really hard to tell if I was progressing as I was supposed to.

The side quests varied greatly in difficulty and were weak to moderate in entertaining. The side quest to get items for Lara was kind of fun, the quest to kill the Arsonists was okay, the quest to release the prisoners was a complete joke (see more below)!

It’s also very easy to “cheat” in the game. For example, since you are on a timer, you can essentially play the game looking for who to talk or where to go next, and once you figure it out, you restart the game and go immediately to that destination. I must admit that I did this a couple of times, and did not feel ashamed about it… Also, whenever the rats or thieves come after you, you can simply enter a house and then come out again, and …puff… both will be gone.

And the dialogues… the atrocious dialogues. My English is not perfect, far from it, but I can usually follow fairly complex dialogues. This game, however, made me question my English comprehension to another level. My feeling was that of a six-grader taking the Certificate of Proficiency in English! I’m aware Pathologic Classic HD had a major rewrite overhaul to improve poor grammar and phrasing, but I still found the text way too convoluted and confusing. Some reviewers mentioned the cryptic dialogues were likely intentional, which is fine. But I’d think the developers would at least try to make the missions’ objectives clear and understandable (perhaps the original Russian version has clearer aims?). In most cases, they weren’t – often I found myself not knowing exactly what to do next, walking around aimlessly without knowing where to go or who to talk to, and hoping to stumble upon the next clue (finding Isidor’s house at the beginning of the game was one such moments).

Furthermore, it would have been very useful to receive some explanation about the game mechanics right at the start. I made a series of blunders early on and didn’t want to restart the game from scratch, as I had already invested several hours. For example, I only realised that missions expire after a full day has passed when I suddenly received a message saying one of the characters had died (to be fair, the game does warn you that something bad will happen, but the message was somehow buried in the game’s confusing text).

I ended up figuring things out mostly by trial and error, when I think there should have been a more gradual and guided learning process. Trial and error was a very  frustrating way to learn how to play this game.

As an example, I arrived on day 6 with little more than 300 coins, hoping this day would bring in some good money. I did collect 10,000 coins which, unfortunately, ran out as quickly as I had acquired them (they were spent on various items just to be able to complete the day). So, I started day 7 not knowing if I would make it till the end, and always thinking I will have to start over.

But, after devoting many days to playing this, who the hell wants to start from scratch?! Of course, I could go back a day or two, but what would that bring me? I think the trick to success with this game is to start collecting money and get geared up right from the start.

My tips to play this game with as little frustration as possible (don’t worry, there are no spoilers)

– Don’t ignore the equipment!!! I learnt that the hard way (I spent most of the game terribly ill-equipped). I know it’s tempting to ignore it because, let’s face it, the prices are ridiculous. For instance, right on day 2, a pair of repellent Jackboots will cost you 16,000 coins, a protective face mask 24,000 coins, and overalls the whopping price of 48,000 coins! Prices will fluctuate, depending on demand, but if you go by with scraps and try not to starve (as I did for a great deal of the game), paying this absurdity is simply out of question. But, believe me, you should really get some protection. The risk of infection by day 5 is a real problem, so even a simple pair of disposable gloves will do miracles.

– Never waste your money, and save, save, save. Complete all the side quests, because you get either money or valuable items you can then sell (I almost always went to the barman since he seems to pay the most). There are many missions that require you to buy items because you were not successful in getting a particular item or complete a particular mission in the previous day. You’ll probably not want to restart after playing for several hours, so buying those items might be your only choice.

– Don’t underestimate how hungry, injured or infected you will be. I felt that immunity wasn’t really an issue as it fills back up quite rapidly by itself. Similarly, exhaustion is easily beaten by 2- or 3-hours sleep. Reputation was the least of my concerns, so as long as you make sensible choices throughout the game you shouldn’t worry either (i.e., don’t make your character an arsehole!)

– Start filling up those water bottles. There are guys walking around who will give you bandages in exchange for those water bottles. This was a life saver to me, because even if your health is full, you can sell the bandages for good money.

– This is the most important of the advice if you play with the Bachelor: when the time comes, DON’T GIVE THE 60,000 TO FREE THE PRISONERS! I did it, and I regretted like hell, because later I realized that you get nothing in return (apart from a bit of reputation, which was useless to me since I had already maxed it out). I don’t remembering getting as much money in any of the missions, so do yourself a favour and just keep it – this was one of the most ridiculous side quests of all! What the hell were you thinking devs?!?

Also, I played the 2015 version of the game (called Pathologic Classic HD), which was an update of the original Pathologic game from 2005, but the graphics still looked very dated; the characters’ faces looked angular and blocky, and the movements were rigid; voices sounded unnatural and artificial.

But surely the most negative point I must award to this game is that navigating the environment was a real pain in the neck. Forcing you to go at a snail’s pace through the town bordered on sadistic. I’m not exaggerating when I say that more than 30 of  my 50 hours of gameplay were spent walking from place to place. You read it right, 30 hours… of slow, pointless walking!

I fully understand that the developers wanted to add some tension and thrill by having a time limit to complete the missions, such that you would feel you could not reach a particular place or person on time. Running would sort of defeat that purpose. But surely there would be valid alternatives. For example, why not make the clock run faster if you run? Or make you lose items or money because you are “in a hurry”? These alternatives seem way more reasonable than forcing characters to walk around at a turtle pace, especially if a man is intent on killing me with a knife – I would sure as hell run like there would be no tomorrow!

I can tell you though that by the time I finished the game, those 30h of walking around made me feel like I knew the Pathologic town better than I know my own neighbourhood.

And how laughable the endings were! I mean, come on! Imagine you devote your time to play only-God-knows-for-how-many-hours for then having an ending over 1 minute, showing you the most boring final scenes I have ever seen in a computer game?!? I’m not lying. It took me almost 50 hours to complete the game, for an ending that was 1 minute and 25 seconds (!).

Way to ruin the climax!

I started the game thinking I would play it with all three playable characters, but after this not-so enjoyable experience, I have to say I have no intention of spending another minute on this game.

Star rating

Pathologic will appeal to some of you, I don’t doubt. The premise is undeniably interesting, and the story is, for the most part, well-devised. However, the confusing mission dialogues, poor graphics, subpar programming, underwhelming endings and weak gameplay all contributed to a frustrating and exasperating gaming experience. Furthermore, I found the story to be unduly complex, and that’s coming from a guy who loves multi-layered stories. However, Pathologic was simply too convoluted, almost as if they decided to squeeze every single idea for a character they came up with.

Usually, I don’t find playing computer games a waste of time, but I felt Pathologic was just not worth it. Giving up in the middle of a game is something I rarely do, but this game really pushed me to the limit.

Unless you are willing to devote a significant portion of your time and learn how to play this game the “right” way from the start (I really suggest you look at my advice above), you are fine with wasteless hours of wandering from location to location, and do not mind the poor graphics and disappointing endings, I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Pathologic gets a star rating of 1.

Bizarrometer

Pathologic is indeed strange, but not overly so. There is a clear mission: find out the source of a deadly plague that is decimating the population of a strange and isolated town. You speak with people, they give you some hints on how to complete the mission, and then you move on and speak with other people, and so on.

However, Pathologic is not short of bizarre elements: the surreal theater presentations, the regular mentioning of the occult, intentionally weird characters, cryptic and (perhaps inadvertently) confusing dialogues. There are also a couple of very strange phenomena that border magical realism – for example, the virus appears to have a will of its own, there are creepy alien-like figures that are never acknowledged, and architectural buildings that defy the laws of physics.

The endings, short as they are, are extremely ambiguous. I read somewhere that you should play the game with all three playable characters in order to grasp the true meaning of those finales. I only played with the Bachelor, but I did watch the gameplay and the endings of the other two characters. I can’t say I’m much more informed by it…

Pathologic gets a bizarrometer of 3.5.