Pathologic Classic HD

I played this game quite a lot, without ever finshing it. Good points : intriguing story , overall immersing atmosphere, open world feeling - you are left quite free and unguided in your explorations, fascinating soundtrack. Bad points : occasionally overcomplicated writing, routine actions - a lot of walking around, problems with quest system, NPC design (you get to see the same faces over and over again apart from the main NPC which are well characteized). Overall sense frustration which at some point becomes the only motivation to try and finish this game.

This game is so unorthodox that it will surprise the most players. So unorthodox that at the beginning one may think it has a fatal bug. While it has some bugs, none of them is fatal. The story is mysterious, immersive and very original. Very much based in Russian culture, employing both its good and bad aspect, both the past and present. Artistic design is quite alluring, but screen presentation is poor and crude. And it's true even when taking into account when it was released (half-naked chicks are rendered very well though). Progress in game is based mostly on dialogues and those are …. weird - to be polite. Perhaps something lost in the translation. You get flamboyant, cryptic answers, often out of topic. I'm sure some people will love it and some will hate it. Don't go for it unless you are very sophisticated and very open minded (and patient), craving for something different. Different it is.

I just finished one of the playable charater's story lines mere moments ago at the time of writing this review. I personally don't know what I can say about this brilliant game that other people haven't said elsewhere and better than I could. But I will say this: this is a probably the most brilliant, insanely interesting, mysterious and artisically driven games I think to ever have existed in the world of video games. The game deserves to be played, you as a gamer deserve to experience it and the brilliant team and studio that created it deserves to be supported. That's all I have to say.

Pathologic 1 is... hard to rate numerically. Played quite a lot of games in a wide variety of genres, but this might be the only game I either can't recommend despite how great it is, or can recommend despite how terrible it plays. This isn't merely a "love or hate" game, it's a "love AND hate" one. Or maybe just "hate". Depends on what you're looking for. Can't tell you if you're gonna like it, but I can try to give you an idea. Most players probably won't like this one. Recommended it to the friend of an artistically oriented colleague. Told me she thought it was trash. Looked at her friend play it, thought it was tedious and controlled like shit. She's right, especially since her friend picked the hardest character (Haruspex). Gameplay is repetitive in Pathologic. You're mostly walking around town trying to solve a mystery, and you're on a timer all the way. You're figthing not only against criminals, but also a lethal disease and your own bodily needs. It's an uphill battle. You'll be constantly stressed, wondering if you're doing what you should be doing, whether or not you're forgetting anything important, if you'll have time to go talk to that one character, visit the grocers to find something not too expensive to eat before night... And when it comes to the actual fighting, it's downright atrocious, shoddy, punishing, time-consuming and sometimes very unfair. I heard the game was made without an actual game-designer, and it shows. So, why a cult classic? Why are people talking about how painful the game is, despite the fact they can't quite put it away? Well, the writing is pretty damn good. The translation used to be terrible, but they fixed it in the HD version. The atmosphere is phenomenal. It certainly feels like you're living through a deadly pandemic. The town is isolated, it follows its own archaic rules, but they're consistent and easy to learn if you bother to talk to people. You'll be wondering what new level of weirdness you're going to uncover.

This game owns a piece of my heart. I watched some full longplays of each route on Youtube years ago and kept thinking about it over the years...got the soundtrack and listened to it for years....finally cracked and bought the game so I could play it myself and exorcise this sand pest from my blood and move on. You don't enjoy it as much as experience it. It's a janky undercooked mess. And it feels like coming home. It might be a metaphor for grief, or for becoming an adult, or for the changes Russian society went through in the 80s-90s, or change in general. But for me, it was an affirmation that "any choice is right so long as it is willed." I willed to play through this game as a cheating no-clip god-mode console wizard and by gum I did and regret nothing.