Pathologic Classic HD

The cosmology of Pathologic hates you. It loathes you. It is completely indifferent to your suffering, and you will suffer. Pathologic can be summed up as a very Russian survival horror game. It's not fun. Unless you are the most ruthless bastard ever, it will make you feel terrible. "I did this? Oh no..." However, the story is unlike any other. Pathologic can also be summed up as a very Russian opera. The quest givers themselves hate you. They loathe you. They will lie to you and mislead you to their own mysterious ends, just to see you fail. You don't belong here. You won't even understand what their intentions are until at least your third playthrough, and even then, it's up to you to decipher meaning, like a mystic sifting through chicken entrails. One of it's central themes is the literary trope of "Man's inhumanity toward man." But, deep at its core, it's a game about carving out freedom with a knife. Or a gun. You're free to advance the game by your own means, but at a terrible, miserable cost. Pathologic is a completely uncompromising vision of being completely alone in a hostile, malevolent universe. You don't play Pathologic, you endure Pathologic. 5/5 for a brutal game completely in a class of its own.

I don't care about the "dated" graphics, they are fine to me. But the game just isn't that fun to play. Awkward dialogue, clunky combat, confusing story (I still simply don't understand why things happened as they happened in the first game day and led to subsequent events).

Unlike most great games I've played, Pathologic is not very fun. At times it can be stressful, boring, difficult to understand, and even frustrating. However, I still believe it to be a must-play experience. The music is excellent, the world is incredibly atmospheric, and the writing is beautifully cryptic. I can say with confidence that there is no other game like it. The first couple hours in Pathologic will be a shock to most players. The game forces you to rethink your expectations of video games and you may find it incredibly hard to enjoy. Walking is slow, the atmosphere is depressing, and combat is best when it's avoided. Only after making it past the intial learning curve will you start to see the beauty of this game and will start to see the positives that lie in each of those negatives mentioned earlier. Each line of dialouge feels so profound and important to the story. Each decision you make feels vital to your ability to survive. The depressing atmosphere is incredibly well crafted and genuine. And the plot will have you hooked as you try to piece together the puzzle. Personally, I feel that this game isn't meant to be fun. It's meant to be an unforgettable experience. I have been mesmerized with the world that exists in Pathologic since I first played it. I can recommend it wholeheartedly, but, be prepared for a seemingly un-fun experience at first.

I don't think I've ever played a game that I hated playing, but wanted to keep playing so much. Not the "I have to finish this just to finish" feeling of, say, the Tomb Raider reboots, but a genuine masochistic fascination with this world. In one word, it is immersive. Fascinating in its alienness. A space that, if you were coming at it blindly, you would leave immediately. Knowing what you're getting into before playing the game helps. This an experience that is if not better, more palatable with spoilers. Because, man, not knowing what you're doing makes this very hard to play. Hard in the game-sense of "doing things as you need them to be done", and hard in that otherwise it becomes so defeating. You can spend two days in-game, only to realise you messed something up. Back-track, start again. It is hard if you don't know what to do. But once you do, it becomes suprisingly easy. All the well-thought-out, inter-related survival mechanics (which predate other less shining examples in the genre) are one of the best ludonarrative I've ever encountered. And the narrative! This is not a story perse, but a metaphor about stories, about theatre, about themes that are important to understanding the world at the turn of the 20th century. Which, come to think of, is very relevant today: conflicting sense of past, present and future. Technology disrupting ways of life. Violence born from misunderstanding. Plague... Walking the streets of the Town-on-the-Gorkhon is one of the best game experiences I've ever played. And one I wanted to finish as fast as possible, if only so I could experience the sequel all the better. Yet. Yet, my promise of "I'll only play until day 6" soon turned into "I have to finish at least one of three stories".

Yeah, I read the positve reviews and the gushing about the story, but this is a really slow unengaging game. I have read it gets better after day 3, but I couldn't play this for more than a few hours, and I was really trying to like it too. All the characters are seriously verbose, and it throws too many wild concepts and ideas at you from the very beginning for you to get a handle on it all. A lot less walking, a little less talking, a slower introduction to the peculiarities of the town, a bit more agency and this could have been better. Still, if some people like the way it is then good for them, but there was no fun there for me.