The worst thing I have to say about this game was that beyond not enjoying the experience of playing it, I also hated looking at it: everything from the zoomed-out top-down camera to the tiny white text made this so much worse. From my first hour alone I could tell that this would be one of those games where clunky controls and busywork would lead to so much frustration that I know for a fact there WILL come a moment where it makes me so mad that all immersion into the horror of it is forgotten as I just fight the game itself. And I'm old enough now not to bother and not to engage. Nothing about it intrigues me enough where I'd rather play this ugly eyesore than anything else anyway, so I don't see it as a loss. I think what this reminds me of most is those horror games on web. Something about it just strikes me as cheap, and not in an endearing way.
It's miraculous that this even exists.
What stuck out to me most during my first few hours were the intuitive interface and building. Usually in games like these I expect to die from missing some resource that isn't even displayed anywhere on screen or for ignoring some event because there's been so many meaningless alerts spammed that I've stopped checking any of them. I experienced none of this in Going Medieval. At one point the it suggested I build a cellar for food to be cool under the summer so I thought to dig a hole and cover it up with wood. After ten minutes I started thinking it probably can't be that easy so I googled to see the right way to do it; but no, it really was that simple and straightforward - there's no special dimensions and quirky requirements like in some survival games (looking at you, Vintage Story). Another thing I liked about the building is that it's not restrictive and it feels like you could probably build some amazing structures here, be it skyscrapers or underground lairs. Being 3D, it gets closer to scratching that Sims itch in ways that Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld simply can't. It's worth mentioning that it does have a peaceful mode, so if you're just interested in building up your community and focusing exclusively on survival, you can do that without worrying raiders deleting your existence. You can also customize everything about the starting conditions and your colonists, including the number of them you start out with, so you could just as well start off all alone. All in all, what I found went way beyond my expectations and I'd recommend it even at full price without hesitation.
I feel bad leaving an average review of EXODUS because the visuals, from neat little spaces with Orthodox ikons, to the breathtaking vistas, badass bandit outfits, junkpunk guns, and crazy storms are amazing. However, I can't in good faith endorse some of the choices they've made, especially with the forced cutscenes, quicktime events, and endless conversations which, while you can disregard, you can't rush along in any way if if you just want to see them play out. You either wait there and do nothing for ten minutes or go and lose them forever. It's clear to me that they wanted EXODUS to feel like this grand adventure, but that's simply not possible with a constrained shooter that lasts about a dozen hours. So the emotional conversations and moments with the crew come across as indulgent schmaltz at best or dull padding at worst. The gun customization is cool, but has one fatal design flaw: when you can fit a scope to any weapon - congratulations! - you've just turned them all into snipers. There's no reason not to go with the one that has the lowest resource cost to craft bullets and call it a day. Enemies aren't varied nor particularly thrilling. And if you choose to stealth your way through most human encounters, then you're basically left with a handful of imbecilic mutants to last you the rest of the game. Had they just committed to the Volga level and fleshed it out into a proper game then I suspect this would've been great. Or maybe not, who knows. But if they wanted the journey, they should've kept it level-based and taken you to different places to give you that impression of travel. As it stands, they went with a vision that doesn't suit the franchise and made some pretty terrible choices about how to bring it about with the limited and shallow "open world." Paradoxically, you don't have time to get fully immersed in any of the areas before you leave them, but there's also way too few (just three) to achieve what they wanted.
I enjoyed the atmosphere, combat, and some of the boss fights, but the same can't be said of the navigation and level design. The levels can be sprawling monstrosities without enough landmarks to go by, a fact only made worse in the moments when you can't even be sure if you're going the right way or if you're hopeless figuring out a puzzle that doesn't exist. Most games do a good job of communicating what are only branching paths with potential secrets and what are areas that won't be accessible until much later, always propelling you towards the next encounter without spoonfeeding. This type of free exploration might be fun if the map were available to you from the start; unfortunately, the map for each level has to be unlocked from a specific point, which means that you either get lucky and find it by chance or do that grueling repeated exploration of every nook and cranny you've already seen until you figure out what was missed so you can get the map and then do a trial and error of every pathway till you determine the right one. Even now, I don't think I could visualize these levels in my head beyond some vague pointers, and I still remember my way in games I played over a decade ago. Call it subjective, but I don't think that's a good sign. Another thing I disliked were the restrictions imposed on platforming because the devs could not account to certain player moves in advance but didn't know how to restrict said actions in the rules they established. Jumps that should be survivable given the damage you sustain aren't for the simple reason that it would ruin the intended progression, so you get teleported back. But this intended progression should be a natural by-product of the overall design without punishing the player for figuring out their way around an obstacle. As much as I like other aspects of the game, the poor level design just drags down the whole thing. But it's their first release so I think it's understandable, if regretful.
If you want to play Kingdom Come the hard way and focus only on combat, you can do that. You can try to master the directional system and grind out your stats/learn the combos with a trainer until you wreck havoc on the toughest of opponents. However, the game offers you a lot of freedom to do otherwise and be as wily as possible. For example, I was asked to clear a bandit camp early on. Considering I could barely defeat an unarmored peasant with a club at that point, taking on a camp of better equipped bandits that fight as a group wasn't going to happen. If you're conniving, though, you'll first do a bit of thieving to afford some decent equipment or become a herbalist/alchemist/hunter to make some cash. And then to ensure success you can go at night when most of the bandits are sleeping without their gear equipped and catch them unawares. Better yet, you can get the assassination and stealth during rain perks and them out during a storm without any of them hearing a thing. Or you could just grind your archery and horsemanship until you're a one man Mongol army headshotting enemies left and right. The choice is yours. And that's what I like most about this game. As soon as you're done with the prologue, you can go in any direction you want and do whatever you like. Do you want to practice your stealth and become a god tier thief and assassin before you even touch the main story? You can do that. Do you want to roleplay as a scholar going around picking herbs, brewing potions, and finding himself the best teachers and books to learn from? Also possible. Just to give you an idea, I've spent the first 30h or so in the game with barely touching the combat or the main story. To say that there's lots to do is an understatement. If you love Gothic and Elder Scrolls, I would advise you try this and keep from making a final judgment until you leave the highly-restrictive Kojima-type prologue sprinkled with cutscenes. Your patience will be rewarded.
Pathologic hooked me from the start. The storytelling, the world, the characters, the mystery - everything perfectly interwoven. Big props also go to the excellent way it made use of the economy throughout, as you rarely get a game that has you considering so thoughtfully what you need most and how far you're willing to sink to get it. In most roleplaying games, when a weak character offers you a reward for helping them, you automatically turn it down to score the good boy points. Not so here. Because what you're being given could seriously make the difference whether someone lives or dies that day. If you've got food on you, you might make the risky trip to help a person that needs treatment. But if you're low? Well, those are hours you simply can't spare because you're in dire need of supplies. Really, what I want to say is that you shouldn't feel too intimidated by the description if you want to check this out. I despise time constraints in most games, but it's so integral to the flow of your experience in Pathologic that you won't ever wish you could play it without it.
