Pathologic 2 is a game with most of the strengths and faults of its predecessor. Let's get the faults out of the way first and quickly, since this is a game I want to commend. The combat is stiff and awkward and salvaged only by being rare - I felt compelled to raise fists maybe four times in a twenty-to-thirty hour game. The system by which named NPCs can become infected and die of the plague sometimes feels impervious to player influence - I once got identical results by treating everyone as best I could, and by reloading a save and taking a nap instead. The plague is supposed to be a force of nature, yes, but it's also a system in a game, and players who feel like they have no effect on a system are probably not going to bother interacting with it. Last and least, the default rate at which hunger increases feels ridiculously fast. Trying to keep Burakh fed is like trying to fill a well by spitting into it. Fortunately, this and many other aspects of the game's challenge can be tweaked via difficulty sliders. Now. As for how Pathologic 2 outweighs these faults to become a game worth recommending anyways: The writing is excellent. The town and its people feel alive, and the player character is no exception. Conversations between them flow naturally, from one choice to another to a conclusion. No looping back to a bland, interrogatory list of questions. The game’s mechanics go a long way towards creating the sense of a living town as well. Survival and time management – challenges and safe routes shift from day to day as the plague walks the streets. The sense of urgency and flow this creates makes the game very hard to walk away from. I’d love to extol the game’s virtues in more detail, but I’m running out of space here, so let me summarize instead: stingy text limit combat bad, but writing good buy for the story
Do you like games that routinely punish you for the imprecision of their own controls? Do you like games where that punishment consists of repetition and repetition and repetition until everything remotely enjoyable is reduced to hateful tedium? If your answer to those questions was 'yes', you've come to the right game, you masochist. If your answer to those questions was 'no', run. Run far away. Don't let Furi's sleek visuals and admittedly awesome soundtrack tempt you to stay. They aren't enough to salvage this poorly designed, sadistic grind.
