Do not understand the hype for this game. Gameplay consists of walking around, interacting with some things and occasionally tuning your radio. There's no puzzles to solve and exploring the island is dull and boring due to how slow you move around, which is likely intentional to pad time for character dialogue... which unfortunately isn't interesting either. Dialogue tends to linger and go on longer than it should just to purposefully waste more time. And I'm saying this as someone who really likes visual novels, a genre of games where is almost entirely about reading and listening. Difference is those games keep engaged to keep reading for hours on-end. The characters here are, quite literally, annoying and shallow teenagers. The whole mystery of the island did not have me engaged, and honestly felt more tiresome when "it" shows up and starts to waste even more of your time. On top of this, the game lacks any sort of key settings to rebind your keys to your preference, as well as having no audio settings whatsoever. How they managed to oversee this in the entirety of the game's development, I do not understand. I've played worse games and I did receive this game for free as part of a prior giveway here on GOG so ultimately I don't feel my time was wasted, but unfortunately this game did not click me with like it seems to with so many others and just felt very below average.
Pathologic 2 is a game that requires your patience and demands you weigh your options and consider what you can and cannot bring to fruition for doing so. If you can't balance this and try do everything you think is possible, you WILL suffer, and suffer you shall in a town that is already full of suffering. The atmosphere of this town really sets this into place, which almost feels inviting at first until you realize just how bad things are and how bad things become, in which it becomes downright intoxicating yet still so engaging that you can't stop playing because you want to see how it continues to unfold. Stellar art direction and an atmospheric soundtrack back this all up to keep you at the edge of your seat. You continue to get sucked in with the townsfolk who each have their own stories, relationships, and struggles. But as mentioned before, you have to value your time and plan things out. You won't be able to talk to everyone and do everything involving them without sacrificing precious time that you must value with care. Pathologic 2 can sometimes feel downright grueling in it's difficulty that in tandem with all this, requires you take the necessary precautions to help yourself. You need to manage your hunger, exhaustion, occasionally your thirst and especially your infection later on. I had to roll back time a few times because of how I mismanaged my days and resources, which hurt doubly so because every time you die, you take a penalty affects you across ALL your saves for that playthrough. While there are some performance issues and bugs that need to be ironed out (16GB of memory is heavily recommended), I can't recommend this game enough to anyone who wants an extremely-engaging and unsettling story to experience. Plus, there is more to come with the Bachelor and Changeling routes coming down the line. Finally, a few things: - Buy the BVLL - Don't throw away "broken" items - DO NOT TAKE THE DEAL. You will regret it.
