Game of the year for me, so far. In Pathologic 2 you play a local folk doctor returning to his isolated home town after time away studying more traditional methods. You are one of the few Kin (an aboriginal steppe people, far as I can tell) born into a caste allowed to break the taboo of cutting into bodies. Very quickly upon return, you find your father has been murdered, the locals convinced you are responsible just as a terrible plague re-emerges. Your (competing) goals become to find out who did it and to complete his work— if you can figure out what that work is. But it seems to involve the fates of town’s children who are threatened by the plague, and of the Kin, your people. The story that follows is fascinating and harrowing and challenging. I’ve played through it twice, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. Maybe the closest I could come it to is Planescape: Torment or I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream as thoughtful, lore-heavy, dark adventure stories. I think I recommend it more to people looking for adventure games than for people looking for something like Skyrim-with-horror or Silent Hill. Now, for gameplay: even with the new difficulty sliders, the game is unforgiving. However, dying doesn’t end the game! If your goal is to understand what is going on, then there is as much (more, sometimes!) content in failing as there is in succeeding. One thing I think is under-emphasized in tutorials and will save you frustration: sneak. You can sneak less on lower difficulties, but it’s not optional late game. Anyway: please buy this game so there’s a huge community around this game. It’s wonderful, it’s not like anything you’ve ever played, and it deserves to be talked about.
