Pathologic 2 (PC) review

Pathologic 2 it's a strange beast. There are many meanings that we can give to the definition of strange beast, and many of them would be completely wrong if we try to talk about this video game.

We can, of course, prove from the basics of criticism: Pathologic 2 is a first-person adventure video game where we will find ourselves controlling the son of a doctor in an unspecified historical period, between the industrial revolution and the darkest plagues. In Pathologic 2 our task will be to survive within a city that does not look favorably upon us, within a dazed society left in disarray, within a body that will not survive the pangs of hunger or backward sleep .

All this is proposed to the player through a technical / playful system of high-pitched quality but conveyed through memorable settings and atmospheres, immersed in a schizoid narrative that could make happy more than a player tired of the usual trite stories from medium-budget films.

Of soot, plague and silence.

The name Pathologic belongs to a brand developed by the Russian software house Ice-pick lodge extremely niche. The first chapter of the saga Pathologic is dated 2006 and has reached, over the years, the status of a cult game due to its many peculiarities. The title was then remastered in 2015, almost as if it were there to prepare users for the arrival of this one Pathologic 2 four years later.

The title we are talking about today is not a real sequel but is more a kind of remake o reboot which takes the ideas of Pathologic and updates them to current technologies, not with particular success to tell the truth. Technically speaking, the title of Ice-pick lodge yes, it is nice, but extremely poorly optimized. This writer has had more than one problem trying to run it on his machine, despite the presence of components definitely above those recommended.

Between a drop of frames, a freeze and about ten seconds passed with the screen completely black Pathologic 2 it offers a lot of ideas to the brave player who approaches it, offers a leaden and sooty atmosphere just enough to set up an incredibly interesting setting. The title, in certain situations, seems to recall over and over again a whole filmic imaginary of authors who are also very different from each other such as Andrei Tarkovsky e David Lynch.

Pathologic 2 begins on the abyss of an endless nightmare. The city is completely overrun by the plague and, juggling between surgeons and mysterious figures, we manage to make a pact with someone powerful enough to give us a second chance. This second possibility is called time travel and will allow us to go back a little over a week to when it all started. Our protagonist, Artemy Burakh, he will find himself entering a town that despises him in the aftermath of his father's murder with the blood of three men on his hands, guilty of attempting to rob our otherwise innocent protagonist.

Pathologic 2 or the most difficult survival game in history?

As soon as the player is in control of Artemy he will find himself struggling with a huge city, where it is possible to talk to anyone, explore every corner, look for every hole to enter forbidden buildings and so on. By interacting with the inhabitants of this slippery and deformed world it will be possible to establish relationships, discover secrets to use to one's advantage, it will be possible to allow the world building to make way in the hearts of those who play.

If you have the patience to read everything that is proposed on the screen (strictly in Russian or English) you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in one of the most fascinatingly sick worlds that the history of video games remembers.

Day after day (because the title is divided into days not even the good old man Shenmue or some experiment Love-De-Lic) we will find ourselves fighting the pestilence we have seen in its final state; if during the day we find ourselves wandering around the city taking care of the needy and interacting with people, during the night we will often find ourselves willingly involved in dangerous fights or we will find ourselves victims of robberies; here we denote all the inadequacy with which the software house has put together the combat system, far from being fun and unable to give real satisfaction to the player.

The blows do not seem to have weight, nor do the weapons seem to have a particular effectiveness or turn out to be fun once taken up; a combat system dull which adds very little to the game structure.

Not everyone is willing to get sick

The main problem of the gameplay of Pathologic 2, however, lies in another situation: the survival system.
Our protagonist will have to eat, drink, sleep and keep away from the plague in the most absolute possible way, in order to find out who is the killer of his father; nothing strange so far, right?

Mistaken.
The resources around the city are scarce and will take away a lot of precious time from what is the gist of the title. The survival mechanics are heavy, not at all malleable and make your character extremely dependent on the three resource bars that appear in the game; this makes the game experience at least frustrating because you can only glimpse the plot between one expedition in search of food and the next.

Die, in Pathologic, it is punitive because it will reduce our vitality permanently, further increasing the already not very permissive level of difficulty.

The video game we are talking about absolutely does not take the player by the hand and, on the contrary, drags him chained in a whirlwind of dangerous choices, intriguing characters and long walks in search of the steak of the moment. The gameplay of Pathologic 2 it is stupidly tricky and hides the fun behind the aforementioned balance flaws, not allowing players to easily reach not the end, but simply the middle of the game.

Making a mistake, the action that you will find yourself willy-nilly doing more often, is punitive and there is no way to remedy your mistakes; Pathologic 2 practically hides much of its content behind a huge number of games that will have to be restarted from scratch, in order to keep your character or an NPC you're interested in alive. A bold game design choice that becomes unforgivable considering the importance of randomness within the title.

The developers stated with an update on their page Steam, to be working on sliders to personalize the gaming experience and make it accessible to interested parties; this, according to them, will end up distorting the game to a minimum but will allow anyone to get close to it.

Pathologic 2 is a story as wonderful as it is disturbing hidden behind a wall made of actions impossible to control and problems of a technical nature. A title that, if made more accessible by developers with the promised patches, could easily become a cult game in a few years. Narratives and atmospheres of the genre are not common in the world of video games, the creativity and genius that permeate some moments of the game is common.
Pathologic 2 is a sought-after dish with very strong scents, which perhaps just needs a little sprucing up by the cook, if not in the flavors at least in the presentation. To get closer to this title you need to arm yourself with a lot of patience.

We tried Pathologic 2 thanks to a Steam key provided to us by the developers themselves.