I’ve been wanting to play Pathologic for a long time. Then Pathologic HD came out and then not too long ago, Pathologic 2. Pathologic 2 is both a remake and a sequel of the original game.
So far I’m 2 game days in. The game is 12 days long.
It is unlike anything else I’ve ever played. It’s very difficult and initially I thought I wouldn’t like it much. In fact when I got the achievement for finishing the first day, it was a diamond achievement. For non-xbox players, that means that it’s very rare for someone to get the achievement. Most people who started the game didn’t get through the first part of the game.
The more I played though, the more I liked it. Your choices feel like they matter. The game doesn’t hold your hand and the game was made so difficult on purpose. You can choose the difficulty but the game tries everything to let you pick the difficulty it intended you to play on.
They want you to be under constant stress. You only get a certain amount of time per day and if you miss something then so be it. Your inventory space is small. Fights are difficult. I tend to just run away from fights for now.
The game shines though in creating a world that’s interesting, deep and so dark. You play as a doctor of sorts who came back to your home town after your father sent you a letter. When you arrive the people there are on the hunt for your father’s killer and you are immediately the main suspect. A plague hits the town and it’s up to you to try and cure it within 12 days.
It’s available on Game Pass and I can definitely recommend it to anyone who is willing to try something different.
As much as I want to like the game, it has some serious shortcomings. One of the biggest problems for me is that I keep getting errors when trying to save a game. It tells me that there isn’t space left, even though I’ve got 500GB open on my XBox One. If I delete some save games then it saves again. When you save you can’t pick a slot, it just adds it. So every now and then I have to clear save games.
Also you can only save at certain save game “clocks” throughout the world. You can easily play for an hour and not encounter one. If your power goes out then you have to replay that part. And our power went out yesterday and again this morning. In fact our power goes out often. It’s very annoying that I can’t save anywhere.
The game keeps changing the difficulty level on its own. I will be playing and run out of resources, only to find that the game set itself to its ideal difficulty on its own. Ideal meaning very difficult.
There’s so much that I like about the game but there’s also a lot that I don’t like. You are forced to run as fast as you can from place to place because you only have a certain amount of time per game day. Everything that you miss, you miss permanently.
I love the atmosphere and the setting. But not enough to keep on playing.