i'd heard about this game, probably like many others, through video essays on youtube that kept trying to tell me i would hate this game if i played it. and i took that personally.

the main consensus around pathologic, namely the original game and it's remaster, seems to be: it's absolutely fantastic, if you can slog your way through it. it's unforgiving, it's hard, and it is a LOT of slow walking and reading. luckily, i'm a DISCO ELYSIUM fan, and all of these words are good things to me. and to be honest, my hot take is that the game isn't really that hard - it's just not explained very well. once i got into the groove of things, i managed completely fine. it's difficult, for sure, but manageable! it's also a remastered 2005 video game, so you just gotta know how to exploit it's inhernt jankiness and you'll be just fine. why risk your health by fighting enemies when you can just enter the nearest building to despawn them! easy!

you're gonna hear me call this game a difficult nightmare and an awful game quite a fair bit in these reviews but i mean this from the bottom of my heart: i love challenging games. i had so much enjoyment out of finishing days in pathologic classic, but god knows i had an awful time doing it- but that's what drew me to them in the first place! i love a challenge, the second i learned that there was several paths and endings, i had pretty much decided i would be 100%ing these games entirely.

steam page ✸ achievement progress: 42/42

first off, i played the classic HD version in order, following a spoiler free achievement guide just to make sure i didn't miss anything! here's how it went.

THE BACHELOR

the premise is this: you are daniil dankovsky, bachelor of medicine, a doctor and researcher from the capital who has come to the town to speak to a 150yo man who may be the key into his research - to cure death itself. the bachelor route is the recommended starting route because he is entirely a newcomer in town with no prior connections to it or it's traditions, much like the player.

first of all, my favourite thing about the bachelor's route is that when you look up guides on his run, they all say "DON'T LET HIM BE MEAN TO PEOPLE IT WILL TANK YOUR REPUTATION" and i thought, not that bad surely? and then i opened one (1) dialogue box and realised this guy is such an asshole. miserable prick. i love him.

i actually found the bachelor's run to be particularly challenging, despite it being the first one you're supposed to do, and that's simply because it throws you right into it and i had not realised how difficult time management would be, and i was terrible at reading the map. i found it very tedious to get through, but i think that's only because i already knew how the bachelor's route ends, so i had no real motivation other than just Getting It Done. but i can tell you one thing, the video essays telling you it's slow and boring to walk everywhere really do not effectively convey exactly how slow and boring it is to walk everywhere. i ended up having to walk sligtly diagonally for the end half of the game just because it makes you walk sliiiiightly faster and i needed every millisecond on my side. it was ridiculous.

i was managing pretty fine during this run until about day 9, when they introduce the army and, with them, a new obstacle in town called the flamethrowers, which are people with big fuck off flamethrowers that torch anything that might even have the vibes of infection. that includes the plague-infested rats that were constantly chasing me around town, and so i kept being baited into the line of a flamethrower and borderline torched to death and forced to restart my game. i got very good at quicksaving and quickloading before turning corners, i tell you.

maybe it's cheating, but i kind of very quickly gave up making an effort to cure myself of the plague if i did get infected. it's difficult dodging the infection; those plague clouds come out of nowhere, you have to visit infected districts occasionally, the goddamn rats, etc., however the cure items were all so much more valuable than 3 real life hours of my time that i very frequently just ended up loading earlier saves if infected.

all in all, the bachelor run took me 27 hours to get through. my ultimate ending choice was to destroy the town and save the polyhedron - recognizing this is the "wrong" choice, but knowing that it's the bachelor's ideal ending (also, after the gruelling, frustrating hours i had spent running around doing fetch quests for ungrateful assholes i actually personally found a tiiiiiiny bit of satisfaction in flattening the settlement). i did every side quest and got all of his achievements, and i enjoyed it!

THE HARUSPEX

the haruspex is artemy burakh, a surgeon and son of a local healer who has returned to town to find that his father has been murdered, and he is the primary suspect. you start the haruspex's run right after being jumped by three men; half health, high exhaustion, and abysmal reputation so bad that the people in town will attack you on sight, and the local stores will not sell anything to you to help.

right off the bat, starting with the haruspex feels like a completely different game. the first thing you do, after the self defence murders, is find out that you can take dead people's organs out and use them to barter with certain people. you get thrown instantly into the shady underworld of the town, as well as tangled up with the kids and orphans. despite all these differences, i had a much easier first day as the haruspex. i knew the map, i knew how to be prepared for day 2, and there was a lot less running around through identical buildings to figure out who the hell i'm supposed to be talking to.

cruised along pretty comfortably for the first 6 days before getting my first inevitable infection after being jailed in a small room with two unavoidable plague clouds. it was gonna happen eventually, high immunity or not. something else that's making this run exceptionally easy is that the haruspex gets to make all sorts of twyrine mixtures for immunity boosts and i was getting along VERY comfortably before this (and possibly a little complacent LMAO). the horrors perist but i stay silly.

it took me a MUCH quicker 18hrs to get through the haruspex run and that is absolutely entirely due to twyrine mixtures, a completely OP ability - making mixtures to boost immunity and health - that made this game a breeze. no reloading, no panicking about the plague. life is good and simple - i think also having that knowledge of the town map and the process each day was going to bring was also what made it so much more streamlined. plus, i was very invested in the haruspex run much more so than the bachelor's. like i said earlier, i love the lore of the town and the steppe traditions and medicine. it's one of my favourite aspects, and it is very, very heavily explored with artemy, and opens up a whole world i only saw glimpses of in the first run. the ending i chose for this run was to destroy the polyhedron and keep the inquisitor alive. i finished all side quests and got every optional achievement!

THE CHANGELING

the changeling is a young girl named clara, who is found at the bottom of a freshly dug grave on the morning of day 1. she is a mysterious character, either hated by the town or revered for her ability to harm or heal with her bare hands. rather than weapons, clara will use this ability throughout the game.

i never hear people talk about the changeling route, and while playing it, i can see why. i'm not sure if it's just fatigue from doing the third run in such a short amount of time, or if i am just better at the game now so everything seems more trivial and not so difficult, but i've found clara's route a bit too....slow? easy? i have most of the quests done and out of the way by 11am. her story IS interesting, it's fascinating to get some insight into her actions that are hinted at during the other two character's runs, but aside from that, it feels very fetch-quest-y for the same two characters.

ALRIGHT. i'm writing this bit after finishing the changeling route and i can honestly say - yeah, this was not very enjoyable. it really was just fetch quests, which i know is kind of the basis of the whole game but there felt like there was narrative amongst all that. clara specifically is just too mysterious of a character imo and the game does not want to give too much away about her, and her route suffers for it. i was very bored. the other thing is as well, the other two characters really do rely on you toeing the moral line properly otherwise things are difficult for you. it would be easy to shoot your way out of every situation, but then your reputation will drop and everyone will be out to get you, making things much harder. unfortunately, clara's reputation is constantly dropping. like even if you do nothing but good deeds and keep your rep at 100%, the game will drain it as part of her run, so. what's the point, yknow? i will just shoot my way out of every scenario, the town will hate me anyway. she doesn't even need to shoot! she has magic hands! i don't even have to strategically conserve ammo! sure, it was interesting getting to see what she was up to while the other two ran around looking for a cure but ultimately, i did not need to have over 10hrs of boring gameplay about it. i know. i know the game is notoriously boring. i know it's a walking simulator (derogatory). but the other two routes are at least challenging, this one is not.

the changeling's route was my fastest run, clocking in at 13 hours. this is for a mixture of reasons: VERY familiar with the map plus clara has access to the map of infected and abandoned districts, meaning i could just bypass areas that would be hard to navigate. i had less issues with conserving my resources, i didn't need to go out at night and kill bandits for money - i could just break into homes, kill the residents, and steal their food. because my rep was abysmal and everyone attacked me anyway. and finally, i was getting most of her quests done by midday and just sleeping until the following day to progress the story because i had nothing else to do. i did get the one final optional achievement, as well as the achivements for each day, meaning i have officially finally 100%'d this game! the ending i chose was, of course, the changeling's ending - kept all of my bound alive and then just picked the first 7 to sacrifice because i truly do not like any of clara's bound whatsoever, they're deeply unpleasant - and did not destroy the town nor the polyhedron.

overall thoughts (so far): i'm enjoying the flow of this game. i don't mind janky games, so that doesn't bother me too much - even if i am sideways strafe walking to go 0.2s faster to stop myself from going insane over the time constraints. i like that all three of our characters are tied into this narrative and playing as the next two characters, i will presumably get to interact with them there as well. very excited for the haruspex run, though i know he's much more difficult. i do also loooove this soundtrack, like a whole lot. it's very gritty and industrial, there's some real off-putting and unsettling tracks in there. this game has a phenomonal atmosphere and does it's job at pressuring you into feeling like you don't have time for everything exceptionally well. it wormed it's way into my real life dreams as well this week, so that's quite an achievement.

i am enamoured by the story and lore of this little town. there are traditions and culture and healing practices that occur in the steppe that are only ever alluded to in the bachelor route, as an outsider, but are elaborated on much more in-depth and play a major part in the haruspex route. there's impossible geometry and some magical realism and some absurd surrealism that i think comes together so perfectly to give you that unsettling sense that something is very odd in this town and there's much more to it than you think. AND - i'm not even going into the overaching theme here of theatre, and how this is all just a play, and nothing is even real and your entire existence here is in the hands of two bored little kids at a funeral but that is way beyond the scope of my quick little reviews here. i'll link a bunch of videos that analyse the proper, true themes of this game at the end of the page.

i also want to talk about the soundtrack quickly - i have come to really, really appreciate the music in pathologic. it's incredibly industrial, grim, kind of ominously looming, almost. each track has a day version, night version, and a disease version for when that area has been infected. they all sound fantastic. one of my favourites, and likely the first you'll notice as it plays in the area the bachelor begins in, is UTROBA MAIN. most of the town's music sounds similar to this but this one specifically feels like the calm before the absolute chaos later on. but my absolute, complete favourite is the steppe's theme - STVORKI MAIN and it's night version. it's so unlike the majority of the music, this ethereal, primal, otherworldly track. you dont really get this experience on your first playthrough as the bachelor, you have absolutely no need to go into the steppe (i maybe skirted the edges a few times and heard the first few notes of this track, but never spent any time in there properly), but you do have to spend a lot of time out there as the haruspex and it does a brilliant job of making you realise there is so much more to this game you did not know about. whole different world the second time around. this ost is brilliant - you can listen to the whole thing on youtube.

final thoughts: i began this game on july 12. i finishied it almost exactly a month later - today, aug 13. i spent almost 60 total hours playing it, managing to knock out two days each session. it was very tiring by the end, but i'm really glad i stuck with it. the game is frustrating, but not as hard as people make it out to be. if you just play smart and pay attention, you'll be just fine - i do also think a guide is completely necessary for both getting the full experience of everything, and for not quitting out of frustration halfway through. this game does not hold your hand and direct you nicely, which i really preferred!. the haruspex run was by far my favourite, and i appreciated being able to look into the town and it's history and lore from his perspective. i do really appreciate the bachelor run as well, i think the things going on outside of the town-on-gorkhon are equally as interesting, though it's not touched on very much. the game itself has an intentionally vague setting and time period, which i like a lot. it adds to the intrigue and mystery of the town, keeping it in that weird suspended ethereal state that it gives off.

would i recommend this game to anyone? not necessarily. i think you have to be some kind of crazy determined to get through it (only 2.7% of players on steam have the achievement for finishing the final day). if you enjoyed games such as DISCO ELYSIUM specifically for the reading, worldbuilding, and story aspect; yes, i would recommend this to you. the world is wonderful, a lot of love went into it. you should be prepared to read a lot about it though. slow walks from point A to B just to learn a little more info is what this game is all about. there are a bunch of very good video essays that cover it well, but it is a massive and involved story to discuss and you will not get the full experience without playing it yourself. don't be discouraged though! i've got some really good videos linked at the bottom. check them out & if you think it looks like something you're willing to play, absolutely do it.

did i like it? yes. i really did. it has it's faults and it is deeply frustrating, but i knew that going in. they really did not detract from the experience that much imo. i loved playing and exploring this game, i also feel very proud of my achievement of getting through it! it was an excersize in patience, that's for sure. i haven't even talked about the smaller details i really loved: the earth being alive, twyrine being the earth’s way of returning the souls of the dead, the town being built on the back of a symbolic bull, the polyhedron damaging said sentient earth-bull symbolic creature, the blood from the earth being spilled by the polyhedron being the haruspex’s cure for the plague, the way the map slowly comes together to form a picture of this as you learn more and more about it each day... there's so much to this. so much. i love it dearly, it was a fantastic experience.

i am really looking forward to playing pathologic 2! it looks beautiful and has massive quality of life upgrades, and is specifically my beloved haruspex's run. my plan is to take a week or so break from patho in general and then i'm gonna get right back into it with fresh eyeballs and motivation :)

steam page ✸ achievement progress: 50/50

Pathologic 2 is purely the Haruspex run. it starts you right in the final hours of day 12, in the theatre, surrounded by the sick and dying. looking around, you’ll see the bachelor and the changeling in there with you. you can talk to your two other healer companions and get the sense that something has gone horribly wrong, and the rush for a cure was all a lost cause. this is a doomed run, the executors and tragedians will inform you. lucky for us, this is a story, and we can tell it however we like.

exiting the theater will prompt you to head to the cathedral and make your final decision. you get to walk through the end days of the town, and it is BEAUTIFUL. the graphics update is stunning, this town has come to life so well in P2; it feels cluttered and cramped and dirty, the dead are lining the streets, the flamethrowers are spraying fire over hordes of the sick who are wailing and coughing as they wander the streets.

Heading to the cathedral, you won’t have to make a decision, thankfully - talk to the inquisitor and the general, and they’ll inform you that you’ve failed, and you will wake up on a train and P2 truly begins. this is a phenomenal introduction to this game - intriguing for a new first-time player, and exciting and full of references for someone coming from P1!

You’re introduced to a couple of quality of life upgrades and mechanic tweaks in beginning:

• difficulty choices. you start a game and get three options: easy (severely handicapped for people who just want to check out the story without the survival aspect), difficult (slight handicaps for people who want a chiller time) and hard (the intended difficulty)
• sprinting! and it's very forgiving. you can go a while and it doesn't take much to do so, though it does introduce a new stat bar: stamina/thirst
• ferrymen. for a certain currency, you can effectively fast travel
• map markers on the screen. no need to flip between map and full screen to navigate - though, this is something you have to hit a button to see.

I have mixed feelings about these additions. And I will admit, it’s very hard to play P2 without comparing it to it’s predecessor, even though it’s predecessor wasn’t very good when compared to any modern game. P1 had charm that has sort of disappeared in the newer games? It’s like...P1 was difficult. unforgiving. the time limit is brutal, you are barely scraping by - but that’s what makes it a survival horror, right? These new P2 additions make it soooo much easier and less stressful. i understand the difficulty choices is more of an accessibility tool so that's forgiven, but the rest? Ehhh. insane thing to say but i felt like i wasn’t struggling enough, even when on the intended hardest difficulty. a walking simulator isn't exactly rewarding when its easy to walk. HOWEVER. the extra lore and how beautiful everything is, as well as a much more fleshed out story does make this an acceptable loss. This world feels a lot more alive than it did P1, particularly when it comes to the steppe traditions and folklore - they use their own language, they have specific traditions that artemy isn’t allowed to participate in until he proves he will be following in his fathers footsteps, they refuse to trade with you for the first few days when they still think that artemy is the cause of his father’s death. Even the regular townsfolk need to be talked to in order to find more quests or direction for the day.

Something else P2 added is a renewed journal/quest system. In the first game, quests were offered to you pretty simply; you’d get a letter, there’d be text in your journal to tell you what to do, and then when you completed the quest, it would just say that. Some quests have different outcomes, so the journal kind of would just state “This is the quest, and I can do X or Z about it”, and then “I successfully completed the quest by doing X” when it was done. P2, however, has this stunning progression tree kind of thing. It will unlock a path when you pick up a quest, and show you how many outcomes it has. The more you learn or the further you complete the quest, the more branches and connections will appear. Some things will be missed, some you will be locked out of - but it shows that! I think this is fantastic. You can see my day 1 quest journal here - yellow means i was locked out of that quest entirely, the blank circles are stuff i missed, and everything else is something i completed. I love it so much

A couple of other things to note: I do think the game has lost it’s silly whimsy a little bit in it’s pursuit of becoming a better game. It IS good, it is better - substantially - but I couldn’t help but be a little bit sad when I saw the plague clouds for the first time and they were just big masses of black spores that traverse in straight, predictable lines. They are super easy to dodge, no more randomly appearing masses of floating skulls that pop out of nowhere and chase you down. Which is goofy, I will admit. And these new clouds do fit the theme of the game better. I just miss the silliness, I think. Also! Despite the clouds being slightly less of a concern, it is much harder to avoid infection in P2. The infected districts to look incredible, they’re grimy and dirty, and just walking through them is enough to drain your immunity over time, so the longer you spend time just standing in the district, the higher your odds of catching the disease are. I also liked that touching things in infected districts (looting bins, opening doors, etc.) will also increase your infection meter as well.

i want to share a couple of comparisons to really hammer in how much the graphics add to this game. the overall odd and clunky vibe of P1 was kept intact, i feel, and just enhanced rather than completely redone.

Also. i dont know where to put this but it needs to go somewhere: the howling dog sound effect in the infected district is the same as one of the default howl options in Wolfquest: Anniversary Edition. I am not joking, once I noticed I just literally could not unhear it omfg

Alright alright. Enough about the upgrades, lets talk about the game itself.

Like I mentioned above, P2 is a reimagining of the Haruspex run from P1. for the most part, it’s the same plotline and story progression, it has just been tweaked and revised to be a little more fleshed out, and give Artemy a bit more characterisation, and a better sense of belonging in the town. People remember him, old friends greet him, etc. the Kin - the native steppe dwellers where the majority of the town’s folklore and traditional medicine practices come from - get a much larger role to play in this game too. To prove yourself as a doctor, you must collect herbs and brew your own tinctures and medicine, and learn how to heal people in the town. Being one of the town’s very few doctors has become a much more involved mechanic too - to heal someone, you have to diagnose the illness and then administer the appropriate treatment. You can do this to the infected people in the streets of infected districts, too - though it’s up to you whether you want to waste valuable resources on doomed NPCs, or if you just want to give them random antibiotics to boost morale and get a little reward for keeping people’s hopes up. You still have your Bound - now “The List”, a list of mostly children left to artemy by his father who you must keep alive in order to get the good ending - except now, them getting infected is random chance, and not just based on whether you complete the story quest the day prior or not. You can also administer antibiotics to your bound to lower their chances of infection for the following day. I partially really like this approach; artemy is learning the ropes of the traditional medicine that his father used, so there’s no real guidance in the game, and it’s fun to stumble into the right mixture and recipes to heal people as you play the game. However, I do miss the concept of “the Bound”; as in, this list of people MUST be kept safe, or you will be punished at the end of the game and won’t be able to achieve the true, good ending. Anyone can die at any time in P2 and it has no effect on the end of the game. I don’t think I like this very much, I think if your childhood friends perish or the kids die due to your inaction, then there should be some repercussions, whether that’s by locking you out of the true ending, or perhaps some kind of in-game punishment other than just being locked out of their sidequests.

Speaking of characters and progression: there’s quite a few instances of sidequests and character dialogue that you can only access if you are talking to random townsfolk when you wander around. There’s also lots of random events that you’ll find by walking through certain areas that you have to go and check out for side quests - i just really like that it’s all pretty random! Better than P1’s system of randomly being given a letter and hoping you notice it in time to do the quest. It feels a lot less linear than the original game too, which is nice. The days are separated into early morning (midnight - 7:30am) and then daytime (7:30am - midnight). Some things are only available in the morning hours, and some through the day, meaning you have to time when you sleep pretty carefully or you’ll miss something. You can’t skimp out on your sleep, either - there’s a lot of important moments that happen in Artemy’s dreams that you need to see as well. It’s fun to balance! I really enjoyed this. Oh, and the pantomimes at the theater!!! The nightly performances still happen, but this time, you get to walk up to the stage and it’s a different scene every time. It’s wonderful, it’s no longer just a conversation with a zoomed in shot of your character’s face. Now it’s a scene, the stage is set up differently every night, there are other characters involved that make use of the entire theater space….UGH delightful, brilliant, I love them.

I did end up taking a break most of the way through this game for.... a couple of months....... i think i just pushed it too hard after finishing the first one, however, i got back at it and finished it off in one sitting!! the final three days were some of the most tense moments i have ever had in any game, ever. genuinely. i was SWEATING, most of the town was infected, i'm busting my ass to make enough cures and run around handing them out to everyone, all while working on a shortened timespan. there was a point where i was trying to reach the complete other side of the town before i was too late to lock in my ending where i was just having to burst through plague clouds and had barely any health left because of the raging infection going on, but i had absolutely zero spare seconds to cure myself because i was on such a tight timer. absolutely delightful. the music swelling as you're on the way to deliver the final orders and make your decision was so good UGH

all in all, the game took me 33hrs to complete in its entirety! finished december 27, just in time. i went for the diurnal ending as my personal canon ending, which is pretty much what the classic haruspex ending is too; bomb the polyhedron, bleed the earth, save the town. the "good ending", in my opinion - though as the game would say, any choice is right, so long as it is willed. i kept everyone alive! walking through the clear and peaceful town on day 12 and talking to everyone was such a nice little wind down to the stressful finale of this game, i really loved it. i went back in and mopped up the final two other ending achievements just to get that sweet little 100% badge on steam at the end and honestly, feel like i made the right ending choice.

final thoughts: i really, really loved this game. a lot, like, personal fave game of the year for me. i have never really met a game where i cared this much about the world, aside from possibly DISCO ELYSIUM? but even then, not as much as i love and care about the world of PATHOLOGIC. i actually missed it during my break from the game, it's just some of the most interesting lore i've ever had the pleasure of getting into and learning about. during day 9 and 10 in the abattoir section when artemy is rummaging around in the guts of the town, and coming across the giant actual physical heart of the town that's being precariously pierced by the spike of the polyhedron was such a fantastic moment to me. that realization that the town is artemy's eighth mysterious ward that he's meant to protect is just. ugh. chefs kiss.

i love this game. my initial concerns about difficulty were not that serious in the end, i would say. the other tweaks made to the game balance out the difficulty enough that i found myself barely even paying attention to the QOL additions. one major loss is in the soundtrack unfortunately :( i do feel like it lost it's ethereal and unsettling feel in P2 in favour of feeling more opressive and ominous - which fits the new game just fine! it's much less jarring. i do just miss that STVORKI MAIN steppe theme though. i don't know if i would have loved this game as this much if i hadn't suffered through P1 first, but! it has made me VERY excited for the third game for the Bachelor's route, which will be out very soon! i will be chipping away at DLCs and demos in the meantime, though. next up is MARBLE NEST!

steam page ✸ achievement progress: N/A

Marble Nest is a self contained story DLC for Patho 2, showing an alternative ending to what could have been the Bachelor's story during the events of the main game. This is a throwback to Patho Classic's Bachelor route! It takes place during day 10 in which the Bachelor believes he has successfully quarantined a part of town, and all that's left to do is wait out the infection and rebuild. Not the case, of course, when someone carrying the disease makes their way into the quarantine area. This DLC has four possible endings to get, depending on some dialogue choices and whether or not you complete the tasks for the day. It only takes place over the one day, in one of the map locations - however, you are balancing low supplies and terrible health bars from the get go. My homeboy is so infected here its crazy and you have absolutely zero supplies.

It was a little confusing at first, as I found myself running around with very little direction and wasted a lot of time looting stuff since I wasn't sure how long I was gonna be playing for and wanted to stock up. This means I missed a few things, but a couple of replays in and I managed to get all the possible endings. This was fun! I don't have much to really say about it, it was kind of just rehashing the Classic Bachelor ending as I said. I would have just tacked this onto the end of my Patho 2 review, but since it's so far removed from the Haruspex's story (in fact, he's just straight up dead in the DLC) I felt like it needed it's own little section. Very nice to see it in P2's graphics, though, and I missed playing my horrible little guy so bad lmfao, it did reignite my interest in the Bachelor route. I tell you what though, I did not expect to feel as sad as I did when I opened up Daniil's people tab and saw how many characters I really got attached to over my run had their names scratched out and marked as dead. I am fascinated at the storytelling the simple tabs do, its delightful. Also, walking past the Stillwater and hearing Eva's ghostly humming was kind of heart wrenching, not gonna lie. I really enjoyed her as a character in Patho Classic, her story makes me so sad.

Anyway! This was a fun little add-on, only takes about an hour to get through. Nice little glimpse into what's to come :) up next is the demo for Patho 3!

steam page ✸ achievement progress: 14/14

P3: Quarantine was a free prologue released as a lead-up to the release of PATHOLOGIC 3! as of Dec 30th, it's no longer available unfortunately, but that's only because the new game is coming very soon! this prologue has you playing as the bachelor once again, and covers the events that occured before the main events of PATHOLOGIC begin.

I dipped my toes into this tonight just to get a feel for things despite not having a lot of time, and managed to make it through act i! this seems to be quite a short prologue, which is fine. there's plenty new stuff to discuss though that's really got me excited for the next proper game. there are some new mechanics involved so far; being able to see the protagonist's thoughts about almost everything in the world is a very nice touch - i feel like this many games deep, a player does have a pretty good sense of the characterisation of our main three healers, but these little personal insights are pretty delightful. especially for Dankovsky, my miserable snarky king. I don't think I love the UI for the thought journal, but there is a little disclaimer down the bottom saying the UI is not finalized, so I'm hoping it'll become a little more intuitive like P2's was. it's a lot of clicking and scrolling at the moment and is kind of a bit confusing. this entry is also, again, a beautiful graphical improvement. in fact, i had to bump a lot of settings down so my pc could handle it because there's just so much going on to give it such a wonderful atmosphere. it's nice to see the rest of the world within these games! part of this prologue takes place in the Capitol - in fact, most of act i has been located there so far and I'm yet to see any of the town-on-gorkhon, aside from a quick cutscene of the steppe. I'm enjoying Dankovsky backstory, thumbs up from me so far! I'm also enjoying how meta it is lol, you can really tell they expected you to replay this for the achievements (or this will just be a sequence in the main game) because there's a lot of hints and references to the fact that you were "only here 2hrs ago!", which I'd wager is the legnth of this prologue. I love it when these games are talking to Me, The Player directly. all this being said, DEFINITELY getting me hyped for the next game!!!

alright this is ebony from the next day checking in to say i have finished the prologue and I mayyybeee liked it? I have mixed feelings. I really, really do not want that fast travel mechanic making it into P3; walking around the town and appreciating it is SUCH an important aspect of the Patho games, but I'm hoping that was just an option for the prologue so it doesn't drag on too much. the mechanics that were added are interesting in the way that they're catered to the character you're playing - I love the bipolar meter, I love the diagnosis minigame, I am ambivelent towards the rewinding time and redoing the day; could be interesting, could really hinder the difficulty that I've come to know and enjoy from these games. I like that my fuck ups are generally permanant. I do NOT like the personification of the plague as the shabnak within Quarantine. There's not much to say about it, but the plague had basically taken form of an ethereal ghostly woman in the demo and I just...really fuckin hated it. in a game so catered towards Dankovsky, I cannot fathom why this Capitol scientific researcher and renowned doctor would possibly be interacting with the plague as a supernatural entity. it goes against everything we've seen in the last few games. i am, however, loving how much it hammers in that Dankovsky is like the worlds most fucked up little guy. there are so many things wrong with him. love of my life.

once again, this is a delightful graphical upgrade just in the sense of aesthetics. the town has been reimagined a little bit to be a bit more cluttered and lived-in, and has so much more life to it! I particularly enjoyed walking through one of the dead districts or whatever they call it when the district is full of looters and such. it was super cool to see fully animated NPCs up on balconeys breaking windows and stuff, rather than just idling in the street waiting for you to pass them. if P2 was a major visual upgrade from the first, then this one ups it again! feels so lived in, even several days deep into the plague. AUGH. delightful. only a few days to go until the release of P3!!

steam page ✸ achievement progress: 06/72

PATHO 3 DAY YIPPEEEE!! I am buying and beginning this on launch day under the expectation that there may be some buggy bits, but that is okay! I’m very excited to sink my claws into this and see how we go.

To start us off - Patho 3 is a confusing start to a complex game. I grasped most of how it works, only because I played the demo. I would have floundered without it for sure. It’s a non-linear method of telling the story we’ve come to know and love, where you have no control over it to begin with, but it does eventually explain the time travel mechanics and allow you to begin where you want to begin the game. Unfortunately, P3 isn’t exactly YOU playing the Bachelor in real time - it’s you playing the Bachelor as he recounts his story to a nasty inspector who (I think) is trying to get the facts straight on what happened in the Town and why it went so horribly wrong. This means that the first few days do get skipped by, as they aren’t relevant to the plague, and you are quite roughly jarred between being in the town, and being in an office with the inspector who’s constantly arguing with Dankovsky over what truly happened in the town.

Right now, as of writing, I’ve sunk about three hours into the game and most of it has been establishing the existing plotline that occurred before we go back in time to fix it. The town is doomed to perish on day 6, and on the 5th day, Dankovsky spends his last night in the town jailed for trying to escape. As we are walking around town, we meet people who we failed to fulfill promises to that we don’t remember making, we have conversations that characters claim we’ve already had, and eventually we run into so many dead ends that all seems lost. The two men we came to town to talk to are dead, nobody seems to want to help us, we failed to escape and our contact to smuggle us out - bad grief - is dead, and after exhausting all possible options to find leads, Dankovsky puts his revolver to his chin and kills himself. This, here, is where we enter the time travelly section and are allowed to go back and fix things before they are doomed. The earliest that we are allowed to start this game is on the third day.

This was a mildly frustrating introduction, I can’t lie - however, has there ever been a patho game that isn’t frustrating? Do I play these games for smooth sailing? Absolutely not. I’m pretty fine with an overly complex narrative and I quite like that this retelling to the inspector is directly influenced by how we do within the game.

here's the first impressions so far: this is an extremely ambitious revamp to the Patho games that exist and already, I can find plenty of upsides and downsides. now, listen, I need you to hear me out: I'm about to whinge but I'm doing so in knowing perfectly well that this is my personal preference talking. I just need to get this out of the way first and foremost because it’s going to be prevalent throughout the whole game and I just. oh my god i hate it so fucking bad. the fast travel. This is an awful addition and it absolutely needs to be a choice option, not forced. the game has restricted its open world system to a semi-closed world, in which the only places you can navigate through are infected districts, rioting districts, or districts that contain your quest. Every time you leave a district, you are abruptly flung into a map where you select your destination and have to sit there and watch a little dot make its way across the map until it hits an infected/rioting district, and then you get hit with a loading screen and then slammed back into the gameplay to navigate yourself through it. it is so jarring and I cannot stand this. All this work put into making the world so beautiful and I’m not allowed to meander through it at my own pace? Appreciate the visuals, the aesthetics and music, the townsfolk going about their day? It really does hurt the immersion. Some of the nicest moments of the previous Patho games have been finding a sole safe district in your travels through the town and knowing you can relax for a moment and loot a couple of things, trade with people, safely restock water, etc. with this new system, you’re forced to only be walking around in difficult places to navigate with no reprieve. It’s incredibly constricting and railroad-y and not something I’m enjoying whatsoever. HOWEVER. in a game from Dankovsky's POV, I can accept that this makes sense. he would not meander through town talking to people, he has little interest in the town or it's traditions or it's population. so. I understand why it was done and, to an extent, I agree with it from a gameplay perspective. I just have a preference for fully open world games and I find it a janky being hit with consistent loading zones. Another thing carried over from the demo prologue was the shabnak manifestation of the plague which, again, not a fan of but I think I can come to live with it as it’s presented more as something Changeling adjacent, as well as Dankovsky just assuming he’s going a bit bonkers, which is acceptable. lots of dodging her in infected districts, which is how every other game has played so far, and is not a huge departure.

On the upside, there are a lot of aesthetic and mechanical things that I think are pretty cool. I mentioned the mood meter in the Quarantine section of the page - this is a lot of fun, I enjoy it a lot, alongside seeing thoughts about the world (and the writing is so damn funny, every thought Daniil has is so insane i love him so bad), etc. Much like in P2, you have a thought journal and a people tab - the UI for the thought journal is indeed improved in the full release, which is good! I like it much better now and I like that it tells you things from the past or future that you, the player, haven’t experienced yet but characters have implied that you have. The time travelling mechanic is pretty cool admittedly, coming from someone who tends to save scum for all the outcomes and achievements - this feels like it was catered towards me, and is a pretty nifty in-game explanation for respawning. Much like P2 having consequences on the world with each death Artemy had, I like that P3 implies that death and fate are in your hands, and dying is not necessarily the end. This feels appropriate for a Dankovsky-centered game. Another HUGE change is that the traditional survival elements are completely gone from P3. No stamina bar, no hunger meter, no infection meter. There is no need to find and hoard food, there is no need to find and hoard money - the only things you need to maintain is Dankovsky’s mood, and his health. I was very surprised to see this in the demo originally, but I didn’t mention it here because I wasn’t sure if it was just a demo thing or not. Turns out it has made it into the full game, but I’m not overly mad about it. I watched an interview with one of the writing staff from IPL a couple of days before the full game released and she had explained this choice being that it just doesn’t fit for Dankovsky; he’s an esteemed doctor invited to town, his presence was expected and he’s being provided food, board, and money by the governing families of the town. It doesn’t make sense for him not to have access to these things, so he doesn’t need to maintain these things. Only thing he’s gotta look after is his brain. here’s a timestamp from the interview where it’s explained much better than I’ve done so here, if you’re interested. I do actually like this approach, particularly for such a Dankovsky-catered game. fighting with the mechanics is enough of a struggle for me as is lmfao

one last little comment about something I really like in the game: each time you’re introduced to a new important character, you get this wonderful little blurb with some info and their model, and their relation to Daniil’s story. I looooove this, I love the look of it; the spotlight, the stage setting, the way it does read as a character being introduced in a play. wonderful little touch.

my strange little ragamuffin <3

I also quite like that Dankovsky’s people tab is sorted into pawns, queens, pieces and off the board. Artemy’s was blood, nerves, and bone. Very cool touch.

I know this is a lot of yapping for someone who’s hardly scratched the surface of the game but! alas. im a yapper. tomorrow, I’ll spend some time playing properly and will get into the meat of a review in terms of the story - just gotta, yknow, get to play the story first!

Dankovky’s true story begins on Day 3, summoned to the town hall alongside the other ruling families and our beloved Haruspex to discuss a state of emergency. Dankovsky is tasked with opening a hospital, and put in charge of issuing decrees - a new mechanic in which you can set curfews, organise vaccines, quarantines, etc., in an attempt to slow the spread of the plague. This is VERY cool, you can see how the things you choose will affect the town and townsfolk overall; some may slow the plague but enrage the people, some will be ineffective but boost morale. I like this a lot, you can really grasp the extent of Dankovsky’s frustrations about not being listened to in prior games when you get to make these choices yourself. On this day, we also begin hunting down answers about the Polyhedron, being sent on a wild goose chase around the map to track down it’s creator, Peter Stamatin, and attempt to ask some questions we do not get answers to. But! The thought is rooted in Dankovsky’s weird little brain map and as we know, it’s all downhill from here. It’s going to be hard to talk about this narrative linearly since the game urges you to jump around and make choices, and then go back and make different choices - what I’m probably going to do is mention anything majorly new, interesting, or just worth yapping about to me and for the rest of it, we can assume the story is the same as it ever was.

The nightly theater performance is no longer announced to you at midnight, but rather, the days are structured in P3 so that they end at 2am. You don’t really end the day in a traditional sense, instead you will use a clock to skip forward to the next day once everything has been done. Dankovsky’s home base is the Stillwater, where Eva will have a conversation to have with him prior to the day ending, and you can step outside to be treated to an absolutely beautiful theater scene right outside the building. I made an audible gasp when I saw how these scenes work for the first time - you no longer have to physically go to the theater, but rather, the theater is built around you, turning the Stillwater into a tiny diorama where a stage is set up and the pantomimes play out. This is so stunning, i love it SO much!!

i know i sound like a broken record at this point, but holy gorgeous graphics!!! every single game gets prettier and prettier.

& if you think that all sounds cool, but don't wanna play it...

i don't blame you! this game is a chore LMAO but here's some of my favourite video essays, analysis and plot summaries on the game that i think do a very good job of immersing you in this world without having to play <3

PATHOLOGIC IS GENIUS, AND HERE'S WHY - hbomberguy
this is the video that introduced me to pathologic initially! it's a great in-depth video into the story & gameplay

PATHOLOGIC, FOR THOSE WHO WILL NEVER PLAY IT (ACT 1) & (ACT 2) - Codex Entry
VERY in depth play-by-play videos about the bachelor route! voice acted by various youtubers, very very good videos and jumping off point if you wanted to bypass classic patho and go straight into the second game, imo.

DISSECTING PATHOLOGIC 2: WHY IT’S THE BEST GAME OF 2019 - SulMatul
An absolutely fantastic overview of the plot of patho 2, elaborating on it’s endings and mechanics, and it’s theater and stage plot that I glossed over a fair bit in these reviews because I didn’t know how to concisely give context for them.