Without any doubt this is probably best novel I read, so far... and yet it is heavy riding, dark and grim story done in gothic artstyle.
Pale Cachexia is a novel about Esther a young girl affected by Cachexia disease.
When science or medicine fail, people often go outside of conventional boundaries, religion, alternative sciences to help themselves. Same thing happened to our Esther, after she heard rumors about alchemist that lives in forest that might found a cure for her disease she went there all alone.
...when everything fails hope is all we have....

This novel as I already mentioned is heavy reading, plenty of heavy monologues about struggle, survival, loneliness and hope. Monologues are fantastic with deep philosophical thoughts often very long going for pages and pages, getting into her mind as deeply as possible. They want us to be there in her mind, all the time, and not just to be there but to understand. Hard job for developers, but also for a reader.

Just think about it for a second, imagine you get up in the morning and you can`t get out of bed, but nothing is wrong with you, you just don`t have enough energy to do anything. This is what this novel wants you to imagine.

What also amazed me is that this novel has only 3 characters and still managed to keep me interested in a story, slowly reading every world, just marvelous.

I admire her in any way, I admire Esther, her will to survive, her struggle and her endless hope, after all hope is what kept her alive and what`s keeping her alive. Her mentality is so strong, she has to be, she has to be stonger then any of us, and she is...

Bloody amazing novel, never read anything so deep, so profound before and most important they got it, they got the point they wanted to achieve with this story. Every word, every line of text is so well done. The more you read, more you are close to an end, words have more meaning, words you read when you start reading this novel, every word becoming heavier and heavier giving you burst of emotions at the end.
Emotional masterpiece.

Esther comes to the woods searching for something she needs really bad. You see, she has a fatal disease called Pale Cachexia. If you don't know what cachexia means, fret not, I didn't either. Basically it's a syndrome which causes weight loss and muscle wasting. “But about the Pale part”, you might ask. That you will find out later.

So yeah, Esther is searching for the cure, but instead she finds a girl named Seina. Together the girls are trying to solve the mystery of the disease. At the same time, Esther learns more about her new friend and the mystic manor that she's staying in.

I like this novel but I think it's not for everybody, because it is very slow, even painfully at times. And it takes a while before you really sink in into the story. There are some parts where you'll probably feel like nothing is happening and you're just wasting your time. But I thought it was okay, because the coolest thing here is the atmosphere, not the plot.

By the way, about the atmosphere — the art here is simply amazing. Sprites of the main characters are super pretty. The background art is also great and adds to the feeling. Of course, the last part of this mix is the soundtrack — chef's kiss. It's quiet piano music which helps create the vibe but at the same time doesn't take your attention away from the story.

I'm still not sure what is my opinion on the ending. On one hand, it's fitting for a story like this. On the other hand, I was craving for something much more vivid, and I think the ending would be more satisfying if it had more drama.

To summarize, Pale Cachexia is great on a technical level. The art, the music, the menu design — everything is gorgeous. Plot-wise the novel is not that great, especially in the end. I recommend buying it only if you're a big fan of visual novels and/or gothic stories and want to expand your library a bit.

P. S. I almost forgot — I've played this on Steam Deck (which I'm obsessed with, but we'll talk about it another time). The novel works perfectly fine, but I had to change layout a bit so that I could use buttons instead of a pad when using the menu.