this isn't a review, this post is just spreading awareness of the fact that the director of this game and head of Ice-Pick Lodge has been outed as a predator of minors.

details and evidence in link below. obvs heavy content warnings apply. info has been out there for a week and a half but i didn't find out myself until this morning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathologic/comments/mlu6u8/nikolay_dybwoski_lead_of_icepick_lodge_and/

A beautiful miasma. Lies and death. There's no joy to be found here, only a deeply uncomfortable test of character. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
One thing I find so fascinating about Pathologic is how it manages to be a true "Role-Playing" game despite lacking the stats, perks and numbers commonly associated with such. It's not just that the writing is staggeringly good, it's that Pathologic understands that playing a video game is like acting out a script - that you're an actor on a theatre play. You're given a prefabricated role to play on the stage, but what differs is your portrayal of the character.
Does Artemy believe in the steppe tales? Does he want to take his place among the Kin, or is he more reluctant and skeptical? Does he still care about his old friends, even seeing what they've become? There are a great deal of dialogue options in the game that shape your understanding of your character's worldview and desires, through the ethically fraught choices and even the mundane ones.

its true that you dont really need to play the first pathologic to play this one, its a remake of 1/3rd of the original (as of this writing, please god let ipl be able to release on the other two thirds in due time e: lost interest in really pushing for that after seeing accusations against director nikolai dybowski of ephebophilia https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KeKKptAkn1D662UZYdWWg-mr16YbYK-S/view) with some pretty major differences more than it is much of a sequel. but playing the first several years ago, specifically doing just a bachelor run in 1 with the original weird translation and then going to haruspex in 2, really affected how i experienced this.

i originally came to the town on gorkhon as a pompous city slicker suddenly faced with an alien culture, being forced to discard certain "facts", though perhaps not enough. with so little making sense, i followed the lead of the town's idealists perhaps too closely, only out of trusting the most friendly and hospitable people i see out of the gate like a newborn baby. some people died and i felt responsible. back then i took this as a compelling game that was horribly broken, so i often cheated. why not right? the game being so buggy vindicated me, so if its too cruel then why not fall back on an out, to move things forward? why not noclip for a bit, in the interest of finding immortality? its only logical.

then, in the second go at it, i became shaman turned doctor trapped between two worlds, one of reason and one of mystery. i thought i knew the town, things about it were definitely familiar, but the years i spent away from it changed it and made me less confident in my memory. everything felt too foreign to be recognizable, but also too recognizable to be foreign. some of the people i knew back then were now indifferent strangers, others resented or lamented that i left them in a way that made them more than strangers, even if they seemed like they were before. i spent alot of time trying to get in these people's good graces again, and occasionally even trying to check in on ones i failed before, the ghosts from a past life. i let unfortunate mistakes and disasters i couldn't foresee happen...well most of the time. i realized playing this time that i can't try to save everybody, i shouldn't cheat, i should sometimes let logic fall by the wayside, for better and for worse, for some greater understanding of how a world can breathe and choke. but i didn't want kids to die. pathologic 2 told me that that was my weakness, but also my strength.

also, maybe this is unethical to say in terms of faithful translation, but props to the localization team for mixing in that mystical quality of the machine translated english in the first translation of the first game. i want to give classic hd a real shot sometime and im not gonna say "its so much better when i have no idea what im being told to do", but idk. its a little too direct, and it feels wrong to not be called an onion

É bem difícil comentar sobre esse jogo. Hehe.
Minha vontade era de só escrever "puta que pariu" e deixar por isso mesmo, mas depois de tanta luta... não dá pra deixar assim.

Patológico 2 é um jogo extremamente artístico que me atraiu desde o início, principalmente após assistir ao vídeo do hbomberguy sobre a Genialidade de Patológico HD. Todas as interações com o mundo do jogo possuem particularidades e simbolismos únicos, mesmo aquelas que envolvem apenas a troca de itens, o que confere um inegável charme à experiência.

Entretanto, devido ao fato do jogo ser notoriamente cruel, a experiência de cada jogador é restrita e individual. É impossível criar uma concepção completa do mundo com base em uma única experiência, já que muitas vezes é impossível inclusive sobreviver, fazendo com que grande parte do jogo envolva custos de oportunidade... intensos. Inclusive, cheguei até a sonhar com escolhas que deveria ter feito, mas não fui capaz de raciocinar no momento certo.

No entanto, isso não é algo negativo para mim, pois acredito que quando um jogo te estressa a ponto de você sentir remorso genuíno, isso significa que você está imerso de fato. Afinal, viver é perigoso e Patológico 2 não deixa você esquecer disso.

Enfim, trata-se de um jogo bastante singular, repleto de identidade e com uma trilha sonora absolutamente fantástica. Um prato cheio para mim. Certamente jogarei novamente em algum outro momento da minha vida.

Might as well write about this game while I'm watching wrestling on my second monitor.

This game and Disco Elysium have been the biggest influence on my writing and the stories I want to tell with tabletop.

Here comes quite possibly the most pretentious thing I will say on here.
Calling Pathologic 2 a game is downgrading it. This shit is something else. Which is REALLY funny to say, given the first pathologic is LESS like a game than this one!

This and Darkwood are going to be the "best" survival experience you are going to get. I put best in air quotes because it matters what you're looking for in a survival game.
For me the best survival experience includes exertion and the will to love.

And nothing else has more of those than Pathologic 2!

The closest I’ve seen a game come to literature. The remarkable thing is how much Game it still manages to pile on top of its literary aspirations. I’ve never played a survival game where the struggle to survive was so pervasive throughout the entirety of the playthrough—and where how much you’re struggling at any given moment is so intrinsically tied to the narrative itself—yet it’s all so marvelously balanced that I never once felt like I had “failed” (unless we’re counting moral failures, but let’s leave that for another time). Instead, P2’s magic trick is to leave you consistently teetering on the edge. Always teetering…

It feels like a miracle that all of its ambitious pieces come together to create such a cohesive whole. Essential…luminous…the world needs more games like this

One of best games ever made, expertly crafted systems to convey the opposite of a power fantasy, a hard game but not to necessarily create a sense of satisfaction after beating it but to make you empathize with the harsh conditions of the world that the characters are living in, you are as likely to die as any character of this game, the only advantage you have is you're a doctor an you can treat yourself and another people, however combat is not your area of expertise and even an 1v1fist fight can be pretty dangerous, not that necessarily you're gonna die but you can lose a big amount of health; in the case where there is a 1v2 or 3 fight or someone of them has a knife, you can die pretty easily even if you have a knife of your own. There are guns in this game but then again you are a doctor and therefore it's not something easy to use and maintain, reload times are larger than one might expect, the gun can jam at any moment when you use it enough and ammunition is rare and expensive, doesn't mean that having a gun is bad, it can get you out of situations fast but you can't abuse it, this game is not about shooting your way out, this is a game about making decisions to survive and find a cure.
One can talk about a lot of things this game does right, how genius some design decisions are, how well written the story is, how every system and detail the games has comes together to create this unique experience, where other games force you to make moral, scripted and sometimes binary decisions, the systems from pathologic 2 create those harsh scenarios naturally; where other games try to make feel sad for killing some random NPC they forced you to kill, pathologic 2 systems CAN even make you consider to kill CHILDREN in your most desperate moments without forcing you with scripts, it recognizes that even if killing can be cruel... bad times can make you do cruel decisions, and if you want to survive in these times you have to take some extreme decisions.
You can't save everybody in this game... and that is what makes it exceptional.
I'm eager to play the other two characters Ice-Pick Lodge are developing and I hope the best for them.

Disempowerment is nothing new in videogames. Over the decades, many have dabbled in the art of taking stuff away from the player, usually as narrative device that reflects through interactivity the lowest point of a character's story arc or as a tool to instill a sense of tangible dread as you no longer have access to familiar mechanics that would otherwise quickly solve the issue, but rarely do those moments ever extend past their unwelcoming phase into frustrating territory before quickly bursting into power fantasy catharsis. Some games in recent years have managed to do so to great effect, like Rain World or Death Stranding, but none to my knowledge have achieved the apex that Pathologic has on that particular stage.

Much can be argued in favor of the original Pathologic's outright repulsiveness, inherent to its ugly look, unintuitive UI and disruptive euro jank, that would inevitably compound over what was already an antagonistic game filled with mechanics solely devised to hurt you, but I believe the greatest achievement of its reimagining, Pathologic 2, is in its ability to eliminate that pretense of subjectively interpreting what could easily be attributed to financial and time constraints and instead being a much more inviting play, shining the spotlight solely on the geniously crafted and designed tragedy that unfolds before and around you at the center of it all. This time around, you will not be able to blame the game.

How does it feel to not be the hero of your own story? Surely we have all experienced this idea in some shape or form with storytelling in media, and in some ways we live it everyday in our daily lives, but have you truly ever been put on the act of such conundrum? Videogames pride themselves in allowing a level of choice and emergent storytelling not possible in different mediums, but hardly do we ever realize how truly shackling freedom can be when explored to its fullest, as games have conditioned us to believe there is always a more righteous and intended path if you manage play "better". It isn't until you are crawling through the night streets of Pathologic 2 frightfully murdering people in despair for their possessions, ignoring the call to adventure and letting important events die out because there are more pressing personal matters at hand like not starving to death, that you realize how ridiculous the conceit of videogames are.

The brilliance of Pathologic 2, beyond its imaginative world and intrigue filled story and manipulative cast of characters, lies in the way it predicates the survival of its town with the player's own, creating a much more engrossing and transcendent narrative inbetween the dialogue filled NPC interactions, where you are making deeply and engaging life affecting existential choices such as deciding if you continue to walk slowly to a destination that will consume your ever dwindling limited time, or if you risk running to it and filling your thirst and exhaustion meters with no hope of depleting them. That constant tug and pull in turn ends up informing your decisions and outlook of Pathologic 2, has you quickly learn that no, you cannot save everyone, and how could you, when you have yourself to worry about?

Pathologic 2 consistently reminds you of its nature as a videogame, mocking you at any chance it gets and correctly predicting how you will be deceived next in an attempt to dissuade you. And yet that constant 4th wall breaking only ends up having the inverse effect of drawing you further into its world. You want to win against the machine, you have played this game many times before. And it will continue to break you down until you play by its rules, to the point of even taking away from you the relief of death. Settling into a path of choices you can feel confident about is an utopic wish that videogames have exploited for most of its existence, and Pathologic 2 being able deform that expectation, gamefying it into a tough provoking exercise that puts you in the front row seat of a misery drama, presenting the human condition by the mere act of forcing you to sell a gun to buy a loaf of bread, is some real shit that you will never experience in any other piece of work.

With two campaigns short of being complete, Pathologic 2 is already a masterpiece of game design, a true testament to the possibilities of the artform and how much higher they can aspire to. Transcending beyond its russian heritage, it demonstrates the hardships of the individual vs. the world, and like a great novel, the more you look into it, the more it unravels and reveals about itself and yourself. You will always feel like you have missed some crucial aspect about it, and that you could have done things differently to better solve it. And that's the point.

Note: This review contains no direct spoilers, but it does pull the curtain on how the game works in a general sense. If you're interested in the game, I recommend against reading it and just starting your playthrough.

Reacting to all of a player’s decisions is a common goal for games, but it simply isn’t possible. Doing so would require not only creating reactions for each choice, but for each set of combinations, leading to infinite complexity. The real question is how games that use decision making as a focal point are able to fake the reactivity in a way that still gives choices impact. Telltale games typically let choices affect the player’s relationship with other characters, but not the flow of the plot itself. Bioshock Infinite’s choices don’t end up mattering at all, with director Ken Levine’s philosophy being that the real impact of decisions happens in the player’s head, not in the game itself. These could be interpreted as lazy or misleading ways to sell a game, but as mentioned before, developers have limited resources and need to ensure their effort is used economically. It’s this principle that allows a game like Pathologic 2 to exist at all, promising a town full of radiant choice and consequence from an indie team on a relatively small budget. The player’s goal is to stay alive as a doctor in a steppe town overrun by plague, and save as many people as you can. There are about thirty named characters to keep track of, and generic townspeople you can trade with or heal to manage your supplies and increase your reputation. You have to survive for about ten days, making deals and compromises along the way to make it out as best you can.

So, with the aforementioned need to compromise, where does Pathologic 2 stand on the reactivity spectrum? Oddly enough, it falls closest to Bioshock Infinite, with the vast majority of choices having no discernible impact. The game emphasizes how the plague is random and how you can’t save everyone, so the cast mostly consists of disposable characters who could die and leave the story unaffected. Ironically, this also forces the few plot-critical characters to be totally immune until the plot says so. The endings suffer a similar irony, where a theme of nuanced decisions is filtered into a binary choice so the narrative can have structure. This recurring mismatch between a focus on player choice and the limitations of a set-narrative structure might be Pathologic’s fatal flaw, especially when the plot exists more as a framework for decisions than a narrative in its own right. If a game is about tough judgement calls, but as a result can’t present any real consequences, isn’t the design an inherent failure?

It might be tempting for me to answer that with a “yes”, and use it as an example of why most games with choices keep a tight leash on their narrative structure, there’s still the mental half of the decision making process to factor in. Players recognizing the pointlessness of their decisions at the end doesn’t matter when they felt real in the moment, and with media being inherently artificial, the real pointlessness would be in trying to convince people that their actions did have consequences. For most games, I would say this interpretation is giving way too much credit, but Pathologic has a recurring theatrical motif that fully acknowledges the artificiality of the drama. The truth is that the intention was never for players to have narrative agency, but to be like an actor in a play. The script may be unchanging, but the emotions and energy brought to a role can add a different life to the same material. The changing circumstances of the player’s survival helps shift this context in this way, creating a narrative arc that is tied to the process of decision making in itself.

I’ve fluctuated between these pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints of the game, and it’s been difficult to draw the line between flaws and intelligently acknowledged limitations. Analyzing the game’s structure in a vacuum makes it easy to be on the positive side, but the dryness and repetitiveness of the actual moment-to-moment interaction puts me on the negative side. Fans will counter that the game’s not exactly supposed to be fun, I might counter that it should at least be engaging, there’s never an easy answer. In everything from the minor details to the overall structure, the line will be drawn based on how much you’re willing to entertain the game’s artistic ideals, rather than them entertaining you. While I wasn't a fan, I still respect the game immensely for committing to an artistic vision that a lot of people would never have the patience to try. It’s a game I can’t exactly recommend, and can’t even really say I like, but trying something new and broadening your horizons will always be an excellent choice.

Pathologic 2 is like the video game adaptation of Pathologic

It's a game that, no matter how well or how many times you describe to someone how perfect it is, it still isn't enough to fully describe it.

This game is Art,
It's not describable, it's experienced.

TL;DR if you don't want to read my incredibly pretentious, artsy nerd review: If you think you'll like it, you will. Play it regardless.

Reviewing, describing, and even just talking about a piece of media to someone can be difficult sometimes, since tastes are always different and what could be a positive for one person is a negative for another. It's impossible to view something in a wholly objective light, because even that can be skewed by personal views. Now, of course, this is known to anyone who's tried their hand at speaking to something's strengths or weaknesses, especially on a public platform like this. So why bring it up? Simply put, because this game's traits are so subjective to the core that it would be completely out of my hands to even attempt to try and speak from a non-biased point of view. That being said, this game is all about overcoming seemingly impossible odds, so let's try.

Pathologic is a challenge. Not just in the sense of the game's notorious difficulty, but in the way that it acts as a reflection of how you specifically would go about solving problems with no solutions and deciding on things that can not be decided on. The game sometimes even resists your choice, by giving you dialogue options with no clear "right" thing to say, as compared to other games that tend to give you the options of "good, bad, or neutral" with no deviation. Of course, it's all just a game, so why does it matter? Why does the inability to say what you want to say affect you at all? After all, it's not you, it's just a character. But, try as you might to suppress the feeling, you still feel that twinge of pain when you end up saying something that hurts a character in grief or suffering. Why?

Blanket statement, I know, but I truly don't know of another piece of media, of any type you choose, that could match the immersion this game provides. It's been described as Kafkaesque in many circles, and while some would say that term has been beaten into meaninglessness, I would say that there has never been a better piece to file under it. From the kickstart of being thrown into the deep end of a situation you barely understand, to the suffocatingly oppressive nature of the town around you, to the dream-like architecture and dialogue of certain characters, it wraps you in a tight, engrossing cloth, not letting up until you either quit or beat it. This immersion is what makes everything in the game so meaningful. The realistic disease makes you dread even going near sick areas or carriers without proper protection, your ever-present physical needs don't feel like something tacked on to further the "survival" aspect of the plague, but rather something more devastating to you than the plague itself. By pushing you to your physical, mental, and emotional limits, the game forces you to make choices that cut deep and make you look at yourself when it's done. You don't want your best friend to die, but if you die, then it's all for nothing, both as a character in the game and as a player.

Eventually, you'll have to kill off your desires to save everyone or to even fully protect yourself because you just don't have the choice, not because the game didn't provide you with it, but solely because it provided you with the choice. Everything you do has consequences, minor or major, sooner or later, and it makes for an experience in which even your own inventory management can be seen as a choice, depending on the circumstances. The game lets you act exactly how you want to act, yet somehow simultaneously refuses to budge from how it wants you to play, again reinforcing its confusing, mind-warping tone that never ceases until you quit resisting and play your part. But then that begs the question, how do you feel about playing your part?

The lore of the game, while not necessarily its focal point, is something I would feel ashamed of not at least bringing up. It is so meticulously carved out throughout the game that, despite me completing it, I still feel like I only know a fraction of what there is to learn. The Steppe's history, its traditions, its meanings, almost everything is not handed to you, but rather something you pick up through finding out for yourself. The logic of the town is revealed slowly as time moves on, in unnoticeable increments; rather than having a revelation, a moment of clarity, you steadily build up your knowledge of how the people around you function and think until eventually, you feel as though you're one of the town's own, living and breathing right next to them, furthering the game's grasp on your mind in the best possible way.

I feel as though I've exhausted all I can say without going into spoiler territory, which is not something I want to do, I'd much rather try to sell you on the game by praising its brilliance and pulling you in to try it than to spoil the experience of learning the world for yourself. I want to end on this note, though. If you play it and you don't finish it, that's alright. If you play it and you don't like it, that's alright. If you don't even want to play it to begin with because you hate every detail about it, that's alright. Some things are challenging to get enjoyment out of, and it's only human for you to not want to go through hardships, especially one as optional as a game. I don't view myself as better for finishing it, and I don't view you as worse for giving up or avoiding it. However, I do ask that you try. Even if you think it's too much, keep trying. It took me over a year to finally beat it, and I could not have been happier to see it through to the end. Everyone deserves to experience the reflection this game provides, and seeing it through to the very end is an incredibly rich, rewarding experience.

Some scattershot thoughts I wanted to tack on and found no place to do so naturally:
- The imperialist themes are incredibly well-done and were a huge driving factor in how i dealt with certain situations
- This might have the best sound design in any game; the soundtrack itself is fantastic but the constant incomprehensible noises from around the Steppe are so effective
- I deeply care about the worms
- I don't think the ending(s) was fantastic in a vacuum but in the grand scheme of the game, I think it works perfectly
- This game occupied my brain for the entire time I was playing it to the point where I was struggling to sleep, thinking about how I would survive the next day once I played it again
- I really, really hope the other two routes come soon, this is already a near-perfect game as it is, having the other two would earn it a spot in the hall of fame

it's incredible how much of an improvement it is over some aspects of the original pathologic. i was just so delighted with seeing all my thoughts and ideas about how pathologic could have been improved being implemented, such as finally being able to RUN <3 but it depleting stamina, and having fast travel options that also come at a different cost if they do save you time. the difficulty is still there, just instead of being boring or a nuisance, there's actual decision-making that goes into it and thus engaging difficulty. the visuals and art direction are as always impeccable, and the writing is great, though i still vastly prefer the russian-lit flowery dramatics of the original game

i am also very glad that this focuses on haruspex's route first, since his route in the first game was weaker than the bachelor's. but ngl i don't know if other routes will ever happen, or whether i will even play them anymore

that being said, wow this game is hard. patho 1 was also supposedly hard but also it's an old game that can easily be cheesed. this, however... i could not cheese this... i am quite bad at it so i did not get far. i hope i will be able to finish it someday

my nitpicks would be that i do not like yulia's new design at all :( eva's as well. also there's just smth about the original pathologic that resonates with me more in terms of its atmosphere and themes still, though otherwise the remake is an improvement in every way for visuals and gameplay

✅ Positives:
• I haven’t played many games with atmosphere quite as oppressive as this felt, almost suffocatingly so. From the get go you’re set off in a town that’s immediately out to get you, with the game getting much worse to manage as a deadly plague starts to set in, supplies run low, and districts fall into disarray. As the town’s doctor, you’ll be tasked to try and keep the people there and yourself alive as long as you can, which gets more miserable with each passing day. While there are difficulty settings to choose from, at the start it’s said to keep it on an “intended” level as a way to really understand the almost unbearable world they’ve made here, and I’d say it does work very well even if it can be exhausting to play after a while
• With the survival systems and timed deadlines you’re pretty much forced to always be doing something, and I liked how the characters, quests and points of interest are structured with a “thoughts” map which made it easy to keep track of things. You’ll rarely be lost cause of this which was appreciated
• The majority of the game is spent talking to the town’s residents, and dialogue is well written. And while he’s not voiced I liked how personified they made the main character’s dialogue options too, endearingly emphasizing his stress with the situation and other characters as he tries to find a cure
• I liked how the barter system works in the game. Ordinarily you can go to stores to buy supplies but that’ll start getting expensive very quickly. Instead you can trade a bunch of general items you have with NPCs for anything they’re carrying to keep you going, like food or medicine. This makes all the random items you find useful when they wouldn’t have much value otherwise
• The music is understated but does a great job making you feel very uneasy as you go around town and things continue to get worse

❎ Negatives:
• Didn’t like the combat. I get that it’s supposed to be avoided as you barely have any means to defend yourself or heal, but in those cases where you have no choice or get overwhelmed by multiple enemies it’s very janky to deal with. On top of this, the game does this thing where you get punished if you die by taking away a piece of your overall health across all your save files, meaning you can’t just reload afterwards from what I could tell. With how fast combat can kill you in general, I felt this wasn’t really necessary on top of everything else
• You will be walking through the same town districts A LOT, there is only a limited way to fast travel with boats and you need finite items to use them (and eventually they’ll ask for more at once too). Didn’t really care for this and felt it just took up more time than anything
• Assuming you play on the intended difficulty, you will constantly be starving. This works as the means to keep you active throughout the game, but at times I felt it was a bit unbalanced as water was comparatively much easier to find and stock up on. Don’t think I ever had a point where I was really in need of that, meanwhile your hunger meter barely lasts a couple hours before having to look for more (and it gets expensive to do so)
• Performance on Steam Deck was okay, but couldn’t really handle it past 30 FPS. Probably should only play this on an SSD also, as it loads every time you enter interiors and I’ve seen it can have extremely long wait times otherwise

Pathologic 2 occupied my mental state. I had a tetris-like experience with it, when at some point my dreams became Pathologic as I kept seeing the imagery of the town and contant time opression. It's such an engaging game and the most surprising thing about it is how enjoyable it was to play. If you try to break it down to basics then you can describe Patholofic 2 a routing/resource management game. Each in-game day you have several objectives to fulfill which will be sparsely spread around the town and the aim is to create the route optimized, ideally, for the best time and most conservative resource expendeture. As you come to grips with mechanics and learn the structure of the city you also learn how to circumvent cutthroat resource drain through exploration, barter, crafting and timely task fulfilment. But Pathologic wouldn't be Pathologic if it didn't try to bring you back to your knees when you start to get a handle of the whole process. The game constantly throws curveballs in your plans by changing the state of the world and even its own rules each new day of the play. This an ever-regressing world and as one of the most important people in the town you gain opportunities to slow down the degradation, but since mistakes are unavoidable you will find yourselves in situations when you have to give up something important. While struggling for your own life you'll probably have to stop pursuing a goal, or give up a chance to gain information, or maybe you'll have to bet on the life of a story character. Dialogue and character interactions themselves become the reward in such an opressive gameplay flow. The journey to unfold the nature of the cosm is full of pain, dread and sorrow, but it's also one of the most rewarding gaming experiences you can have. Masterpiece