EU release played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.
The Pathless very much wears its influences on its sleeve, and while the core gameplay loop involves gliding through vast environments and hunting down giant beasts, it does offer a few more similarities to Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the WIld. The world is abundant with life but the only people you come across are corpses, and the beasts you help cleanse will help further your journey. It also has a great auditory design with deep bassy voices in fictional tongues and haunting string scores helping sell the vibe of this humanless world, and the visual style is absolutely striking, with colours that pop out at you and featuring a huge similarity to BotW's Calamity Ganon when you see a rampaging beast surrounded with swirling red mist.
I did enjoy my time with The Pathless, but I'm not really sure if I can recommend it at it's current price point of $40/£30 given I probably could have finished it in about 6 hours but did it in 10 purely to hunt the secrets and trophies. The world is certainly unique, and the method of using your bow and arrow to shoot targets that help traverse the environment in interesting ways alongside your eagle friend that allows you to glide is satisfying to utilise. But I spent probably a good couple of hours on and off using the spirit vision mask that filters the world into a ghostly blue aura, making it a little uninteresting to look at, and unless you want to actively hunt down a lot of the lore markers and spirits that litter the land and help you learn more about the world, there's really not much else to do here. The world is (usually) quite pretty to look at once you've cleansed an area and the beast designs range from fearsome to quite cute, but I felt they could have been scaled up to be just that little bit more intimidating.
I'm not one to usually invoke the idea of a game's pricepoint needing to be tied to it's length, and given how much I did enjoy my time playing it and solving the unique puzzles I feel a little unfair for being so harsh. I enjoyed the gameplay despite my small niggles with it, and the story was well told (if you find those pieces of lore) - it's certainly a strong favourite within my list of recently played games, but if it was roughly a tenner cheaper I feel this could be a new indie classic. I encourage you to try it out if I've made it sound interesting to you, but yeah, probably wait for a sale.
The Pathless very much wears its influences on its sleeve, and while the core gameplay loop involves gliding through vast environments and hunting down giant beasts, it does offer a few more similarities to Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the WIld. The world is abundant with life but the only people you come across are corpses, and the beasts you help cleanse will help further your journey. It also has a great auditory design with deep bassy voices in fictional tongues and haunting string scores helping sell the vibe of this humanless world, and the visual style is absolutely striking, with colours that pop out at you and featuring a huge similarity to BotW's Calamity Ganon when you see a rampaging beast surrounded with swirling red mist.
I did enjoy my time with The Pathless, but I'm not really sure if I can recommend it at it's current price point of $40/£30 given I probably could have finished it in about 6 hours but did it in 10 purely to hunt the secrets and trophies. The world is certainly unique, and the method of using your bow and arrow to shoot targets that help traverse the environment in interesting ways alongside your eagle friend that allows you to glide is satisfying to utilise. But I spent probably a good couple of hours on and off using the spirit vision mask that filters the world into a ghostly blue aura, making it a little uninteresting to look at, and unless you want to actively hunt down a lot of the lore markers and spirits that litter the land and help you learn more about the world, there's really not much else to do here. The world is (usually) quite pretty to look at once you've cleansed an area and the beast designs range from fearsome to quite cute, but I felt they could have been scaled up to be just that little bit more intimidating.
I'm not one to usually invoke the idea of a game's pricepoint needing to be tied to it's length, and given how much I did enjoy my time playing it and solving the unique puzzles I feel a little unfair for being so harsh. I enjoyed the gameplay despite my small niggles with it, and the story was well told (if you find those pieces of lore) - it's certainly a strong favourite within my list of recently played games, but if it was roughly a tenner cheaper I feel this could be a new indie classic. I encourage you to try it out if I've made it sound interesting to you, but yeah, probably wait for a sale.