Far better-looking, it works significantly better as a game, the localization is actually comprehensible, and the overall jank levels have been significantly reduced (though there’s still jank to go around). In short, it’s leaps and bounds beyond the first game, although due to its weird status as both a remake and sequel, I’m not sure if the first one has been entirely superseded; it’ll probably be the domain of die-hard fans only going forward.
For what it’s worth, that interview making the rounds is apparently from months ago, shortly after release, and things aren’t as bad as it would suggest. They had to let some folks go, but the core team of around 10-12 (iirc) is still there, and they still fully plan to release the Bachelor and Changeling scenarios later. I also think the recent review by MandaloreGaming on YouTube gave them a decent sales bump in the past week. All in all, not a great situation, but not nearly as dire as the initial interview suggested.
I’m coming back to the game after a bit of a hiatus due to real-life events. Currently on Day 7 with 4 deaths under my belt, and I feel like I’ve actually had an easier time of things compared with the first day or two. On the other hand, the way the narrative is going, I’m getting vibes that things are about to get really bad, so we’ll see if I can keep it up. I haven’t found the death penalties to be all that punishing, and the game very much expects you to die, as certain aspects of the narrative are only revealed through player death (not to mention the tooltip that actively warns the player against save-scumming). I’d be lying if I said I didn’t save-scum occasionally still, but I guess I’m still unlearning habits about being able to take every quest and save every person, like you can in virtually all other games.
I like RagnarRox a lot, just got finished watching that vid. There was also a review from MandaloreGaming a week ago who I also follow:
Got to get back to playing this myself, thinking maybe in October. I’ve only made it to Day 2 so far, haven’t been in the right mindset to play more even though I really appreciated what I played.
Ouch, on PS4, from a technical perspective, it’s bad, maybe even worse than the original. Picture that!
Trophies don’t work, as in they never get sent to your profile. I mean, it’s not that important, but I’ve never heard of a game actually screwing up trophies completely. The worst is loading times every time you cross some artificial boundary. Is it like this on PC? I remember the original Pathologic being sluggish, but not stuttery.
Is there any chance the game will be patched? The last update on their site is from October, but there’s still only 1 out of 3 characters in the game. They must be doing something though since the game showed up on PS4 in March… but maybe we shouldn’t expect much right now because of the actual pandemic.
Then again, the game is still as weird and smart as ever. Navigating the streets feels horrible… I don’t remember it being this bad in this original. The architect chick tells you she did it on purpose because the Kains see the town as some kind of catalyst to eventually bring about the overman. It’s easy to leap to the conclusion that your character is that overman and that really means the player.
I’ve experienced small loading hitches, but I’m using an SSD, and I discovered not that long ago that my PS4 Pro has a 5400rpm HDD in it, which is bullshit and part, I’m sure, of why MHW takes literal eons to update.
The real travesty of this game (on PC at least), is how incredibly slow the mouse look is, although you can sort of fix it by editing a file, but that shouldn’t even be necessary.
I wish the Russian was subtitled, but I guess it’s not game-breaking or anything. Adds to the flavor, and when I switched to English the people were just saying weird things that seemed to have nothing to do with their dialogue anyway, so I switched back. Had to watch a YouTube video of the opening to find out what the hell the monologue was when you’re walking to the house (father’s letter, it turns out).
I’m not blaming the hardware. Lots of games that look way better than this run much faster on consoles. I think it was madness on my part to expect the devs of supremely janky games would actually be able to port the game correctly.
So there’s also a board game, huh? That sounds good: one player plays the plague and the others one of the three healers. The healers are supposed to cooperate, but not really, which realy fits the theme of Pathologic.
You show up at the Town Hall and you’re told: “We started the meeting without you. By the way, the town is under quarantine now. Okay bye!” That second paragraph is basically it. Five minutes’ worth of cutscenes in a few sentence fragments. Also note that the first thing Big Vlad mentions is money, 'cause he’s a big fat bourgeois oppressor.
Ok, the other not-so-playable character, the Bachelor, probably gets to see the whole meeting. But it’s fascinating that the game cuts the player out of one of the most important events in the game’s timeline. How bold. How many devs would ever dare do that?
The interplay between the playable characters is brilliant. As the Haruspex, the snooty Kains barely talk to you. I played the original as the Bachelor and the Kains just loved me automatically as a person of high learning. But I also vaguely remember being irritated at the steppe people not giving me the time of day and that their entire world was closed to me. Now I’m playing the sequel as the Haruspex, the steppe people accept me as one of their own and I get to mix herbs and stuff, but I’m also an outsider because I’ve been gone too long. My character is also incapable of not thinking of the steppe people as superstitious idiots. Talk about the grass not being greener.
As for the third character, the Changeling, she’s even less liked. During the same Town Hall meeting, the Bachelor basically says about her: “She’s an idiot that thinks she has magical powers, but she probably can’t do more harm than good. Let her do whatever.” The Haruspex and the Bachelor hate each other, but at least they credit each other for not claiming to have, gasp, magic powers! I don’t know much about her, but she probably thinks them fools for not seeing the real problem… which I guess has something to do with energies and mistresses? She’s a jerk in her own way too!
Few games have social classes and interactions this well fleshed out.
I love this game. It’s a piece of shit, but it’s also the best game ever.
I don’t know… I guess it still has to be worth it since 2 out of 3 characters are only playable in the original. Who knows if they’ll ever have the budget to finish this game?
I was thinking of giving the old game a shot just to see how it feels. I haven’t tried Pathologic Classic HD, it’s basically a remaster. I’ll try a little bit of the Changeling’s story, since I hear they cleaned up the translation and her storyline was basically a garbled mess.
I’ll report back.
EDIT: Her storyline is locked behind the other ones and after looking the net for an hour I don’t know what file to edit or where to find a save file. Damn.
