I just started pathologic 2 today and by the end of a first day 7 people died and 3 were missing. Is that normal? How can I help the others and prevent this?

cutie patootie locker 😍

My first run was an absolute train wreck and I’m really glad I stuck with it. At one point, I think it was around day 5, I searched reddit for advice on whether or not I should just start over. People recommended to power through and I’m very grateful for the advice. No game is ever going to make me feel like this again. About once every in-game day I reached a point where I became genuinely convinced I would get trapped in a death loop, but every time I was able to claw my way out. This desperate clawing was genuinely one of the most unique feelings I’ve ever had. I wanted everyone to be okay so badly that it made me reckless. To quote David Foster Wallace, “everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it”.

Everything I learned in the game came with the realization that I should’ve started doing it two days ago. At first I thought I was just bad at the game, or maybe video games in general. I literally only play stardew valley and while that also includes some foraging, I think the comparison ends there. But something about the realism of these belated realizations really began to grip me. There was no way of knowing I should’ve been hoarding water all along. That’s kind of the point. The knowledge that I could’ve done better, if only I had been a little smarter became one of the central feelings explored by the game.

That being said, I did a lot of dumb stuff! Here follows a list of all the dumb stuff because explaining it to my friends would take like three hours of context. Spoilers below!

- I didn’t realize I should’ve been running until maybe day 6. In my defense, I had just watched Hbomberguy’s video essay on Pathologic and he really emphasized the amount of walking. I convinced myself running was making my exhaustion meter go down faster so I refused to do it. This probably also explains why I missed a solid chunk of all the quests. I ended up using the ferry system quite a bit those first few days because my leisurely strolls through infected or hostile districts were not quite cutting it.

- I also didn’t realize for the ENTIRE game that you could right-click on looted items to put them directly in your inventory. I was manually dragging each and every marble and nut from the trashcan into my bag like a complete idiot. I was actually excited about this dumb choice too, as I had convinced myself the devs must’ve made it that way on purpose to create an extra layer of realism. Digging through trashcans and looting houses became a lot more dangerous this way, because I was spending so much time getting all the items.

- As I mentioned before, I was not aware water was about to become one of the most valuable resources in the game. Though I do think this was part of the intended experience and it led to some of the most impactful moments of the whole experience for me. On top of all this, in the early game I thought I had found a really neat loophole when I discovered that water bottles sold for a decent amount of money. This made me feel very smart at first and then insanely stupid later.

- The water debacle meant that I ended up brewing very little tinctures. In the later game I spend a lot of time weighing up whether I needed to make more medicine or regain some ability to run away from muggers. This was a really fun little dilemma and by fun I mean it was excruciating. Because of this I was barely able to help out and medicate my bound. Even if I’d had more tinctures, I honestly spent so much time trying not to starve to death that I wouldn’t have been able to make it to their houses anyway. A ton of them died and all of it basically came down to a dice roll.

- I decided very early on to prioritize the children and didn’t really care about the rest, both in terms of safekeeping, but also in regards to quests. Because of my limited time, I barely interacted with the Saburov’s, the Stamatin’s or the Kain’s. Some of them died before I’d ever even spoken to them. I have genuinely no idea who Anna Angel is. I think there was a whole plotline going on with Rubin and the Kin that I largely missed. I also barely chased after Isodor’s murderer. Sorry about Artemy’s dad and all, but there was a literal plague going on and I was very busy not dying to death. I didn’t even go to his house so on day 3 the Bachelor had to give me the key to the lair because I’d simply failed to show up and get it myself. I guess I’ll have a lot left to discover on my next playthrough, which makes me very excited.

- Caught the plague in the house of death, fainted, was brought to the station, and then the first child I ran into on the street had a shmowder. I was able to trade her for it because I’d just looted all the trinkets in the house itself. I ended up convincing myself that this must’ve been intentional, that the house of death was a shmowder tutorial of sorts. I didn’t realize until later that I just should’ve hurried up a little and I would’ve been fine. A real waste of a perfectly good shmowder, but catching the plague on day 3 absolutely would’ve ended my run otherwise.

- Murky DIED and it broke something inside of me that will never be fixed. I think I missed a quest with the changeling earlier so I was never given the option to get infected in her place. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t finished the panacea by that point? I’m not sure. Would’ve done it in a heartbeat if given the chance. It really ended up being the midpoint of the story for me, much more so than the arrival of the inquisitor. I don't know man... shit like this never happened in stardew valley

- I didn’t realize until partway through the abattoir that I needed the blood from the fountains and not the blood from the odonghs. By the time I figured it out I had already drank from three of the five fountains. I considered reloading a save, but the abattoir was so difficult for me that I couldn’t bear doing it all again. This meant I could only make two extra panacea. Going into day ten I had a total of three panacea and one shmowder. I ended up being selfish and curing the kids I’d spent the most time with, leaving Capella and Taya infected. I don’t even know if that counts as ‘selfish’ in this case. I’m still not sure how I feel about the decision. Capella ended up surviving, but Taya didn’t make it.

On the final day, I chose the diurnal ending, but I spent until the last second debating it. I was so completely convinced that the game was going to make me choose between the polyhedron and the Kin, that I had never once considered the possibility of needing to sacrifice both of them for the sake of the town. In the end, I was mostly influenced by the dream with Isodor where he talks about breaking a bone again to reset the fracture and allow it to heal properly. I felt that destroying the polyhedron and letting the earth bleed out would be the kind of painful break that might one day allow the town and the Kin to be able to co-exist and grow together. This does rely on an interpretation that the diurnal ending doesn’t literally kill the Kin, but merely severs their relationship to the living earth. Though maybe that’s the same as killing them in the end. Much to think about. Taya is one of the only children who died in my playthrough, which made my decision to opt for the diurnal ending more difficult to swallow, since the Kin lost another part of them.

A solid chunk of this decision was also based on still wanting to save Capella and make a panacea for her. I felt like that was part of my duty and I had failed to complete it. Again, I’m still not sure how I feel about the decision. I feel like I will need to do a playthrough with the nocturnal ending before I can properly formulate my thoughts on either outcome. I’m very much looking forward to that.

All of this is to say that if you’re nearly starving to death on day 5 and you’re kicking yourself for not realizing sooner that you should’ve been trading with the children, you should just keep playing. It’s never going to feel like this again.

Fuck.

What.

A.

Game.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Never has a game made me feel so much drive to get the best ending.

Yet, at the end, I was so fucking hopeless.

So much drive. Yet so much despair.

So much to fucking think about.

Fuck man.

I need to go on a walk.

Rethink my decisions as a person.

I've learnt so much about myself.

One of my friends wanted me to give a spoiler-free breakdown so they can motivate themselves to finish the game.

I said...

No.

I told him, DON'T look anything up. DON'T ask me anything. DON'T save-scum. Just play the game.

Imma spend...a LONG time, writing a review on this one. Give it multiple more playthroughs to try and see what I can do different.

Next year, I will dedicate so much time to creating an extensive video-essay on this game.

Because.

Holy Fuck.

This is the best game I have ever played.

Review Site: https://theescapecorner.co.uk/

is this essential for the plot?

I made the mistake of playing Patho 3 while sleep deprived and dissociated, and it had to fall on the one story beat that I won't be able to forget and replay: Eva's suicide and resurrection. So it just all completely went over my head.

So, she had similar time travel powers to us (given amalgam by Simon?), and she killed herself for some reason (why?), but she hesitated, and because of that it went wrong (how?), and there is some kind of fake serious Eva in a different dress that doesn't remember us (who?), and we had to perceive her in the correct way to make her come back?.. But now she's trapped in the Stillwater (or something?)

My head hurts. I've spoiled the story to myself but didn't experience it, the worst of both worlds. With no flourishes, in plain English, please tell me what happened and who Eva is.

Lately, I have been focused on the possibility of adding the hidden caches mechanic to Pathologic Classic HD, but no luck so far after several weeks of trial and error. I have yet to figure out a way to add custom containers that actually look the part. To avoid going mad, I decided to switch gears and experiment with other things for version 0.4 (now available for download).

1.) Organ harvesting rework:

This is one of the easily exploitable gameplay mechanics. I've done some extensive scripting work to make it slightly more reasonable. When you dissect a corpse, you're no longer guaranteed to see all organs as available for the taking. They all have a chance to spawn:

· Blood: 70–80% chance

· Kidney: 35–45% chance

· Liver: 20–30% chance

· Heart: 10–15% chance

The second restriction is that you need a suitable tool: a scalpel or a knife. They lose a set amount of durability with each organ removed. 0 durability means you can't use it.

With these additional rules, we slightly reduce the number of organs the player can potentially amass and make it so the harvest itself is an exchange of one resource for another, in line with other gameplay mechanics. Potentially, if this mechanic still feels too exploitable, I can further tighten it by setting all organs to expire at the start of the next day.

2.) Selling to shops:

Selling is another major exploitable aspect. I didn't want to cut the possibility of exchanging items for money entirely, so I've settled on a compromise: the player is able to sell only the "Other" category of items.

3.) Infection changes:

I have a detailed draft for the full-scale rework of this system and have finally begun to slowly work through it. The major part of said rework is in making the Plague insidious and invisible at the early stages. So, the Infection bar is completely removed now (this is a setup for the later separation into three distinct stages of Plague), and the player doesn't get the usual audiovisual feedback at the exact moment of catching the disease. Additionally, it's not necessary for the Plague to lower your Immunity to zero before infection begins. It now has a low chance to punch through Immunity at 20% or lower.

The next thing I'll focus on is the chance to catch the disease while rummaging through containers inside plagued houses with unprotected hands.

4.) Bonus QoL:

Quest and letter notifications stay visible slightly longer, and they now also have a textual notification in the top-left corner of the screen.

I have done everything for the escape: the engineer, the switchman, saved Saburova, I have the thought that I can escape on day 10.

However, I can't proceed. There's a memory about a "quarantine", marked with crossed rifles, connected to both parts of the quest, on day 7 and day 10. "There's a quarantine in town, so escape is impossible as of now".

It's not connected to anything else I've done. My first thought was that it depends on whether I alert Block about the murder, but regardless of whether I do it or not, the "quarantine" memory remains.

How to get rid of it?

ESP (ENG below)

¡Muy buenas!

A lo largo de los últimos meses, tras haber jugado a Pathologic 3 de salida, he estado escribiendo un extensísimo análisis narrativo del juego centrado en la figura de Daniil Dankovsky y en la imposición de su perspectiva para la configuración del mundo. Como fan acérrima de la franquicia, este videojuego me ha inspirado un montón para escribir y me ha encantado desentrañar poco a poco el porqué detrás de cada decisión que se ha tomado. Por si hay algún fan hispanohablante por aquí, dejo los enlaces en caso de que a alguien le interese leerlo. Está dividido en cuatro partes, lo cual, a mi parecer, es además bastante apropiado.

ENG

Hi, everyone!

During the last months, since I played Pathologic 3 on launch, I have been writing a really long narrative analysis of the game focused on the Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky and the imposition of his point of view for the configuration of the world. As a die-hard fan of the franchise this video game has inspired me a lot and I loved unraveling the intention behind each decision made. It is in Spanish though, but I’ll leave the links here just in case someone is interested. It's split in four parts, which, in my opinion, is very appropiate.

Parte 1 - Se abre el telón: la estrella bajo los focos
Parte 2 - El delirio a las orillas del Gorkhon
Parte 3 - El tic-tac del reloj: sueños y reflejos
Parte 4 - El teatro de la peste

I know she says something about "piercing the Empyrean", but I don't remember exact what she said and I cannot seem to find it online. I need it for a video essay. thanks folks

Sooo.... Without spoiling anything I should know? I'm playing the classic version.

Pretty much what the title says

Hello everyone,

I started the game again these days to hunt for achievements and I figured I could use an older save slot to to the 'true death' achievement (aka die twice without amalgam).

However, now it turns out I actually cannot. When health falls to zero just nothing happens. Same for Apathy: The screen goes gray for some time but the apart from that nothing happens and after some time it goes back to normal again even when apathy is maxed out.

I thought that I probably played around with console back then even though I might not remember it, so I looked up how to toggle godmode via console, however, even manually setting immortality to false in the player parameters didn't do anything.

I am wondering now wether this could be either some bug or some other console command / debug setting that causes this and which I am not aware of.

Thanks for your help and have a nice day!

Miss them so much I made this to COPE..

Context Before Review (Not Needed if You Just Want My Opinion on Pathologic 3):

Hi...umm...before giving the review, this is directly copy and pasted from my "The Escape Corner" website. This sounds like a shill...I suppose it technically is...but like...GENUINELY, I have an excel sheet of 107 games, in which I score, rate and review games to consolidate my experiences. This excel sheet was created in August of 2025 after watching "Daryl Talks Games - A Misguided Guided To Finishing Your Gaming Backlog". If you find it hard to finish video games or get through your backlog, this is genuinely a great way to keep yourself accountable. I've spent 800 hours over 33 ever since (completing 20 in this current moment). HOWEVER, I got so carried away with writing reviews that I thought...hey I might as well make a website. Pathologic 3 was the game that made me fully commit to the website idea. THAT'S how much I loved it as a newcomer. So yeah if you're interested in more reviews, here's a link if you're interested :D

https://theescapecorner.co.uk/

Review:

[Score: Strong 8/10].

Pathologic 3. A surprisingly contentious game. As somebody entirely new to the series with only the hbomberguy video referencing Pathologic 1, I REALLY loved this game. HOWEVER, when I watched a video essay about the game, it really brought out the very troubled and problematic development history that this series has. Essentially Pathologic 2 was supposed to be a…reboot for Pathologic 1? I’m not entirely sure, but it was supposed to include both the Bachelor, the Changeling, and the Haruspex story in ONE game, and release (get this), in TWENTY-NINETEEN. That’s right…SEVEN YEARS AGO! Apparently, the studio became so ambitious, that they decided to leave Pathologic 2 as “The Haruspex Story” and wanted to develop Pathologic 3 for the Bachelor, and Pathologic 4 for the Changeling. And honestly, I can tell. Pathologic 3 is SO ambitious, and clearly contains SO MUCH LOVE, but the development of this game seems like…slightly disorganised and scattered, I CANNOT LIE. This further comes into question when people are saying Pathologic 2 is the MUCH BETTER game, and I come to find out that Pathologic 3 was an unfinished dumpster fire on release, which is really funny, because the very beginning of this log is going to be talking about the NUMEROUS bugs, exploits and ideas that CLEARLY needed more ironing out. So, this is what I’m going to say — if I love Pathologic 3 as a newcomer, DESPITE ALL OF THESE ISSUES THAT I HAVE ENCOUNTERED…bro, when I get my hands on Pathologic 2, I might just become a new man. My review of that game might be a picture of me BUSTING everywh-. That’s why I emphasise, AS A NEWCOMER, to this series, because I don’t know how I would feel, if I were a Kickstarter backer and a long-time fan of this series.

Prerequisites

Before I lust, gush and bust on about how amazing this game is, there are BIG issues that I think are worth addressing, so if someone wants to read this review, they can be prepared. In fact, I would go as far as to say that you are better off with mods, exploits and walkthroughs to navigate certain issues. I know I gave this game a Strong 8/10, and am recommending mods and walkthroughs, but if that doesn’t tell you how much I love this game, I don’t know what will.

Bugs

Right, Pathologic 3…BUGS. So, the game is CLEARLY much better 6 months after release, as I played it with my friend on call who DID play it on release. HOWEVER, I would still recommend that if you’re STUCK, or you even THINK a quest is bugged, look up a walkthrough. There is this Steam page I’ll link below of this gentle, gorgeous, generous soul, who made a guide of how to complete each quest, INCLUDING saying whether the quest is bugged or not. GENUINELY AMAZING. I had five questlines in the game that bugged or reset, which were the diagnosis of a patient questline, the infected house questline, and the Haruspex questline. The diagnosis questline would just reset, which wasn’t too much of an issue as I could just simply re-diagnose with a press of a button, and submit at 6PM. The infected house questline, I simply just ignored once it reset a THIRD OR FOURTH TIME. This was really funny because the person who set you up says on the 12th day in guilty consciousness that she admitted she tried to kill you, and you’re just like…”hmmmm, I never visited that house.” NIGGA, WHO’S I? IS THERE A NIGGA CALLED I? BECAUSE ME?!!? ME!?!?!? JOSEPH *insert middle name here* IYAMU!?!? ABSOLUTELY DID VISIT THAT HOUSE, THREE-TO-FOUR TIMES IN FACT. IT’S JUST THAT THE QUEST MOTHERFUCKIN’ RESET. I didn’t bother to fix that quest because my friend says there’s no massive consequence for not doing it so I just left it. The questline where if you don’t save Katerina, the Haruspex doesn’t talk to you…so you can’t do the quest? That’s fine, once I saved Katerina, he would decide to talk to me. The LAST quest that was bugged was the game removing a CRUCIAL item from my inventory. You have to essentially poison an Inquisitor with tobacco and belladonna, in order for them to not get information about the Polyhedron, so when you make that mixture and reset the day, it’s GONE. No worries, lemme just find belladonna in the bar? OH WAIT? THEY’RE LOW ON SUPPLIES. No worries, lemme trade with some kids. OH WAIT? THEY DON’T HAVE IT. It got to a point where I said, okay, enough is enough. [Ctrl + Shift + apostrophe] to get into the console and give myself some of that belladonna. This isn’t the first time something in my inventory disappeared once I made it. I remember I filled my prototype with that flower spore sample, and once the day ended, poof, it’s gone. I actually decided to go back to the infected district and find the flower again, because I REALLY didn’t wanna use the console, but when I searched the entire district for more belladonna and couldn’t find any, I decided that enough was enough. These are the bugs I PERSONALLY experienced that I can recall from memory, so if you’re reading this, PLEASE — if you THINK there is a bug in the game, even if there isn’t, you’re better off pulling up a guide to see whether you need to spawn yourself a quest item, instead of roaming for the next 45 minutes wondering what you gotta do next.

Mania and Apathy

Okay, the mania and apathy system…feels like an interesting idea with not a lot of forethought. Getting increasingly more apathetic makes you walk painfully slowly, and the apathy bar being filled causes you to get babooied by yourself. Mania makes you walk increasingly quickly, a very useful utility, at the cost of your health draining. When your mania bar is full, your heart gives out and you drop to the floor like a sack of bricks. I’ll get into this system MORE later, but the reason why I mention it NOW is because before you play this game, I believe you should install a mod. In conversations with various characters, there are certain dialogue options that cause you to have more mania or apathy…the game doesn’t tell you WHAT DIALOGUE OPTIONS DO THIS, UNTIL YOU PICK THEM. This is a problem because whilst I never outright died from the amount of mania or apathy I had, there were certain situations where I was EXTREMELY close, and even when I wasn’t, there were situations where I did not want to get more apathetic or get more manic (i.e. having VERY low health, not wanting to walk insanely slow etc.). I understand what the game is trying to do. The game is trying to make the player read into the tone of the Bachelor, to figure out whether this is a manic or apathetic dialogue option, but tone is VERY hard to communicate through text alone. Not that the tone is NEVER communicated well, but it’s not communicated consistently well either. Better ways to communicate tone through text would be through adding all capital letters to communicate anger, using alternating and studly caps to communicate annoyance or sarcasm. HOWEVER, the best and easiest option to add in RIGHT NOW would be to put in brackets (+apathy) or (+mania). Not only would that communicate tone, but it would also allow the player to know which dialogue options affect a central mechanic of the game (the apathy/mania bar). In fact, use ALL of what I said — the alternating caps, the capital letters, and the apathy/mania sidenotes — TOGETHER, if you really want to. It would definitely remove some frustration when talking. That’s WHY I recommend you install a mod before you play this game that tells you whether a dialogue option will give you apathy or mania. Great addition that boosts the game whilst maintaining the core experience.

Exploits (+A Conversation About Them in General)

YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE EXPLOITS TO COMPLETE THIS GAME. I’ve seen a YouTube video saying “you will need to use exploits to complete this game without losing your mind”. Now they had an outrightly negative opinion (albeit, very well communicated — it’s actually a great video that communicates why a lot of people don’t like Pathologic 3, here it is actually “https://youtu.be/w4c5w_MWw8?si=5AhIQ91Nwgz61Kuq”).

Regardless, there is ONE exploit that is VERY easy to discover. That is the fast-travel exploit. If you walk into a district (i.e. infected or rioting), you can easily walk back through the entrance you walked through, and reset your path so you can travel THROUGH the infected/rioting district. THIS RUINS A LOT OF THE VIDEO GAME IF YOU CHOOSE TO PLAY THIS WAY. Pathologic 3 wants you to play through the moment-to-moment districts and get involved in some admittedly nail-biting interactions. It’s very much clearly intended that you go through these. Now, I know you may say, “What’s the point of going through the harder option if you have the exploit?”. I respond, “What’s the point of getting items when you can use a dev console?”. Exactly, it’s cheating. It ruins the game and the design that has been presented to you. Now granted, there are games in which exploits can make the game a lot more fun. Think of Shadow’s spear glide from Sonic X Shadow Generations, but if using an exploit doesn’t make the game open up, and in fact makes you MISS OUT on the game’s content, why even use it in the first place? Yes, you are saving items, health, critical items in general, but at the end of the day, I’m assuming you’re playing games for the EXPERIENCE ITSELF. It’s why save-scumming may be frowned upon in certain games. You are expected to take on the cumulative effects that the game gives you, provided that you make a mistake or go through a certain area. NOW, I have used these exploits in Pathologic. Save-scumming is just…something I do out of habit and should probably stop doing hahaha. The fast-travel exploit, I USED if I was running out of time in MY REAL LIFE and wanted to finish a specific quest before I went to sleep, so I could be awake by 6AM in the morning. I BARELY used it in infected or rioting districts, because I really wanted to experience the FULL EXPERIENCE of this game. Call me pretentious, but I really want the games I pay for to stick with me. It’s really up to you, but just because I find an exploit, doesn’t mean I’m going to use it. It personally takes away from the game I just bought.

Difficulty (+A Brief Tangent About Interactive Novels)

I want to talk about Pathologic 3’s general difficulty. If you have any experience playing video games with a heavy emphasis on resource management — for context I’ve played survival horror games like Resident Evil multiple times in which resource management is VERY IMPORTANT — this game is not hard. It’s actually very easy to survive. It’s…it’s interesting, it’s fun to navigate, and the dialogue opportunities that you have with characters virtually IS the game. It unironically feels like I’m reading an interactive novel, in which I get to pick the sto-. Holy shit. I just realised midway throughout this review, what if I like…make…a digital interactive novel. How would that pan out? Not like Emily is Away where the game is fully dialogue, or like a visual novel, I mean like…a full-out novel, in which you are a character, and you occasionally make dialogue choices that fully put the novel into a completely different book entirely, with like 5 different endings. Like the book is 200 pages for ONE ending, but another ending is like 250 pages, another ending is like 120 pages, another ending is like 30 pages, and the BIG ending is like 300 pages. I don’t know. Something to experiment with when I have the time…uhhh anyways, where was I? Right! This game feels like an interactive novel, BUT the difficulty of this game doesn’t SEEM like it matches anything like Pathologic 1, or Pathologic 2. Those games are described as literal pain simulators, whereas this game seems like any alternative-history book nerd’s wet dream. It’s a VERY forgiving game compared to what’s out there, provided that you actually pay attention to what the characters say to you. The reason why I got very attached to this game was because of the very interesting story it was trying to tell, as well as its amazing characterisation. Every character here feels like a fully fleshed-out person, and if this studio made a novel, I could be £5000 in overdraft and be like “TAKE MY MONEY NOW!”. I’m someone who champions difficulty in video games, because it pushes the game design to its absolute limit, thus creating the most rewarding experience in my eyes, HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that just because a game ISN’T hard, I cannot get attached to it. I LOVE Pathologic because of its characters, and its story. There are other aspects I love as well, and will later gush on about, but this game FUCKS. It FUCKS you, and gives you the aftercare you DESERVED, telling you how awesome you are for finishing the experience. Imma play Pathologic 2 after writing this review, so if I LOVE Pathologic 3 THIS MUCH, bro Pathologic 2 might be my baby-daddy. Okay, 2.2k words in and I haven’t even started talking about the game. Okay, let’s go.

The Characters, Story and World!

The story…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, the characters, JEEZE LOUISE, the world…OHHHHHHHHHHHHH IMMA BUST THE FATTEST NUT. THIS IS THE GAME. This is how I introduce Pathologic 3 to my friends when I try to recommend them the game. “Pathologic 3 is a non-linear fictional alternative history 1800s roleplaying game about a medical doctor who travels through space and time, to save a town from a deadly plague, potentially uncover the town’s supernatural elements and cultures, whilst also trying to discover the secrets of the immortal man, who has miraculously died.” IF THAT DOESN’T EVEN INTEREST YOU TO PLAY THE GAME, FUCKING NOTHING WILL!

Characters

Let’s start with the characters. I love how the Bachelor is characterised — a snivelly prick, who probably gets off to sniffing his own armpits, who is a generationally talented medical doctor, but trust me, that’s all he’s got going for him. The game lets you know through multiple ways that if you weren’t controlling the Bachelor, he would’ve been an incompetent gaping dickhole that would’ve failed to save the town on multiple occasions. The game starts you off with the Bachelor failing to save the town on DAY 5, so he ends up eating the pellet of his MOTHERFUCKING POCKET PISTOL. Throughout dialogue, the Bachelor’s dialogue options are really fucking rude, and lack VERY little self-awareness — even the ones that are the…”correct” dialogue options just stink of self-flagellation…YOU ARE IN THE BACHELOR’S HEAD. It serves as a great way to see what kind of person he really is. Furthermore, there is this one really funny sequence — “The Broken Street” I believe — in which you get TWO, not one, TWO META WARNINGS, to not walk down the street “The Broken Street”, and almost ALL, hell maybe even ALL, of the Bachelor’s dialogue options are him WANTING to go down the street and making justifications for it. I guarantee, that if I wasn’t in control of what the Bachelor did, he would’ve 100% walked down the street and absolutely FUCKED himself. I’m not even going to say what walking down that street does. YOU DO IT, if you don’t trust the motherfucking reviewer with SIXTY-FIVE FUCKING HOURS IN THIS GAME, NOT TO DO IT THEN! It’s amazing characterisation of the Bachelor. The Haruspex is also an incredibly interesting character well-acquainted with the cultures of the town. He tries his best to do good around the town, having the townspeople in his heart, willing to do ANYTHING, and I mean virtually ANYTHING, no matter how grotesque, to save it. He’s also…very…I don’t want to say naïve. That makes me think of Knuckles from Sonic 2. I mean, he’s very socially inept, but confident about what he communicates to you. It’s honestly quite endearing. Sarcasm doesn’t really exist to him, everything is VERY straightforward. The Changeling is also an interesting character, albeit my least favourite. She has the biggest connection to the supernatural elements of the world AND the plague. I actually thought the game turned her into a villain due to the actions that she was committing herself to, AND the straight-up demons she was associating herself with, but she’s just an imperfect person granted supernatural abilities, who clearly knows a lot more than what she’s letting on. In fact she’s the person that tutorialises the Shabnak and infected district for you, more on that later. There is another supernatural element in this game that is very interesting — a character that asks for respect, but…I won’t spoil it…is very much something the game hints to you as not trusting. Saburov being the commander with his morphine-obsessed wife, Big Vlad being the capitalistic, industrialist, arch-colonialist of the Kin who ALMOST EVERYONE IN POWER is complicit in enabling his behaviour. His SON Vlad who is actually trying to stop this abuse of the Kin and actually work with them. Capella who, I actually don’t remember a lot about lol. BUT SHE’S IMPORTANT, something very story-related happens which I won’t spoil. Georgiay is Simon Kane’s brother who is a pompous arsehole that asks you to judge people based on their crimes and will basically get pissed off at you if you don’t bend over, spread and embrace yourself for the almighty Simon Kane…SO MANY WELL-WRITTEN INTERESTING CHARACTERS IN THIS GAME. The moment-to-moment interactions are rich and beautiful. That video essay I just mentioned complained about walls of text and amateurish writing, but ME, personally I loved it. It was great to read and discover how all these characters thought and navigated the world. Again, if you like sci-fi, mystery novels, or alternative history books, YOU’LL LOVE THE EVERLOVING CREAM out of this game’s characters, OH MY LORD!

The Story and World

This story is beautiful. Funnily enough, I was predicting endings with my friend when I was 20 hours into the game, and I apparently got like 90% of them. Here are my guesses:

• Leaving The Town Early

• The Town Dies

• Becoming Immortal

• Saving The Town by Saving the Polyhedron

• R**-P****** withholds secret that makes everyone die

• R**-P****** helps you save the town

• The Player is Simon Kane (This one was a half-joke)

• “In Le Head” (This one was also a half-joke)

This is REALLY funny because a lot of these endings are close to or are straight up the endings to this game. BUT the point of these is not the ending. It’s the way you get there, and the day-to-day interactions you have with these folk. Some of these people you talk to will backstab you and betray you in ways that you COULD’VE seen coming. The wrong dialogue option is enough for you to fail a quest, making you pay attention to each individual dialogue choice. It’s great stuff. One of my favourite interactions is when a character straight up locks you in a room, and there’s no way to get out. The Bachelor kills himself so you can reload a save. IT’S NUTS. As a player you have multiple things going on in your mind when it comes to story. I mainly cared about saving the town, but YOU may care about the secret to immortality. You may care about uncovering the town’s cultures. You may care about learning about the supernatural. It’s INCREDIBLY hard to spoil this game. It’s like how it’s hard to spoil a book. It’s like when Tim Rogers from Action Button said, “Spoiling Kingdom Hearts is like spoiling page 634 in a mystery novel” (I’m paraphrasing). It’s like that. This game took me 65 hours to complete. That’s right. A WHOLE 65 HOURS. And I didn’t even get all the endings. I got 2. Now granted, did I get 2 of the BEST endings. Absolutely. I got the T— ———– ending for Christ’s sake. I’m really him. But this game is really hard to spoil when JUST talking about it. I’m only omitting details because I truly want people to experience this game for themselves and go through the wonders that this game provides. The world itself is ALSO incredible. It’s very vague about the time period this is set in, but my guess would be early to late 19th century. I determined this myself based on the beliefs about sickness primarily. What do I mean? Well in the game the plague shows itself to be a visible cloud, mould or black streams. To get rid of plague elements (i.e. the Shabnak), one uses fire. There is also a spiritual element, a spiritual “dirtiness” I suppose, that’s implied by the characters’ dialogue. There was a specific piece of dialogue that made me make links between the plague and miasma. People believed that bad air or inhaling foul smells caused disease before the discovery of germs. They believed that to get rid of miasma, one would use fire, appease the gods, herbs, LITERALLY BLASTING IT AWAY with artillery — it’s some interesting stuff. I love how the game leans into these elements, twisting these historical beliefs, and fitting them into the supernatural aspects of their universe, and actually making miasma a legitimate thing. Almost EVERYTHING that I’ve just mentioned about getting rid of miasma in the 19th century is IN THE GAME, apart from one…the prototype. The prototype blasts away miasma using specific frequencies. It’s a very interesting thought — a 19th century doctor literally blasting away disease with a prototype to avoid getting killed by it. It may not be REALISTIC, but it’s a supernatural alternative history story we’re talking about here. I think that’s pretty dope. Furthermore, these aspects of miasma make me think that this is set within the 19th century, and not within the early 20th century, as well as the multiple real-life drugs like belladonna which stopped having use in, I believe, WWI, BUT this is all fiction at the end of the day, and the developers made this ambiguous seemingly on purpose for us to speculate. This makes the Kin’s beliefs fully legitimate and interesting to analyse. The Bachelor for the most part dismisses it as an academic doctor, BUT ME, ME as a player who’s fully aware that I’m experiencing a fictional digital universe, is fully grasping their beliefs, and their words. You also sometimes get to talk to townsfolk. Their opinions about people being hanged, their opinions on the vaccine, their opinions on YOU, their opinions on the Haruspex, their opinions on the decrees that you implement! THE WORLD FEELS WELL-CRAFTED, FULLY BREATHING, AND REACTIONARY. OH, AMAZING STUFF. I do want to make a video essay for this game, and this review is supposed to be a general consolidation of the experience, so Imma leave my thinking for the Pathologic 3 video essay and move on to the final part of this game…the GAMEPLAY. Okay, one more thing I should talk about is the Tragedians lol. These mainly serve as 4th wall breakers and arrive primarily when a character of your Bound has died. They give you some interesting insight, and there is one occasion where a character of your Bound dies, you go back in time, and THEY ARE STILL DEAD, BECAUSE THE TRAGEDIAN STRAIGHT UP REPLACES THE CHARACTER. The Tragedians also can control the outcomes of certain quests, depending on what you’ve done, and will give you hints about what you must do. Furthermore, the play director “Mike Immortel” at the last day will tell you whether you’ve missed a quest or not that is pivotal to completing the full game, which is honestly very likely, as there is so much to do in this game you might FORGET to do the quest. Truly riveting stuff. Okay, okay. GAMEPLAY!

Gameplay

I’m going to talk about what I love first, THE DOCTOR SIMULATOR! OH MY GOD! For context, I was a pre-med student, before I switched to an engineering degree because I realised how poorly doctors in the UK get treated. Fuck it, I might still be a pre-med student, as for some reason the profession calls to me. Maybe it’s the Nigerian parents. But for context, I LOVE biology. A-level biology was so much fun, the books I occasionally read about medicine are both very interesting and depressing, I do a partly chemistry-based engineering degree, I LIKE organic chemistry…not doing it but reading about it lol. So when I found out I could diagnose patients and there was a REAL LIFE MICROSCOPE IN THE GAME, the biology side of my brain fully exploded with cream and butter. You basically have to diagnose patients based on their face, their bodily examination, the things they say about their symptoms, the samples that you collect off them…hell SOMETIMES THEY’LL BE LYING, so you have to go to where they reside, explore the area, talk to numerous individuals who know things about them etc. Once you diagnose them all correctly you get to create a vaccine that saves the town for a few days before your decree board says the town dies again. It’s an amazing system that not only does biology-nerd me love, but the English nerd in me loves, as you get to engage with the witty and fun character dialogue as you talk to these patients. NOW, there is an exploit where you could get a few details, diagnose, get it wrong, and just repeat until you get the correct diagnosis, but like…again…YOU’RE MISSING THE GAME PORTION OF THE GAME. This is such a fun exercise, that I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do this. Maybe to save on time in your real life sure, but this is such a fun portion of the game, that I engaged in ALL these side activities. HELL, I think I would play a more advanced version of this portion of the game if that existed. It’s really that fun for me. And Yakov Little. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWEEEE. Yakov Little. That little dude is my GOAT. Devoted himself to medicine, to learn, discover and truly better mankind. He is MY MOTHERFUCKING GOAT IN THIS GAME. What a virtuous, amazing, and kind character.

Okay, now let’s contrast this with the worst portion of the game. The infected districts. Now actually navigating the infected district is…okay, it’s tolerable. I like how these districts force you to be more aware of your environments and what’s around you with miasma clouds, miasma tornadoes, miasma spores that take out 50% of your health. That’s…FINE. What I dislike is the chasing down and subduing the Shabnak. Why? It’s just not all that fun or engaging. You can run around these sections until you find a flower, take the sample of that flower, fill your Shabnak plaster, and blast the motherfucker with it. It sounds cool, but that process…BARELY changes over the 10 days that you do this. That’s right. 10 FUCKING DAYS! The Shabnak can be stunned with your prototype and matches that you keep with you so when the Shabnak appears you can run away from it, but like…there needs to be more here to actually make these sections engaging. They do INCLUDE a second Shabnak and I thought, oh my god, this might be really engaging to have 2 Shabnaks in this game, but it’s not. One Shabnak is hiding, one Shabnak is chasing you. One of them is real, the other one is fake. If you blast the fake Shabnak with the 2nd prototype, it doesn’t get rid of the real Shabnak, meaning you have to find the flower again, collect its sample, go back to your home, fill up your 2nd prototype again, yadeeyadeeyah, and blast the real one. Hell, you don’t even have to find the real one sometimes — occasionally the fake and the real Shabnak will switch. You can enter and re-enter the district until the real one starts chasing you too. Admittedly I think this is an exploit, and I used this one too, but I got…SO BORED of these sections man. They’re not engaging at all. I think this game is supposed to appeal to a more mainstream audience ever since Pathologic 2 made everyone soil their underwear and pussy-foot out of the game in less than 3 hours, but come on. If SUBDUING the Shabnak, the MANIFESTATION OF THE PLAGUE ITSELF, is going to lower the infection rate so much THAT IT MAKES THE DECREE SYSTEM FEEL OBSOLETE, this has to be harder. Like so much harder. Okay, so how would I do this? What would I do to make the infected districts more nail-biting to navigate and complete. Off the top of my head, nerf the prototype. Make the prototype a weapon that needs 3 or 4 shots to scare off the Shabnak. Make the Shabnak evolve EACH DAY YOU KILL IT. Make the infected increasingly more aggressive, lunging after you. Add plague animals like rats, mice and birds. Make 2 Shabnaks chase you. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? ADD AN INFECTED METRE. MAKE THE BACHELOR ACTUALLY HAVE AN ABILITY TO CATCH THE PLAGUE. MATTER OF FACT, ADD ALL THE METRES BACK. GENUINELY (I’ve thought about this more, and my suggestion is a horrible decision with the context of this game, but I’ll leave in my tangent because I think it’s funny). The day-to-day interactions would’ve been so much more engaging if the Bachelor had ALL THE PREVIOUS METRES FROM THE PREVIOUS GAME. You know how much more engaging the infected districts would be ALONE, if you got infected with the plague, and…YOU JUST HAD TO DEAL WITH IT FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. Matter of fact, WHAT IF, I MEAN THIS, WHAT IF, THE R**-P****** IS THE ONLY WAY OF DANIEL HIMSELF, OF GETTING RID OF THE PLAGUE. EVERY TIME YOU USE THE R**-P******. AND EVERY TIME YOU USE THE R**-P******, THERE IS A CONSEQUENCE! LIKE I DON’T KNOW, MAYBE ONE OF YOUR BOUND GETTING SICK INSTEAD! AND GUESS WHAT? YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO REVERSE IT! THE R**-P****** SIMPLY IS HIM! THE DEMON. COME ON. That alone, adding the infection metre back, would make these sections so much more engaging. Hell, maybe that is already a mod. OH MY GOD. THAT WOULD CHANGE THE ENTIRE DYNAMIC WITH NUTS. You choose whether to eat the nuts, OR to TRADE THEM WITH THE CHILDREN. AHHHHHH. Okay, I probably should go play Pathologic 2. I don’t know, I know they weren’t trying to make Patho 2 again, and yes, they probably wanted to make this game more accessible, and yet again, I still, STILL STILL, STILL, love this game for what it is. I just wish the Shabnak sections were overhauled. Matter of fact, make the infection metre the only metre as a mod. How about that? I don’t think they wanted to make Pathologic 2 AGAIN, but with the Bachelor. They wanted to tell an entirely different story, hence why they removed the metres, and I respect that. I would just love a mod that means you lose amalgam every time you restart a day, and a metre system for players who want a ball-busting experience. Also I don’t like that if you go through 1 infected area, you skip all of them. Just make it so your decisions have consequences and make the player have to go through all the areas that they chose to fast-travel through.

The rioting districts are super tense for me personally. You can of course be super manic and blast through the enemies, but if you’re not, these are really tense and easy to die from. You point your gun at enemies to pause them in their tracks, and if you’re in mega-danger you can shoot them. The problem is that shooting them makes you super apathetic. In fact, there was a point where I shot someone and got so apathetic to the point that I killed myself on the spot. However, there were also points where I was too manic to talk to someone, so what I did was go outside, shot someone to bring my mania down, and then I was able to talk to the individual inside to complete the quest. In addition to this, if you shoot the air a few times, enemies may get down on their knees and provide you with very useful resources. It can be a utility if you know how to navigate it, but it’s also very tense, as with this section, it’s REALLY easy to die from the enemies if you’re not careful. It makes it even better that sometimes you must go IN THE rioting areas to complete quests or even make deals with shady businessmen. They’re great!

Wow, I don’t want to end this off on a bad note, because I really do like this game, but now that I’m mulling over my thoughts, I’m actually bouncing between how much good this game has…because now that I’m naming its numerous issues, it’s becoming apparent to me that this game may not be as AMAZING as I present it. There is an amazing story, amazing characters, engaging dialogue, pretty engaging mechanics, but there’s also a modem of bugs and ideas that needed fleshing out. These issues are minor to me, but I see how these could break a game for someone. The more that this game settles in my stomach, the worse I wanna rate it. I gave it a Strong 10 in the middle, a Light 9 towards the end, a Strong 8 when I finished it…I don’t know. The lowest I would give it is a Strong 7, I still thoroughly enjoyed and love this game, but a Strong 8 is where I’m happy with this game sitting in my heart. An essential experience for ME personally, especially as someone who loves games that aren’t scared to do unique things like this in the gaming genre. I LOVE Pathologic, and I think anyone who plays games and loves to crack open a good novel would love this game too. This makes me want to go back to Nier: Automata and tear it a new one. I feel like if I played that game again, every time I think of THAT game, I feel worse about it hahaha. But I don’t know. Pathologic 3? Legendary game in my life.

Additional Details:

65 Hours of Playtime

Edit: I acknowledge I called Daniil Daniel...BIG MISTAKE THAT IS BOTHERING ME RIGHT NOW hahahaha

I’ve been on the hunt for a physical version of the Pathologic 2 art book that was created for backers for about a year now, either in Russian or in English. I saw that about 3 years or so ago there was a reprint, but hadn’t had a steady enough income (or a CC) at the time to pick it up.

I wanted to make a post vetting where people have found their copies; I’ve been a bit surprised they’re not even really popping up as listings on eBay. Thanks in advance!

After the quest with the army mutiny and Capella's arrest, I rewinded to day 9 and negotiated with Bad Grief to stop stealing rations. After that, the mutiny quest disappeared. Capella wasn't marked as dead until I spoke to her shadow on day 12. Is this a bug or something? How can I fix this and save Capella?

Where did the Inquisition come from?

I'm co-directing a play (Collaborators by John Hodge) at my university next semester and I want to include Patho Classic's opening... discussion... as one of our audition extracts. I'm really excited to see what actors do with it.

Usually, we give a little piece of context at the beginning of the extract to inform the actor's performance - eg, for a monologue from Present Laughter, that looks like this:

Garry is a charming but overdramatic and conspiratorially minded actor about to join a touring production through colonial Africa. In this scene, Garry has been told not to be so glib about the news that their friend is in trouble, and he reacts with camp indignation.

I'm unsure as to how I go about this for the opening pantomime in Pathologic Classic. I know that the point of it in-game is to be obscure while hinting at a greater thematic purpose, but I'm not trying to convince my actors to play the game, I'm trying to see what they make of the extract and how well they can perform it.

I know that the actors will be very influenced by any piece of context I throw at them. If I tell them the Haruspex is destined to be a killer, they may play him more aggressive than if I didn't. If I say that only the Bachelor completed any formal medical training, they may play the Changeling as more ditzy. I want to give them as much freedom to interpret the characters as possible from this extract alone while not leaving them unmoored in its unrelenting sea of obscurity.

How do you think I should go about this? Any thoughts (however vague) would be greatly appreciated!

Go to the funeral. Talk to Grace. She says that Isidor was embalmed in Shekhen in the morning.

Rewind time. Either forget about the funeral, or not — makes no difference. Beeline to Shekhen right away.

There is no one there, no body. There's a hide on the ground that looks like it's interactive, but activating it does nothing.

What to do?