Pathologic 2: Open World First Person Doctoring - Guaranteed to confuse the shit out of you, or your money back.

Ineedahero

Ineedahero

kiwifarms.net
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Aug 8, 2016
Pathologic 2 is out! I know everyone is as excited as I am because there has been barely a mention of these games on the forum since 2015. And yet, I have a feeling these games would be right up a lot of people around here's alleys. Puzzles, weird lore, fascinating train wrecks - what's not to love? Each of them take place in a town, and you are tasked with stopping a plague from wiping out the town, then given several days and told to get at it by exploring the town, building relationships with ephemeral otherworldly beings and dirty Slavic peasants, tending to the sick and investigating the plague and fighting off vagrants really badly.

There was a pretty good piece about the original Pathologic on Rock Paper Shotgun, and Eurogamer wrote a review of it that was very popular too, (Back when games journalism wasn't a complete and utter joke) and then recently the developers Ice Pick Lodge re-released it as Pathologic HD, which was slightly less broken, and now they have released Pathologic 2! It is a broken mess like the first one, but I am enjoying it so far. The graphics aren't disgusting and it is a lot of fun wandering around saying 'what the fuck is that?' all the time. I am giving serious consideration to using cheat engine to disable the survival mechanics though, I fucking hate good survival mechanics and these are not good survival mechanics.

If you want to check it out without slapping down cash you don't have to pirate it because it has a demo! Remember those? It allows you to play the first day, which is more than enough to tell you if you will like the game.

Anyway if you've played it, what do you think? Have any tips? Why can I see those weird black and white people near the important characters? Also here's the trailer:
m.youtube.com

Pathologic 2 - Launch Trailer | OᑌT ᑎOᗯ! 🔥

Pathologic 2 is out now! Get it on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/505230/Pathologic_2/ Pathologic 2 is a Narrative Driven Survival Thriller set i...
m.youtube.com m.youtube.com
 
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I played the Original/HD Remake and I will say i am hoping it is much better paced then the first. I say the biggest downside of the first is that it concept was stretched out way to much i think if it was at max a 10-15 hour game it would have been really good but that game over stayed it welcome and then some.

I did by this one in hope that has improved a bit. I did like the first. I like bizarre shit
 
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Promestein said:
-Atmospheric
-Survival

That usually means the gameplay is either shit, or nearly non-existant, so thats gonna be a hard pass from me.
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Yep, I get that impulse, but the pathologic games are not walking simulators, they are open world rpgs. The gameplay is broken as fuck though, but it's that charming 'there's a logic here I'm just not crazy enough to piece it together' kind of broken, like deadly premonitions. Or at least the first game was - the second game is shaping up to be a slightly more polished attempt.
 
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Wait, that was today? I was always very fascinated with the first Pathologic so that's pretty tits. I should give it a go I suppose.
 
vertexwindi said:
Wait, that was today? I was always very fascinated with the first Pathologic so that's pretty tits. I should give it a go I suppose.
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Ditto, I've been super excited for it and didn't even realize it had come out. I'm really bad at keeping track of time. Shouldn't steam be advertising this game like wild? I know it's not a massive game but I'm sure they'll be getting lots of sales from the die-hard fans of the first game.
 
i played first pathologic and the void when i was a kiddo and i'm so happy to see the progress company has made and how more experienced devs become.
I like how they made much more focus on theatrical part of the game this time.
 
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It's good to see IPL advance so much over the years, but I'm still a bit sad they got fucked by the Russian economy. They collected the Kickstarter money with the expectation of having a major benefactor additionally funding the development, but this fell through, and the collapse of the rouble in 2014-2015 made the Kickstarter funds much more scarce. They've managed to continue development for all those years, but if it wasn't for TinyBuild (which stepped in as a publisher relatively recently), I think they'd just quietly close their doors due to the lack of funding. This is also the reason they're releasing it in 3 parts, one for each character. I guess the Haruspex route was the most polished one, which is why they've released it first.

Still, as I've said, it's good to see them improve so much. I've only played it for like 2 or 3 hours now, but the game is breathtaking. The town and the Steppe look more beautiful than ever, the narrative is much more refined and presentable, and the writing is very gripping just as before (at least in Russian, can't speak for the quality of the translation to other languages). I'm glad they were able to pull through and hope they'll manage to release the remaining storylines.
 
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juwo said:
They collected the Kickstarter money with the expectation of having a major benefactor additionally funding the development, but this fell through, and the collapse of the rouble in 2014-2015 made the Kickstarter funds much more scarce.
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Shouldn't it have been the other way around? The money they'd collected in September 2014, if kept in dollars (because duh), should have bought them more programmer-hours after the collapse.
 
Safir said:
The money they'd collected in September 2014, if kept in dollars (because duh), should have bought them more programmer-hours after the collapse
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Well yeah, they had more money (ruble to dollar conversion became twice of what it was), but everything around them also spiked in price alongside this - the rent, the services, the food. So yeah, not a good situation. Still, I guess it was enough to keep them afloat until they secured their funding with TinyBuild, so it couldn't have been too bad.
 
juwo said:
It's good to see IPL advance so much over the years, but I'm still a bit sad they got fucked by the Russian economy. They collected the Kickstarter money with the expectation of having a major benefactor additionally funding the development, but this fell through, and the collapse of the rouble in 2014-2015 made the Kickstarter funds much more scarce. They've managed to continue development for all those years, but if it wasn't for TinyBuild (which stepped in as a publisher relatively recently), I think they'd just quietly close their doors due to the lack of funding. This is also the reason they're releasing it in 3 parts, one for each character. I guess the Haruspex route was the most polished one, which is why they've released it first.

Still, as I've said, it's good to see them improve so much. I've only played it for like 2 or 3 hours now, but the game is breathtaking. The town and the Steppe look more beautiful than ever, the narrative is much more refined and presentable, and the writing is very gripping just as before (at least in Russian, can't speak for the quality of the translation to other languages). I'm glad they were able to pull through and hope they'll manage to release the remaining storylines.
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as someone who's been absolutely obsessed with ice-pick's work for years by now, i can say that they've been dealing with financial issues since their inception, basically, even if they're actually decently well recognized in russia itself. i'm not sure if anything happened while they were working on the original pathologic + tension, but i know that noviy disk ended up stirring some shit over tension (which was why a few years ago the void got delisted from steam for a bit) and that bitcomposer ended up fucking them over on cargo. knock-knock was their first self-published game and it did well enough that they tried doing the same with pathologic 2, except the russian economy kinda prevented that from happening unfortunately. i'm pretty sure they were the ones who reached out to tinybuild actually

i think the ultimatum for them was either releasing the game in parts or not releasing anything at all - if it were up to them they absolutely would've released the game with all three playable characters. either way this game's gotten me through some tough times and the work they've done is absolutely incredible so i didn't really have any issues giving 'em 50 bucks for the supporters bundle. they've said that the other two routes will be free or not depending on how well the game does (they'll be free for backers regardless) but that was shortly before the game came out, so all we can do is fucking buy the game and hope other people do too i guess
 
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Loving this so far, but I think my video card is finally showing its age and that depresses me.

They really have managed to maintain the atmosphere of the original.

It's a strange thing to focus on, I know, but I hope they kept that revolver reloading animation from the original teaser clip. That small animation had so much character in it.
 
THANK YOU! I've been waiting to play this for a while and had no idea it was coming out today.

As for those wanting more insight into Pathologic, I would suggest checking out Mandalore's video:


Granted, this is about the first game, but P2 is essentially a retelling of the first game with improved graphics and the like.
 
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So is the first one worth playing or not? I keep seeing praise but at the same time a lot of criticism. Never been much for horror games but it seems kinda mild, so might be worth trying out.
 
Pathologic can be very frustrating, like other Russian games such as 'The Void' which a lot of people don't know about (You make spells by collecting resources, and have four cenobites chase you around in the afterlife, and you draw your spells on screen in real time and mix colors). It was a beautiful game, but obtuse as fuck and so hard they really had to patch it down, because if you played it out wrong you had no chance of winning or coming back. I did beat it when it was nearly impossible to win because it was just a ton of fun and real pretty. Game journalist's heads would explode if they played it today, because like Pathologic, there's barely any instruction at all on what you're doing.

Pathologic kind of follows the same. The game is glitchy, the game-play is VERY obtuse and sometimes hard to figure out what you're doing and it doesn't hold your hand, like at all. The story itself is extremely abstract and metaphorical, which I've noticed is a common theme from Russian developers. Its also really good and tells the story from multiple points of view from characters. Also once NPCs die, they're dead for good. So your choices matter in how you play the game. Again, the game doesn't hold your hand, and doesn't tell you what to do or where to go, so you're piecing this mystery out for yourself. There are guides now, so you can skip that part. I'd call it more of an open-world survival horror RPG game. You're in a town dying from a plague and it can get frustratingly hard at times.

I heard the HD version fixed a lot of the issues, so start with that.

EDIT:
Honestly, if you're curious, Pathologic Classic HD is $1.30 cents right now on Steam. So there's not much of an investment there.
 
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Krimjob said:
So is the first one worth playing or not? I keep seeing praise but at the same time a lot of criticism. Never been much for horror games but it seems kinda mild, so might be worth trying out.
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pathologic 2 is basically a retelling\reimagining of the first game. So if you want to see stories of all characters right now - go get it. There are no screamers\cheap scares so it's fine for ppl who doesn't like horror.
 
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Oh, guys, i didn't want to necro this thread, but i beg you to give a chance to this game.
Check Mandy's review
Also they added difficulty settings, so if you are game jurnos, you can play this game now.
And i recommend to turn on russian voiceovers and english subs, if you are not russian. Voice acting in english is good, but in russian it is perfect. Devs invited professional theater actors to voice the lines, and it's sooo good.

Game's director had an interview few days ago where he said that game sales were bad and they can't finish two other characters in near future. They want to develop mobile games to make some profit and maybe after that we can play as Dankovsky. Kinda gives hope, since knock-knock was their biggest finantial success. Also they want to make other 2 parts in different game genres.
Many slav fans asking them to open donations, but they don't want to take more money from people. Maybe it's good, but for many of us IPL are symbol of statement that games are art, it will be a shame if they become another match-3 developer.
 
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I bought it, because I liked the first Pathologic years ago. That, and the fact that Mandalore Gaming made the good point that shit like walking simulators will be considered video game's equivalent of art if we don't show it some love.
 
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