Many have long gotten used to the idea that good games are not made in Russia (apparently, by analogy with cinema and other media products). If we take this fact for granted, then without exaggeration I postulate: the creators Pathologic 2 – the last hope of the Russian gaming industry.

Before getting acquainted with this, I’m not afraid of this word, work, about its developers, namely about Ice-Pick Lodge, and their games, I personally didn’t really know anything. Like, perhaps, many who are used to following mainly “high-profile” projects and new products.

The game itself is, in fact, a remake of their 2005 original called "Pestilence". Utopia", in English Pathologic.

In general, when, after Layers of Fear 2, when choosing a game for review, I read in the description the phrase “the author’s story-driven art thriller,” I, of course, just shuddered, because I had enough of the muddy crap in “Layers of Fear”. However, having found out that the developer was domestic, I could not contain my curiosity. And, as it turned out, not in vain.

Start of the game
Right from the start, even on the loading screen, we are warned, they say: “You may not immediately understand what is happening. But soon the picture will begin to take shape.”. And this, damn it, is thoughtful and pleasant on the part of the developers, especially after the ill-fated Layers of Fear 2. And yes, it’s no coincidence that I remember it again, because we find ourselves in some theater and they also tell us: “play your role.”.

True, here at least they give the director a look into his cunning little mouth.
The theater turns out to be not so simple: there are beds with sick people everywhere, and corpses are piled up behind the stage. After talking with a couple of suspicious characters, we leave the theater (shooting range) of the hospital and stomp through the streets of the city, which is clearly going through hard times: there is chaos on the streets, soldiers are burning people with flamethrowers and clouds of black dust are everywhere.

We reach, apparently, the people in power: the “inquisitor” and the “commander”, who report that everything has been spent, you have let everyone down, you did not deliver the cure for the plague reigning in the city on time and now the city will be bombed.

The smart-ass director appears again and offers to start all over again. Like, start the story from the beginning (although we didn’t seem to have time to START THE STORY).

IN present same beginning we are given a brief explanation of who we are, as well as where we are going and why we are going.

! And then watch what happens!
We find ourselves in a freight car of a train, a coffin falls out of the boxes, from which a man gets out and starts chatting with us. The train derails, we get off, there is a huge bull standing on the tracks, fires are burning around, nearby talking stuffed animals with bird beaks, we go into a cloud of ash. We are again on the train with the guy, he offers to play dice for fate. We find ourselves in a house with plague patients, we get water for the woman. We wake up on the train again, chatting. We move to a clearing with some steppe boys and strange weirdos, fight with an aggressive Mongol, and then exchange HEARTS with him. The train has arrived, the man says goodbye, we get off, we find ourselves in our father’s house, we open one of the doors and get off the train again. Bandits attack and they fly off quite easily from the hands of the protagonist. The game begins.

Do you know what really happened?? They managed to teach us almost all the mechanics of the game: dialogues, collecting and using items, key character characteristics, fights, trading, and also gave us introductory information about the plot and began to intensively immerse us in a gloomy and mysterious atmosphere.

And from this very moment the game will almost completely stop dictating what to do and where to go and leaves complete freedom of action and movement.

Setting
The town in which the story takes place is not small and is divided into districts, in each of which you will have a reputation scale that changes depending on certain actions.

At a level from “You are not welcome here” and below, residents and shops in the area will refuse to communicate or trade with you, and at a level “They hate you here,” passers-by men, day and night, will simply immediately attack and hit you in the face, even to the point of death.

It will be extremely easy to lose https://playstarcasino.co.uk/login/ your reputation, especially at the very beginning of the game, when, not knowing the city, you can arouse suspicion by simple conversations with the population and suddenly discover that attitudes have dropped to minimum values ​​everywhere. Only at the cemetery there will be no problems: after all, “you are always welcome here”.

There will be many people living in the ill-fated city: hard-working townspeople, tribal inhabitants of the steppes, strange Odongi creatures, half-naked women, street children who have formed their own independent communities, three main families holding power in the city, as well as many plot characters with their own history and relationships.

It is on the conflict between different groups and individuals that an important part of the plot revolves, and since there is absolutely no division into white and black and everyone has well-founded motives, it will often be difficult to choose who to support.

Gameplay
The freedom of action in Pathologic 2 is serious, I would say, adult. Throughout the entire game you will practically not be forced to do anything at all. In the preface they make it clear that you have to live in the city for 12 days, but, roughly speaking, you can simply lock yourself in some house for this entire time or run away into the fields (which, by the way, I have never found boundaries). Time will move forward, without being tied to any triggers or story cut-scenes, and events in the city will develop regardless of your participation. Another thing is that it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to sit for so long without getting involved in anything and at the same time survive.

Speaking of survival. I haven’t mentioned yet that Pathologic 2 is a survival game? And yes, the survival game, in turn, is not at all funny, I would even say that it is one of the most difficult, if not the most, I have ever played. If you, for example, look at the game’s page on steam, you will find that almost every negative (and many of the positive) reviews will refer specifically to inadequate difficulty.

Now, under public pressure, the game seems to have added the ability to reduce the severity, but in the original difficulty it is definitely not for casuals. Welcome to all lovers of unlit souls and all sorts of axes.

No, I’m really serious right now. Sooner or later, resources become so depleted that it’s hard to believe that you’ll be able to get out of it. Judging by messages from the community, many quit the game because of this, even though they liked it: they simply could not complete it.

This should be emphasized: the game will not let you relax at all, literally at all. No matter how hard you try, Pestilence forces you to give up the habits of calm play and the ability to provide your character with everything you need. Absolutely takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you really feel the hero’s plight, when you have to sleep anywhere, don’t have time to do anything, and also don’t know whether there will be food at least for the second half of the day.

Just an incredible, monstrous and insatiable hunger will drive you forward, and time will fly faster every day, even while fucking rearranging objects you will go forward, depriving you of any opportunity to catch up with all the things that will constantly arise.
Pestilence will also not allow you to save: only in certain places in the city will there be clocks, only through which this will be possible.

Variability
But the desire to save will surely appear: it is completely unrealistic to be in time everywhere and everywhere. And the hero, ready at any moment to die either from hunger, or from fatigue, or from wounds, or from infection, in conditions of severe incompleteness of information, must constantly make a choice on which the fate of both the characters and the city itself as a whole depends.

And yes, the choice will mean, again, real “adult” variability. Not the feigned illusion of choice so beloved by modern developers, in the style of, for example, games from the late Telltale Games.

No, depending on your actions (or inaction), almost any character can die or survive, and the number of options for passing will tend to infinity: for Pestilence is like life – they are thrown to the mercy of fate, and then SUFFER and somehow turn around on your own, no one will lead you by the hand.

As I already mentioned, the city will live (or die) without you. There will always be more paths and things to do than your capabilities, so Pathologic 2 is not at all embarrassed, right from the start it hints at its replay value. I won’t say for sure about the number of endings, but I can definitely say that she’s not alone here.

Plot
Very briefly about the plot: it is excellent. The world, setting and especially the atmosphere are incomparable. In the ornate dialogues with the characters and their intricate phrases, one feels as if the writer’s handwriting and everything together personally inspired me with the spirit of Dostoevsky’s works with an admixture of mystical fantasy.

There is an insane amount of symbolism and mysterious details that seem to slightly hint at the secrets of the city: be it areas with names like “kidney”, “womb”, “core”, “khrebetovka”, etc.d., strange division of characters in the magazine into categories of “blood”, “bones”, “nerves” or “voice of plague”, which can actually be heard.

The detective investigation of all the stories turns out to be fascinating and addictive with its mystery and atmosphere, and what happens throughout most of the game can be described approximately as “it’s not clear at all, but very interesting”.

And most importantly: you can actually find the answer to most questions! If you try, of course.

In short, I highly recommend it to all lovers of deeply thought-out worlds and cool stories.

Some cons
Of course the game isn’t perfect. Firstly, this is still a long-term turkey from Russian developers, the funds for the production of which were raised by the whole world. Hence a number of disadvantages inherent in budget projects: pieces of the interface will pop out, disrupting the atmosphere, or passing through a door will cause flickering textures.

And here the characters in the bar lined up like idols, waiting for the main character to come up to talk to them:

There was either no training for stealth mode, or it flashed by unnoticed, so I somehow managed to go through the entire game without it at all, and only found out about its existence thanks to a screenshot on the loading screen near the end of the game.

Also, judging by the reviews, optimization suffers and many are experiencing serious problems with performance in the game, the graphics of which, frankly, are a little outdated for 2019. Well, I already mentioned the frantic hunger and complexity above – personally, hardcore brought me into some kind of masochistic delight and made me really feel the whole burden that falls on the shoulders of an unfortunate provincial doctor in an isolated plague town.

Conclusion
So what do we have in the end??

Pathologic 2 is much deeper than it seems at first glance and is an extremely versatile work, the likes of which are incredibly rare these days.

This and:
-The first full-fledged city survival simulator I’ve ever seen.
-A simulator of a doctor looking for a cure for the plague, as well as cutting out kidneys and selling human blood in order to buy pies for himself.
-A simulator of the nineties, when at any moment you can be stabbed by a gopnik with a knife and shit happens non-stop on the streets.
-A simulator of a homeless man eating in three throats and collecting empty bottles from trash cans.
-A nanny simulator with a bunch of homeless, suicidal, schizophrenic children with a complete lack of self-preservation instinct.

And there are also boobs.

And, in the end, in what other game can you exchange fucking MORPHINE from children for nuts???

One of the few cases where Steam tags: “atmosphere”, “deep plot” and “survival” actually 100% describe the game itself.

Pathologic 2 has something many modern games don’t – you’ll need to actually play it! Don’t sluggishly press a few buttons and watch the development of the kintz on the screen, but play thoughtfully and figure everything out on your own.

I wish the Ice-Pick Lodge studio to take over the cash register with this product and use the proceeds to continue producing similar products for us.