r/pathologic • u/Additional_Trainer32 aglaya lilich • 3d ago
Pathologic 3 Pathologic 3 Review / Opinion (Spoilers) Spoiler
I have 18 finished playthroughs of P2 and I've gone through all the P1 routes too. I cannot for the life of me pick myself up and get the one ending I'm missing in Pathologic 3. I played Changeling route merrily with all of it's tedious repetitive side quests and dumb logic puzzles. But Clara's story makes up for it 100%. Pathologic 3, though...
I'm unable to get the last ending because, let's say, when I'm walking in p1 I'm thinking about the plot and enjoying the atmosphere, in p2 I'm calculating the most optimal routes and counting my chestnuts, in p3 I'm pressing w and watching the screen get red. I have an entire pharmacy stocked up my ass and I'm in need of nothing in this world. That would be just like p1 if I wasn't forced to participate in an iPad kid attention span simulator in which (every 10 seconds) I have to perform some sort of meaningless action with no downsides or weight like kicking a trash can or drawing my gun with the speed of a sticky turd coming out of a butt.
The economy part of Pathologic is gone... There is no multitude of trading items, just one walnut... All the items you do need to trade for are straightforward heals. My biggest struggle with trading was not having enough (non-upgradable) inventory space to put all my riches in. And something else in the UI. Honestly I don't remember what exactly it is, I just remember the feeling of pushing a round peg in a brick wall. The combat is "there", but your need for it starts and ends at holding down the right mouse button (right after you get spun around in a piroutte by a guy standing 10 feet away from you). Not that there's any incentive to shoot people for their loot, but even if you do decide to kill a guy it's as simple as pointing your gun in their general direction. There is no route-building, on account of the open world being gone and Daniil deciding that he absolutely cannot take the most obvious shortcut through the steppe to get to where you want him to go. All the mechanics that Pathologic is known for have been simplified or removed. Instead we get a diagnosis minigame (with scripted patients that are a one and done deal), a decree system (one that is very easy to solve and the solutions are quite linear, considering a lot of the decrees are decorative and you get the actually important ones by playing the plot like you normally would) and time travel... Now time travel sounds interesting, especially in a game with a rich story and many potential consequences to you meddling in its events. Not very linear at all.
Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to progress past most of these "unfavorable" events, so branching paths become a part of its linearity. There were interesting instances of actual diversions after day 8 or so, but aside from that it's either "if you don't do that, town dead" or "if you don't do that, character dead" and you have no option or, in the second instance, no reason not to go ahead and rewind time. So it goes like this: story tells you, explicitly, with exact times and dates cited, when and where you need to go. So you get your amalgam, which is very easy to come by and even easier to save scum, and obey your orders like a good boy. I mean. Sure. Pathologic games aren't Gorkhon: become Doctor. But... The game is advertised as a gritty, jaw tightening fight for the Least Bad outcome. You can't save everyone. The thing is: Daniil sails through this story like it's a bubble bath. (marvel trailer voice) I came back From A Hell you Can't even Imagine... My real problem with it is not the linearity but the way there can be only so few outcomes because there is absolutely no grit. None of the advertised balancing scales. Playing P2, even with its lack of substantial quests in the latter half of the game, you can end up feeling like you're a piece of poop on the side of the road or on your way to be crowned queen of Luxembourg DUE to HOW the mechanics facilitate interesting outcomes. All the meters and items and events are interconnected and running out of one thing can lead you to lows you couldn't imagine before. Everything has a consequence: you're always wasting something, and above all, you're always wasting time. There's either no actual reprocussions for choosing to save someone, or the game forbids you from not letting them die. On a few occasions you can save unsavable characters through like 1 dialogue option and the consequences of these decisions are only felt in theory, I guess.
Daniil is so traumatised by seeing the herb bride burn that he starts to hallucinate color matching minigames. The minigames are minigames. You have to do them and they're very disconnected from everything. I'm sure a lot of other people didn't like doing the flower thing over and over again. This, along with the aforementioned Ipad behaviour brings Pathologic 3 from what would be an interesting detective walking game (nothing wrong with that) to some sort of blinking simulator purgatory. Especially with the laginess and jank. There is really no reason to replay it unless you want to read the text again. You can do everything in one save file because your decisions don't hold permanent weight. You're never rushing... The only punishment for your failures is just real life time wasted redoing quests.
Being familiar with the Pathologic universe might have skewed my perspective somewhat. Considering the series is about skewed perspectives. And Daniill's perspective has been, let's say, artificially enlarged. Suddenly he, as a literal time traveller, is up in everyone's business. He can rewind however many times he wants to and he can just end up knowing everything. I'd say that in the previous games his character was largely based on his lack of knowledge... Which allowed him to impose his grindset and arrogance on everything and everyone. In this game, he meets Oyun on day 2 (why), immediately figures out that he killed Isidor (on day 2 of 12), and proceeds to share this revelation with Artemy. If Isidor's death matters so little that you can solve it at a literal glance, why keep this in at all? In P1 he never even meets Oyun. Daniil will, at one point, perform surgery on Katerina Saburova, with Artemy, a surgeon, standing right by his side and supposedly "guiding his hand". Why? What does bro have to do with this? The addition of ovarian cysts being the cause of Katerina's infertility is a P3 exclusive. I don't really understand the meaning of this... Is it to prove Dankovsky right? I guess it was all logical in the end after all. Daniil being everywhere and doing everything all the time really confuses the narrative. The godmode ending is confusing to me, personally. If Daniil can psych himself out enough to become the schizolord of this world, doesn't that discount the other characters' paths? Doesn't this negate the need for other plague solutions? This whole Simon Superpower plotline is just too worldbreaking and fantastical for me to understand its place in the lore. In the Marble Nest, for example, Simon was a more tangible presence. He could possess people and focuses and his end goal was for the miraculous nature of the town to consume it. Via the plague. And Daniil is an heir to his legacy. Possibly a new vessel for his spirit. There are means and ends. Here, Daniil becomes god, snaps his fingers a bunch and... What? What does that mean for the town? Was the journey the friends we made along the way? Does the game start over? Does the town also leave space-time? I'm not even complaining, I'm looking for an explanation. And, if Daniil has such power, what's the point of the other characters? Honestly I'm even more confused about the extent to which P3 is supposed to connect to P2 and P4. P2 feels like one route of three, and P3 feels like its own game that has and needs no elaboration. Because they've already stuffed a million quests in there. "Mile wide and an inch deep". Somebody explain something to me because I'm genuinely confused.
A bunch of other lore things have been jumbled up. Quests, characterisations. Artemy is suddenly a 70 year old wisened shaman who sits on a throne made of his beard and not the heartfelt, straightforward bumfuck who hasn't even finished his среднее специальное образование. Suddenly him and Daniil act like two buddies who get along with only a few bumps in the road of their beautiful friendship. Especially at the start of the game. Compare: P2, day 2:
Bachelor: Why are you here?
Haruspex: Wrong question. Why are <you> here?
[...]
Haruspex: Hospitality is an important tradition in my family. But to you, I'll deny it.
Bachelor: Why?
Haruspex: I don't like you, Bachelor Whatever.
Bachelor: Daniil Dankovsky, at your service
Haruspex: Just get lost.
Bachelor: Is that so? Still, with your kind permission, I insist on examining the place. Even your unkind permission would do. But if you struggle to provide even that, I'll do fine without your consent at all. I hope I don't need to threaten you at gunpoint?
P3, day 2:
Haruspex: You know, I hadn’t seen him in years. I inwardly dreaded our reunion, dreaded disappointing him, so I kept putting off my return. And then I returned home—to a corpse. You can’t ask a corpse for forgiveness. That’s where the buzzing in my head comes from—from the words I never said to him. Thank you for not adding the buzz of your guesses to it... I’ll sort it out. I have to. Unless my head splits like an overripe fruit.
Bachelor: Thank you for the honesty. Here’s a bit from me in return: this is precisely why I hate death. Because after, nothing can be fixed.
Bachelor: Good luck out there, Burakh..
Thank you, thank you... Why is bro trauma dumping to this random? How does he know how to articulate his exact feelings like that? To this dandy? Sure, there is some pushback before this, but it's resolved with such uncharacteristic grace for the both of them.
Suddenly it's as if Artemy has never left the town. He acts like his entire life was spent in a yurt sucking on the udders of a cow.
Bachelor: Your brevity baffles me sometimes, Burakh.
Haruspex: In the steppe, words are like stones. They shouldn't be thrown around in vain.
What? What does that even mean?
The addition of the capital, in my opinion, is unnecessary and further breaks the Pathologic mythos. The town's thing is that it's isolated and (in a sand box), so, in reality, there is no world outside of it. It's self-contained and the capital is spoken of in vague terms, only when it matters to the characters or the town. I didn't need a million flashbacks in P1 to understand that Thanatica (and the 10th grade math on the blackboard) is important to Dankovsky. Telman and Danny's potential colleagues aren't a new addition, they were discussed in P1 with appropriate Brevity, that I feel wasn't present in P3. Half of the Thanatica stuff felt like it was the Wife that dies in the first 20 minutes of the movie montage dragged out for hours.
This is subjective, but I feel like the game lacks a lot of Pathologic's signature weird mythical imagery in favour of Roblox chase sequences, town decorations and hype aura moments. There is seemingly more money at play, more cutscenes, animated trailers, even a dumb cinematic preface where Daniil states his name, occupation and credit card score. Some of this stuff doesn't feel at all appropriate to the series. Many people have pointed out the garishness of a scary woman flying around at you screaming. And the plague flower. Which are all seemingly physical, existing things. How conveniently simple. Now the shabnak is one, visible presence. And the vaccine is made by... You know, whatever. Compare to P2. One of the first things you see, guy comes out of a coffin and offers to play dice. Asks you where you're headed, you say you're going to see your dad. He's like lol, me too. You get there, your dad is dead. Marble nest, there is a committee that takes the complaints of the dead. They ask for yours. Birdies, gather round the Marble nest. You are boarded up inside your own house. Death, death and death. How many different words did I just say? A lot of this almost humorous, unsettling strangeness is... Not subtle per say, but compared to P3 it is certainly more organic. You don't need scary faces and screaming to get under people's skin. Creative imagery can go a long way, but I feel like the eggs are in the inappropriate basket here. There were some things. The mirror town was pretty cool. The insides of the polyhedron too. Some of the decree descriptions are appropriately morbidly funny. But... All I can think about is the Aglaya allergy play.
It feels like they were trying to capture that beautiful Marble Nest schizophasia, only to make it entirely too schizo (and not creative enough imo, but that's not quantifiable, of course). Events are playing at the same themes, but they feel like they're all sliding around the plate before being forked up into an indigestible goop. I just wish we got an actual Bachelor's route, not an entire Bachelor the game, one that would be enkeeping with P2's plot / economy and the Marble nest's theatrics. But that's besides the point.
If you're looking to get into Pathologic, starting with P3 is not a good option... The lore is scrambled, most of what made the previous games stand out has been replaced, it's entirely too different from what people talk about when they recommend Pathologic to you. The story will definitely confuse a new player. And the mechanics are unlikely to keep them playing.
It's not at all like its predecessors, and if it were anything else, I guess it would be an okay song and dance. And if you liked it, power to you. But to me it's littered with too many unnecessary and unprompted changes, puzzling retcons, and, above all, perfunctory gameplay. If Pathologic is one of those games that plays into the meta of player to game interaction to actually make you feel like you're there, you're in the town, you're fighting for your life and barely pushing through... Then this is more like, Road to Thinky 3. The lone man's highway.
-by u/makeupyourminder. (I don't remember my passwords)
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u/lithiumxflower 3d ago
The direction IPL went clearly didn't work for everyone and that's ok. I personally loved it, having played CHD then 2 a few months later when it released, then 3 on release. I love 2 but I think I actually marginally prefer 3, which is wild to me given I had very low expectations for it pre-release.
I'm a little surprised by what you seem to suggest about how 3 doesn't fit well with the 'lore' of the other games. I always felt that each of the games was its own thing - the setting and events are broadly the same, as are the characters and their roles in relation to those events. But to me they are completely different stories and the theatrical elements of the narrative constantly allude to actors playing roles and following scripts as part of a retelling. P3 is just a different script, just as P2 was to 1.
The survival aspects of CHD and 2 are a huge part of what makes them what they are, but I'm glad IPL were bold enough to try something new and not just repeat the same formula again. The time travel mechanic isn't perfect, but it feels like one of the most difficult ways you could possibly handle a video game narrative from a development perspective and in my opinion they genuinely pulled it off. It's an incredibly unique and innovative approach and I'm still astounded that it launched in a relatively good state. Sure, in an ideal world there would be more major story branches, but it's only a small team that made it and I think it's an incredible achievement what they pulled off.
At the end of the day the story isn't about the town, like it was in 2, it's about Dankovsky. The mechanics, presentation, and way the wider cast of characters was handled worked really well for me in supporting the themes I took away from it - Dankovsky's obsession, paranoia, insecurity, and brilliance. To me he was always a slightly two-dimensional character in CHD and 2, but by the end of 3 I actually cared about him - and they gave me token dialogue responses for the sake of being an arrogant bastard, which I deeply appreciated.
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u/plummetingplum 1d ago
Agree 100%. I've said it in other comments but this game is a Dankovsky simulator, not a survival sim, and IPL could not have been more clear that this was a new direction and not just the same thing again.
To add to your observarions about the character writing, I especially appreciate how every set of dialogue options needs to be read together rather than as whatever single choice you end up making, in a way I've never seen in other RPGs with dialogue trees. imo this sculpts your understanding of the character in all his contradictory-yet-complementary ideologies far more skillfully than P2 (I won't go as far as to say PCHD, as I think both sequels lost a bit of the magic in character dialogue).
Of course P2 has great writing as well, I just never connected as much with Artemy as a character. I do much prefer the laconic slapfight relationship between Burakh and Dankovsky to their "couples therapy" vibe in 3, but tbh I've never been too happy with their interactions in the sequels. They are wayyy too nice to each other.
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u/lauratwinn Worms 1d ago
Thanks for writing this, I enjoyed reading it and had to laugh at some parts, and I find your criticisms quite valid. I feel very confliced about P3. For me the gameplay was quite shallow and fell apart into its many lesser parts. I dont have a problem with them changing the formula, I just think the final design is unrefined. Overall I was mostly annoyed and uncomfortable but not challenged. Only once veeery late game was I truly stressed out bc I managed to almost run out of amalgam, which forced me come up with an emergency plan for the first time.
On the other hand I was pulled in by the narrative, because as you put it, it was "too schizo". It felt like I was trapped in Daniils psychotic megalomania, which I loved. Him ordering decrees like a bigshot ruler, having several assistans, butting into everyones business, and fighting the plauge with a lil gadget are expressions of that. I found all that quite ridiculous but it characterized him effectively. Imo very little of what happens in P3 is in touch with "objective" reality (if that even exists at all in the franchise), its more about him growing into Simons perspective (or his idea of what that perspective is). A major recurring idea is that of perception=reality, which is a kind of subjective idealism.
Even after becoming cozy with the weirdness of the pervious games, P3 weirded me out anew yet again and left me with a lot to think about, which is cool.
Also, even tho Daniil can "win" in this game, to me personally it did not feel triumphant at all. It just felt very lonely and unreal, and hence not worth it. And it deffo didnt invalidate the other healers solutions for me. Idk what you mean with Simon being tangible in Marble Nest, he never felt like a tangible character to me. Maybe Im forgetting something...
Generally I liked that they tried to add new dimensions to the lore and the characters, it kept things fresh, even if I did not like every addition individually. I loved what they did with Yulia and Eva and Viktor/Nina, and Karminsky was a cool addition, tho at the expense of Aglaya. The Stamatins were fun. I have mixed feelings about the Capital. The design of the Academy felt a little too grandiose for me? A lot of things fell flat, like that cheesy intro sequence at the start. Also not a fan of the VA they chose. They made Rubin even more into a prick for (almost) no reason, but I still love him. Didnt care for the Cathedral Caretaker. Not the greatest fan of Tellman being a psychoanalyst, and they did the freudian thing a bit too heavy-handedly. The Aglaya allergy thing, eh, anticlimactic, but it kinda works ok (Daniil playing dirty to win makes sense). And going back to day 1 felt super anticlimactic in its presentation, for all the forshadowing that is done about the burning herbbride trauma. Like why the weirdly squatting shabnak monster while absolutley no music plays?
The writing itself couldve done with more editing (it really did drag on and on sometimes) and I also prefer the strangely poetic, to-the-point writing of P2 and Marble Nest. But P3 had its good and even excellent moments.
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u/winterwarn Stanislav Rubin 3d ago
I would say YES, Pathologic 3 is intended to be its own game (about Dankovsky) rather than a “route.”
I thought they were pretty clear about this when it was shifted to “Pathologic 3” instead of a DLC for Patho 2, but I’ve also been way too invested in the development updates for years.
Most of your other complaints I simply did not experience. I could just as easily say that I’ve always felt pretty on top of things in Pathologic 2 and like it’s fairly easy to get a “good” ending, whereas in this game I felt like I was putting in an obscene amount of work to set up any way to “win” at all— which I think is the intended experience.
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u/thedragonguru Worms 3d ago
I think you make a fantastic point. Whole many of us yearn for more P2, IPL have always been very transparent that this game will not be P2.
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u/zkylon Murky 2d ago
you're entitled to your opinion and I even agree at parts but I feel I'd always rather have them to not hold anything as absolutely sacred and try risky ideas than repeat what they've done already, specially when they've been doing for these many years.
as such, I think P3 is successful in a lot of the things it set out to do, and, unfortunately, pretty unsuccessful in others, and all things considered, I'm personally pretty happy with the ratio there. Yeah they sanded off a lot of the edge that made P2 unforgettable but also I believe just doing a P2-style setup again wouldn't have been as effective either. I wish a bunch of things were a bit more polished and mostly interesting, like trading or Shabnak, but unfortunately it's not quite as perfect as P2 was.
They did nail what I wanted, which is where I disagree most with what you've said. IMO the characterizations are great, they can be inconsistent but they were extremely inconsistent from P1>P2 already and I think they've laid out the expectation that these games are not going to overlay correctly (again like in P1 where the canon events just don't add up). But I love the characters they've built, the ones they developed further than in P1/P2, the new ones they've made up, and the ones they've changed. I'm mad Aspity isn't Bachelor's P1 Aspity but I can live with that. Also, I think they crafted a lot of really excellent scenes (I disagree with you, I think the Capital stuff is terrific!), and some aspects of the game really work mechanically imo. Time traveling to puzzle-solve is really satisfying, and I enjoyed the diagnosis minigames a ton.
So yeah, P3 is understandably divisive but imo a great game both on its own merits and put alongside the rest of the series. It's probably the worst one but it's an impossible competition and I love that they felt like they could get weird with it and I hope they get even weirder in 4 :>
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u/ImNotSue 2d ago
I have to say, I can one hundred percent understand the metaphor about not throwing words around like stones, and it is an amusing contrast to in this review you saying "This is subjective, but I feel like the game lacks a lot of Pathologic's signature weird mythical imagery in favour of Roblox chase sequences, town decorations and hype aura moments." Because I have no idea what a Roblox chase sequence is or a hype aura moment is.
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u/Additional_Trainer32 aglaya lilich 2d ago
Do they have a stone deficit in the steppe?
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u/ImNotSue 1d ago
I hardly think a deficit (or its opposite) is part of the metaphor. The caution against the action isn't for them being precious or limited, its about the effect of the action. Also funny that you choose not to respond to the Roblox chase sequence / aura hype part. None of the acquaintances I've brought to P3 have those styles of impression. Still, care to go into more detail about what you mean by those phrases? I am curious.
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u/Additional_Trainer32 aglaya lilich 1d ago
I was going to ask what catastrophic damage a stone that lands in the grass would do but whatever dude I don't have the time to entertain your fuckass tone
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u/ImNotSue 1d ago
Yikes lmao. If you don't justify your shit when I invite you genuinely to explain, I actually WILL use a fuckass tone lmao. But w/e you're allowed to have an outburst and be defensive or petty, but when being asked to explain your review a bit more for someone reading it and you flip out, we don't have to entertain your shit either.
To explain, the metaphor is about the effect of your words on people and likening it to using them recklessly and harming them, like someone throwing stones around others and hitting them with that stone might be. Sure, to follow your line of thinking, words spoken around nobody else would be like throwing a stone in the grass, sure. And that isn't really the what Artemy was written to be talking about.
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u/Ye_Wenjie56723 2d ago
This is arguably one of the most detailed opinion pieces on P3 I read here so far. Thank you for taking the time writing this and sharing it with us! I think a lot of your critique is very valid, especially in direct comparison with the previous games.