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Pathway - turn-based strategy adventure from the developers of Halfway

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,031
It's Depth of Extinction all over again.

:prosper:

I agree. They fucked up the combat. The managed to do the impossible. Halfway was half-decent but this one is bad.

I love the animations, the humor, the story ... but the combat was streamlined to stupidity. Fuck.
Ah.
Let me guess; cure for RNG is worse than the problem in the first place?

But I never asked for this ...
:despair:
 

bataille

Arcane
Joined
Feb 11, 2017
Messages
1,073
Yeah, the presentation and little story vignettes are pretty great. The combat, however, is atrocious to the point of being the weakest point of the game. It's mostly 2-4 minute battles, with barely any skills, and the 2 AP system. It feels like a couple of minutes of senseless noise with a few dice rolls that determine whether you win, partially win, or lose. It's too atomized. There are so few variables in any given battle that it's really, really hard not to think of them as literally rolling four or five dice before seeing the results screen. Combat feels like a mini game, not the meat of the experience.
Past this point, there's not much left. When your combat system feels much less intricate than the game you copied (and that's considering that FTL didn't have movement during battles), it's game over, man, game over.

I think they should have designed a linear game akin to mutant year zero since they obviously have a knack for writing simple yet very charming story bits. Desert encounters are nicely done, but again, they feel like they are supposed to break up battles and serve as a pacing device, not be the main draw of the game. The game itself feels barely thought out, with super large chunks missing. Both combat and exploration are secondary to some vital part that isn't in Pathway.

As of now, it's an almost verbatim FTL clone but without its simple yet tactical combat design. If you've played FTL, you can figure out what it leaves the player with.
 
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PrettyDeadman

Guest
I wanted to buy this but looks like I will be buying Totally Accurate Battle Simulator since it has more high IQ combat system.
 

tripedal

Savant
Joined
Feb 22, 2015
Messages
401
Location
Ultima Thule
Tried it for a couple of hours. Agree with bataille. Absolutely love the presentation/aesthetic/theme, but the gameplay mechanics are extremely simplistic. There's also almost nothing but combat in the game, so don't expect any interesting events that don't involve fighting.
 

Jamma

Novice
Joined
Jul 10, 2018
Messages
30
Played it. The combat system is too simple with no meaningful choices to be had. Move to squares where you get 100% accuracy, kill the enemies one by one, stay behind cover. That's all there is to it. Enemies don't have any interesting abilities and neither does the player. This would have been fine for young players, but I can't see them enjoying it when that's all there is to the game, hour after hour.
Between fights you get to move on the map, but 90% of the map is random events so you might as well take the shortest route and hope for good RNG. The events aren't interesting since they're tied to shallow mechanics, and funnel into mindless combat.
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
Dammit. Was really looking forward to this. Maybe they can fix it?

On the bright side, now I have no reason to rush through ATOM.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Posted this on Steam:

Man, if the game had a solid story campaign, with Indiana Jones like puzzles, some RPG elements besides skills and equipment, this could have been great. But this grind just for levels and equipment really wears thin quick, at least for me. Why this procedural stuff? Your last game had a nice story with fun characters!

Oh well...

Kinda feel sad with how boring the game is. Graphics, setting and such is really good, but then they make it so simple, both mechanically and story-wise. I would probably power through and enjoy it, if it only had something that hooked me, but nope. Cleared three adventures, took 6 hours and I think I'm done :/

Halfway was way better.
 
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warci

Educated
Joined
Mar 6, 2018
Messages
70
well, it's out apparently, but the steam reviews sofar don't give me much confidence. Anyone played this yet?
 

warci

Educated
Joined
Mar 6, 2018
Messages
70
well, it's out apparently, but the steam reviews sofar don't give me much confidence. Anyone played this yet?
Are you on drugs? Too hard to scroll through this topic and find your answer?

ah damnit, that's what happens when you're reading the codex through a tiny device made to be handled by asian ladyboys, sitting on your male throne taking a poop and your fat finger slips from the last page to 'first unread'
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria


https://steamcommunity.com/games/546430/announcements/detail/3463740364506628095

Our Plans For Pathway
12 Apr @ 10:09pm - bach
28b0e33f51d7b7ab459a5a2550210854a33ab536.png


Pathway has only been out for a little over 24 hours and we can't express enough how grateful we are to all of you! Thank you so much for taking the time to check out our little game!

Of course, we have also noticed the concerns many of you have voiced and we want to address some of the issues raised and hopefully clarify our plans for the future.

Most importantly: We hear you and we are listening. We are entirely committed to Pathway and we will continue supporting and tweaking the game to make it the absolute best it can be. Your incredible support makes this possible.

Over the next few days we will be focused on getting as many bugs fixed as possible. We've already released two hotfix patches and have just now released another version on Steam addressing more issues (changelog below). We will keep working on smaller quality of life updates as things come up.

In the medium term (over the next weeks) we want to look at ways to address some of the more fundamental concerns brought up. Many of you voiced that the game can feel repetitive and that there's not enough variety. Some things like the same event popping up multiple times in the same adventure are simply bugs. Other issues have to do with how the procedural generation works. We believe that with some work on our side we will be able to much better present the variety the game possesses. There is a lot to discover in Pathway, but we can do better at making sure you experience it.

Another issue we want to address in the medium term are the tactical battles. We had a very distinct design goal when designing the combat for Pathway: Make them fast-paced and fun. Our aim never has been to make an incredibly deep combat system but instead an approachable and fun battle system to go alongside our event driven exploration. Big picture, we think we succeeded. However, there are definitely some issues we want to fix and areas to improve. The AI needs work, some mechanics are not clearly communicated and we believe we can do more to characterise the uniqueness of the enemy classes.

Of course, we are also planning on releasing the Japanese and Chinese versions of the game in the near future. More localisations are currently being looked at but we don't have anything confirmed just yet.

Long term we are committed to more content. We have so many ideas on how to expand on Pathway. Northern Africa was a pretty obvious choice for our initial adventures, but there are many more exciting places we want to send our adventurers to.

As mentioned above we have also just released a new patch. Below are the fixes and changes included in this update.

Version 1.0.4 Changelog:
- We added an optional "Confirm Move" toggle in the Game options. When activated, you will have to click again to confirm your move before it is executed. This is to prevent accidental moves.
- We added a "Dog friendly" mode. This can be activated in the Game options. At the moment this simply disables the dog hit/die sfx. But we are planning on expanding on this and completely removing the die animations/blood.
- We've added additional fallback options for our shadow rendering that should fix issues we've seen on certain hardware configurations causing the game to crash at load and during gameplay.
- Added option to disable Reverb SFX effect. This may help on systems that have experience audio issues.
- Fix a bug that would let you recruit a character twice in a row
- Fixed a bug with character unlocks. Some people had met the conditions for unlocking a character but still couldn't use them when starting a new adventure. These characters are now properly unlocked and the issue has been fixed.
- We fixed a bug that caused crit hits that also killed a target to not count towards achievements, combat stats and adventure stats.
- We improved loading times in some events
 

thesheeep

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Watched this on a few streams and I think I agree with what most have said.
It seems fun for a short while, but ultimately I really don't see much lasting appeal. Which has nothing to do with it being too procedurally generated, but everything with the tiny scale. Which is kinda funny, given how much the procgen was discussed here.
It is as if they took XCOM 2, simplified combat just a bit and made every map a small (1-4) vs (1-6) match on an area roughly as big as a barn. If the maps were much larger and had actual objectives - so, much more similar to XCOM - the game would be better.

It's not like combat is much more simple than it was in XCOM 1-2. But the maps sure are.
 
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Dickie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
4,235
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I didn't buy it, but I watched a dude play it on YouTube, and it just looks so bad. Here's some things I noticed.
  • The pistol puts all the other weapon types to shame because double shot is so good.
  • The same encounter will happen 3 times on one map, but this is supposed to be fixed at some point.
  • Most of the encounters are just text that says "nothing happens."
  • The animation of the jeep driving to each node takes way too long.
  • The stuff you get from leveling up is super boring things like "+4 damage with pistols" or "+8 healing from medkits."
  • There's nothing interesting about the different weapons in the same class, i.e. a pistol is just strictly better or worse than another pistol.
  • The guy who gets -25% damage to Nazis is worthless, since most enemies are Nazis and most of the game is combat.
I was hoping this game would be good, but I think I'll pass, too.
 

Sloul

Savant
Joined
Mar 26, 2016
Messages
259
Knife, shotgun and rifle are the best weapons.
Knife because highest dd.
Shotgun and rifle because aoe. Go kill 3 guys in one turn with pistol.

The nazis are the most common on first maps. Best char are pereira and jackson.
 

thesheeep

Arcane
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Joined
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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tried it, played through the first Scenario. It has a certain charm to it, but it gets repetitive after about an hour. The combat is mobile level shallow. Definitely not worth buying.
Is it really the combat system itself that is that shallow? At a glance it really doesn't seem much simpler than nuXCOM, for example. You got your 2AP system, cover, LOS, different abilities, health & armor, you-move-they-move battle order.
What you don't have is morale and overwatch.

The biggest difference I see are the super small maps with a total lack of other-than-deathmatch goals.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
https://steamcommunity.com/games/546430/announcements/detail/1639783051333157261
Pathway Devlog #8 - Preview Builds & Update Cycles
19 Apr @ 8:50pm - bach
69c6a0f07344f589ea3dad32b7954fc3735032ed.gif


Wow, Pathway has been out for only a little over a week!

Up to now we've been in overdrive-mode fixing bugs. Additionally, we've also started introducing a handful of quality of life updates such as the undo button when recycling items as well as improved tooltip comparisons. Updates have been almost daily during this period to make sure critical issues are addressed promptly.

With today's post we want to explain what the next few months are going to look like.

New Update Cycle
From now on, we're switching to a more predictable update cycle: Every Wednesday we will release a new update. However, new features and changes will always first go to our public Preview branch. Once those changes had a bit of time to go through a testing and feedback phase we will then push them to the main branch. So in practice this means changes will generally linger in the preview branch for a week before appearing on the main branch. Sometimes we may decide to keep some things in the incubation stage for a bit longer before they make it to the live branch.

The preview branch will serve as an experimental area, where we can try out some changes and gather feedback from the community before making them available to everyone. So if you want to be a part of shaping the game's future, we'd love to have your help there!

The first preview build will go live next Wednesday. We will post instructions on how you can join the preview testing then.

Here's a little taste of what's coming to the first preview build:

Improved Damage Information
615435285735a87dc7e806671cffcb63919506b0.gif

An area we see confusion about frequently is how damage is calculated in Pathway. In the upcoming preview, we're adding an overhauled tooltip when hovering over enemies during an attack action. In the compact view you simply see the effective damage potential. This includes all adjustmens that may occur from things like the weapon's damage type or if your character has a special bonus/penalty against an enemy type. If you press tab, you will get a more detailed breakdown of how exactly the final damage calculation came together. We hope this will help in making some of the game's more complex damage calculations clearer.

Rebalanced Loot Distribution
We're making the beginning adventures more rewarding in terms of loot drops. We want to keep the legendaries for the mid to end game, but we feel like the first two adventures could use a boost of rewarding items.

Reworked Perk Branches in Events
Another feedback we've seen popping up often is that the perk branches in events don't feel weighty enough. We are starting to address this issue by taking a lot of luck out of the perk branches. So far, you'd always have a significantly improved chance at success, but in practice it often felt like you're gambling just as much as when using one of the other standard branches. Starting with this build, perk branches will now give you a success in an otherwise risky situation. There are a few exceptions to this rule still. We think this change will make character perks a lot more rewarding to use and provide a more tangible benefit.

There will be a full changelog with the release of the build on Wednesday that will of course also include a bunch of general bug fixes and improvements!

THANK YOU again for playing our little game and sending us your feedback. We truly do appreciate every constructive comment coming our way - We're constantly reviewing your ideas and and we are looking to address a lot of the concerns in the next little while.
 

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