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KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
0 deaths. Saved everyone*. :positive:
qVUMMYu.jpg

zwGTDht.jpg

*I'm assuming Aglaya can't be saved.
It wasn't even that hard. Maybe I got lucky rolls. I also knew what to expect this time and how to prepare. Stockpiled a lot of water bottles for tinctures. Food isn't that big of a problem as long as you always do the hospital quests and max the fund.
The revolver was essential for Rubin's quest (2 headshots per worm, only have to kill one of them with a knife). The worms in the Abattoir can all be backstabbed. Just sneak past the first one and get the scalpel. Those are the hardest parts in the game.

To save everyone I needed to get as many Shmowders as possible. There are at least 2 guaranteed Shmowders from early quests (that I know of), but occasionally I also found some in those children's caches, random trades, and the Dead Item shop. I must have had at least 10 in total. Seemed a bit cheap at first until I got to Act IV when the plague gets serious. In the end I had to use them all. I also had strong antibiotics prepared, just in case, but never needed them, at least not for my patients.
:M

I had encountered one bug after the Abattoir which almost cost me the run. You know how the plague "cheats" at the beginning of day 10? That must have confused the game somehow.
End of Day 9: Notkin not infected.
mCjEWnA.jpg


Day 10:
XEX363Q.jpg

rZK8zTN.gif

The most interesting part was dealing with the infection after day 6 because I didn't want to waste a cure on myself. I know there is another way to get rid of it, but I was afraid I could die in the process. And that gimmick shouldn't be in the game anyway. Besides, the plague is a fun companion to have around.
I remember from my first playthrough that it was almost unbearable to live with an infection for longer than a day. I had to spend so much time and resources to keep it under control that I had to neglect treating my patients, and I was always low on health. But I also made a lot of mistakes. With the right treatment and some preparation, it's surprisingly easy to live with an infection.
Get lots of Swevery and enough organs. It's useful to have 2 scalpels (Menkhu's Finger + Lancet) so you can get more organs with one visit to the hospital. Then make potent antibiotics and painkillers.
After you get infected, drink Medrel+ to raise immunity to 100%, and keep it at 100%! It won't go down on its own, only when you get in contact with the plague or go into infected districts (protection becomes more important now). High immunity significantly slows the infection growth. And as long as you keep the infection small, it won't eat much of your health at all.
The problem with antibiotics is that they cost a lot of health. You have to take them before sleep so you can immediately recover health during sleep with the help of painkillers. Don't take morphine! It increases exhaustion and makes you waste more time sleeping it off. The homemade painkillers also have some subtle differences between different combinations. For example, drinking painkiller made from brain tissue even lowers exhaustion by a fair amount (not sure if color matters, I made them from Medrel). So every time before sleep, you just have to take one antibiotic and one brainkiller. Then sleep for 3 hours to get almost all your health back.
As long as your immunity stays at maximum, you can keep the infection in check indefinitely. Your exhaustion meter will be full again and forcing you to sleep before the infection can "outgrow" your antibiotics. You just have to make sure you have another dose of antibiotics and painkillers ready for the next sleep cycle.

Speaking with the big heart after the Abattoir cures the infection.


Btw, the nocturnal ending is shit. Can't even explore the town myself and get force-teleported when I talk to the wrong NPC. And the characters are all acting stupid. Is there anyone who likes this ending? I hated it so much that I went back and got the diurnal ending again.

And I still can't exit the game without crashing.
 

v1rus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
2,253

Its been two years since I played it, but, I do remember this - character deaths (or rather, rolls) from the plague are decided at a certain point (5am or 6am IIRC), and are from that moment unchangeable - you can cure the characters with a schmowder, or boost his immune system, which should make the game reroll.

The point is this - the game just rolls at that precise time whether the character lives or dies. You continue the day, and you get the results at 01:00. The arrow itself is just a visualization, not a precise information - in your scenario, you could have reloaded an hour or two before this specific roll, and Notkin would still survive - with the arrow perhaps even finishing at the very top of the bar. ALL the results of the roll would remain the same, but the arrows location would change.

Its a been a while tho, so there is probably something I am misremembering, but yeah. Arrows do not show how close a character was to dying, that I'm sure of.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
Yes, you can't easily savescum your way out of it if a character dies. Which makes this bug even scarier. I wouldn't have been able to load an earlier save from day 9 evening and cure Notkin because he wasn't infected.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,837
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
0 deaths. Saved everyone*. :positive:
It wasn't even that hard. Maybe I got lucky rolls. I also knew what to expect this time and how to prepare.
Good job. But then, I wasn't expecting it to be that hard if you know what you are doing. A large part of the challenge the first time through is not knowing the game mechanics, and having to figure stuff out as you go. And spending a lot of time on pointless activities, because you don't know what is important*.

It's a really interesting kind of difficulty imo. Rewards you for trying to get into the shoes of the player character and drawing conclusions from hints in the game world.

* I only ever got a single shmowder in my playthrough, which I used on myself. Had quite a few deaths as a result.
 

Terra

Cipher
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
896
Just clawed my way through to the finish line... Many people died...

Couple of random thoughts on the game:

I found speaking to major NPCs was often a bit disjointed in terms of presentation- you initiaite dialogue and the NPC is delivering VO of a subtitled line yet the actual conversation you're partaking in is completely different. It's offputting to say the least and an odd choice.

For me at least, it's not the game's difficulty that I think stops people getting into it but the whole theatre trappings and frequent fourth wall breaking. Honestly, at times, when I was getting repeatedly killed in a tough spot and having to repeat a section of gameplay, I could have done without Mark Immortel's paragraphs of rambling about nothing in particular. It's not limited to him though, even some of my characters responses seemed fourth wall breaking, add in the whole mythology of the Kin (oh, hey, here's some half naked chicks and various weird creatures we're not really gonna explain till the eleventh hour). Likewise, the Foreman dude and Aspita? can be a bit laborious to talk to - I got the gist most of the time, but riddles, interwoven with the "everyone is an actor" fourth wall schtick just really kept pulling me out of the experience; it's so rare that you'd get anything approaching a straight answer that I honestly found conversations both tricky & irritating to follow at times.

I found trying to learn about lore, characters and town was at odds with the "actor" stuff, on the one hand, the game is trying to raise the stakes through the plague, on the other, Artemy magically revives upon death, which the game further blurs by insinuating that when one Artemy dies, another steps in. Really felt this undermined attempts to up the ante, with the town's inhabitants' lives apparently on the line, while Immortel's exposition & Artemy #2's appearances (as a separate interactable NPC) undermine any dramatic tension in the story (or at least distracted from it, replacing it with confusion) as it's at all least partially fake? Add in the tradgedians & plague doctor orderlies and yeah, the whole thing's weird (not in a good way, in a riddle that never gets explained way), like the game & story are trying to head in two opposite directions.

But I still enjoyed the game quite a lot. At a certain point you start to get a better feel for the game systems and sort of hit your survival stride, you get a handle on the day to day mechanics and all seems well... Up until Day 10 at least. I did not like that foreknowledge pretty much gates the final days of the game. I was doing pretty well up until Day 10, then it felt like hitting a brick wall; food was near non-existent, the plague was all over the place and most army soldiers were grouped up which made it difficult to pick one off and swipe a ration. Essentially, I was in a inescapable hunger-induced death spiral and I had to go back like to a save 2 days prior in order to formulate a strategy to overcome Day 10; which involved hoarding food.

Ending convo with Lara was particularly bleak - I’d busted my arse trying to keep her alive after she got infected, then she’s just stood on that structure with a tragedian or two: “Oh hey, I heard you adopted some kids”. My character’s response: “they’re dead, I don’t want to talk about it.” And that was that, just damn... Murky only died cause she was on the opposite side of the map and I couldn’t physically drag myself over there in time without croaking it and Sticky died to bad RNG.

I also didn't like discovering that fire, either from a flamethrower trooper or an arsonist, will completely eliminate the plague from the player character. Surviving an arsonists thrown molotov is relatively easy, and the small amount of HP damage you take in exchange for avoiding a potentially gamelong struggle pretty much trivialises the plague's threat to the player, so long as one of these fire sources is accessible.
I’d definitely do a lot better on a second playthrough now I have a better grasp of the mechanics. Honestly, I think my main takeaway from this game is that I really wish someone would make a game like this but without the theater trappings, just keep it grounded - the atmosphere was really great but I truly hated being constantly pulled out of the experience through some of the dialogue.

Played a snippet of Marble Nest - is this thing a copy/paste of the beta thingy from the Kickstarter? Notably, I found the Bachelor’s dialogue and interactions there seem much more… human legible than some of the conversations that Artemy got into, shame he doesn’t have a full campaign here.
 
Last edited:

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Just clawed my way through to the finish line... Many people died...

Couple of random thoughts on the game:

I found speaking to major NPCs was often a bit disjointed in terms of presentation- you initiaite dialogue and the NPC is delivering VO of a subtitled line yet the actual conversation you're partaking in is completely different. It's offputting to say the least and an odd choice.

For me at least, it's not the game's difficulty that I think stops people getting into it but the whole theatre trappings and frequent fourth wall breaking. Honestly, at times, when I was getting repeatedly killed in a tough spot and having to repeat a section of gameplay, I could have done without Mark Immortel's paragraphs of rambling about nothing in particular. It's not limited to him though, even some of my characters responses seemed fourth wall breaking, add in the whole mythology of the Kin (oh, hey, here's some half naked chicks and various weird creatures we're not really gonna explain till the eleventh hour). Likewise, the Foreman dude and Aspita? can be a bit laborious to talk to - I got the gist most of the time, but riddles, interwoven with the "everyone is an actor" fourth wall schtick just really kept pulling me out of the experience; it's so rare that you'd get anything approaching a straight answer that I honestly found conversations both tricky & irritating to follow at times.

I found trying to learn about lore, characters and town was at odds with the "actor" stuff, on the one hand, the game is trying to raise the stakes through the plague, on the other, Artemy magically revives upon death, which the game further blurs by insinuating that when one Artemy dies, another steps in. Really felt this undermined attempts to up the ante, with the town's inhabitants' lives apparently on the line, while Immortel's exposition & Artemy #2's appearances (as a separate interactable NPC) undermine any dramatic tension in the story (or at least distracted from it, replacing it with confusion) as it's at all least partially fake? Add in the tradgedians & plague doctor orderlies and yeah, the whole thing's weird (not in a good way, in a riddle that never gets explained way), like the game & story are trying to head in two opposite directions.

But I still enjoyed the game quite a lot. At a certain point you start to get a better feel for the game systems and sort of hit your survival stride, you get a handle on the day to day mechanics and all seems well... Up until Day 10 at least. I did not like that foreknowledge pretty much gates the final days of the game. I was doing pretty well up until Day 10, then it felt like hitting a brick wall; food was near non-existent, the plague was all over the place and most army soldiers were grouped up which made it difficult to pick one off and swipe a ration. Essentially, I was in a inescapable hunger-induced death spiral and I had to go back like to a save 2 days prior in order to formulate a strategy to overcome Day 10; which involved hoarding food.

Ending convo with Lara was particularly bleak - I’d busted my arse trying to keep her alive after she got infected, then she’s just stood on that structure with a tragedian or two: “Oh hey, I heard you adopted some kids”. My character’s response: “they’re dead, I don’t want to talk about it.” And that was that, just damn... Murky only died cause she was on the opposite side of the map and I couldn’t physically drag myself over there in time without croaking it and Sticky died to bad RNG.

I also didn't like discovering that fire, either from a flamethrower trooper or an arsonist, will completely eliminate the plague from the player character. Surviving an arsonists thrown molotov is relatively easy, and the small amount of HP damage you take in exchange for avoiding a potentially gamelong struggle pretty much trivialises the plague's threat to the player, so long as one of these fire sources is accessible.
I’d definitely do a lot better on a second playthrough now I have a better grasp of the mechanics. Honestly, I think my main takeaway from this game is that I really wish someone would make a game like this but without the theater trappings, just keep it grounded - the atmosphere was really great but I truly hated being constantly pulled out of the experience through some of the dialogue.

Played a snippet of Marble Nest - is this thing a copy/paste of the beta thingy from the Kickstarter? Notably, I found the Bachelor’s dialogue and interactions there seem much more… human legible than some of the conversations that Artemy got into, shame he doesn’t have a full campaign here.
I've finished the original 3 years ago and don't remember it having so many obtrusive theather elements as you say. Maybe the remake went overboard.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
"Donation" sounds about right... This machine translation is great for uncovering the underlying meanings...
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
Here is hoping this time they will be able to sell a lot of copies and finally have enough money to do what they want.
 

Wunderbar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2015
Messages
8,809
https://vk.com/wall-33165854_45890


Friends.

The troops of the country in which we live, whose history and culture we respect and love, have started fighting in Ukraine, where our friends and colleagues live, with whom we have worked together for these years.

Our studio, "Ice-Pick Lodge", has always stayed out of politics. We cherished the fact that our studio produces Russian games, makes a contribution to the Russian culture, helps the reputation of Russia, gives someone a reason to be proud that interesting and worthy works are being created on this land. Now we see that a crime is being committed on our behalf.

This is not only a declaration of our position, but first of all an appeal to our Ukrainian friends - five of whom participated in the creation of our games. We have never voted for this Government and its political course. We have never supported and do not support its illegal and bloody actions. Thank you to those who believe in our conscience and our compassion.

Be strong. Let's hope for the peace talks to succeed. This nightmare should be over soon.

Nikolai Dybowski, Airat Zakhirov, Sophia Bodrova, Vitaliy Aleksashin, Elena Alt, Dana Kirilenko, Nikolai Ponomaryov, Maksim Kolosov.
 

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