Source
r/pathologic•
Steelpoint

Pathologic 2: Too easy or too prepared?

I have recently completed my play through of Pathologic 2 on the intended difficulty, and at the end of it all, despite my great enjoyment of the game I personally found the game became, just, too easy towards the end of it all.

To give context, this was technically my second playthrough of the game, however my first attempt ended midway through Day 9 when I bought a new computer, and failed to realise the game did not support steam cloud saves and thus I lost my original playthrough. However, my original playthrough was going just as well as my second playthrough.

By the end of the game, I had managed to save every single character, no one had died or succumbed to infection by the end, my belly was full, I had accumulated well over twenty thousand coins and had enough tinctures to run around a infected district, clouds and all, naked without care.

I only died twice, the first due to me underestimating how much damage the odongh's deal, and my second death being me accidently 'alerting' two odongh's in a end game section.

This game is at its greatest when the struggle to save others versus yourself becomes the greatest and more pressing issue, this rarely occurred for me past the first few days.

I do not know if my success with my survival came because of luck, perseverance, or perhaps my foreknowledge of how bad things would get based off of my playthrough of the original Pathologic 1.

As it stands, I've started a new playthrough but with me cranking the difficulty sliders to their maximum, I'm eager to see the outcome.

I'm curious if anyone else has encountered a similar situation with the game?

Posted Jan 14, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

617
memesarentrealHaruspex•

Probably too prepared. I played 3 and a half days of the original before I saw that Pathologic 2 was a remake and switched to that, so by then I knew sort of how the game worked, that food prices spike on day 2, etc.

14
SteelpointOP•

The price spike in general on day 2 can come as a shock, however I'll credit that Pathologic 2 offers some warnings of the incoming price increases via a few conversations if the player pays attention.

7
genericQuery•

This demonstrates the nature of the game. It truly is not difficult, not when one understands. When one knows where to find food, money, water, and to prepare for these things, the game quite honestly becomes simple.

When one does not... this is when the game is most interesting. It's power lies in exploiting that helplessness and powerlessness.

11
sabinlord•

Yeah, if you know how hobo economy works you are basically set for life in Pathologic. I'm day 7 and have 12k coins, 10 potions+, one of each kind of Dead Gruel, full clothes, lockpicks, 3 miracles and only Stamatin died because I didn't like him lol.

9
vfig•

Having watched a dozen different youtubers play this blind—some of whom had played P1, some not—I think the default difficulty setting is pretty much spot on.

A whole lot of the difficulty just comes from the systems being unknown and the daily changes to the systems being unknown, and that you’re under time pressure that makes it hard to feel in control of it. But this is what the game’s difficulty is about: not requiring you to develop skills to master it, but asking you to persist despite not being in control.

Once you have a good idea of all the systems, and a good idea of what events will happen on a particular day, you have a tremendous advantage for sure. Like, almost all of the youtubers did far better on any given day when they replayed a section due to death.

So yeah: you were too prepared with foreknowledge. Also you probably didn’t get really bad RNG (like, check out SulMatul’s playthrough: IIRC, on one day seven people get infected (despite that he gave immunity boosters to most of them), and then the next day five of them die (despite that he treated several of them). Really harsh RNG can happen.

7
cocainess•

Too prepared. I struggled horribly the first time, ~24 deaths, quit on day 10 (AND I tweaked the difficulcy on Day 6-7 or so).

Replayed - 2 deaths total as well (Abbatoir), pockets full of panacea and shmowders, inventory is upgraded and clothes mended. Was tight on food though on Day 11.

5
NetrobHaruspex•

For me the Fund made the game too easy. Some hospital quests outright fill the bar, and you can get food and medicine for the whole day as well as a huge sum of money for a bit of antibiotics that never cost too much for some reason. The ultimate difficulty option would be to play without the Fund and those three gardens in Shehen. Bonus points for playing without the map and Batman vision for MAXIMUM ARTISTIC AND INTELLECTUAL HONESTY

3
SteelpointOP•

The Fund did indeed help trivialise the game when it came to food, although I think its a good concept either way, and at least the player has to go a bit out of their way to increase their Fund meter.

3
TheMightyRance•

As someone who began with Pathologic 2, I can assure you the game kicked my ass from start to finish. I never had time to do anything, and I was constantly starving from day 5 until the end. The >!food coupons!< just completely blindsided and destroyed me. This was after watching several reviews who warned me how hard the game would be and offered tips and advice (like always bin raking). I found it to be a pretty damn hard game, but I figure that if I played it again it'd be much easier.

3
RightRevJake•

I was able to trivialize the first game once I figured out the quirks, but I’m still banging my head against P2. Y’all are making me feel dumb, lol.

2
TessHKM•

I think the difficulty of the game comes from how difficult it is to prepare yourself in the first place, being unsure how the game systems exactly work, and being thrown off when those systems change abruptly.

I never played the original Pathologic (although I know about it, so I was armed with the general knowledge that it would be a good idea to stockpile food and prices would spike).

I had to restart the game twice (once because of hunger, once because of plague) and I died a couple dozen times throughout. By the time I started my third attempt, I had familiarized myself with the game (knew about the herbs in the steppe, knew how to barter to stock up on important shit, figured out that jewelry was worth a fortune in cash, had a rough schedule for each day ahead of time) and yeah, I comparatively breezed through the game, amassing a fortune in cash that I never had to spend and only having died 2-3 times, with only a couple of NPCs dying who I didn't care enough to treat when they got sick.

So being able to know what's going to happen is a huge advantage that almost nullifies all the difficulty that the game has (except for a few areas, my strategy for dealing with more than 2 enemies at once is sprint away). Which I think is pretty well dealt with by the adjustable difficulty sliders. I think it works well that a lot of the difficulty in the game comes from being in a strange place, not knowing how things work or what's going to happen.

2
DotaGuy12•

I'm playing at 150% hunger speed and 50% food value and never came close to starving. I think kids offer fish and eggs for too cheap, thugs carry jewels way too often, and the steppe has too much swevery.

Probably the most straightforward way to go hard mode is never bartering with anyone, only scavenging and buying from shops. Would make most objects found like scissors and such practically useless.

1
TessHKM•

The thing about the Steppe herbs being plentiful is definitely true imo, but a lot of the other stuff you mentioned is really hard to get a handle on if you haven't played before. I never played the original Pathologic (although I knew a bit about it, roughly that it was a good idea to stockpile food because prices would spike) and I had to restart twice because I fucked myself over. I didn't realize jewelry sold for so much at shops until I read it on a guide here for my third playthrough - previously I'd been bartering it all away for razors/grindstones and fish, which I think is what most new players will naturally do.

1
LastBurningBachelor•

I agree that the game felt too easy. I actually tried to play the game again with all the sliders set to max difficulty but it became a bit too crazy on day 3 for me. (I wanted to complete the quests too.) I wish there was a harder preset than Imago. I'm also not sure if just adjusting the sliders can make the game harder in an interesting, satisfying way. Needless to say, I really like the game anyway.

1
c0wpuncher•

On my first playthrough it was only hard until I found out infected houses with a single locked drawer always have a ring in it. And it got difficult when a guard took the loot off a bandit I killed so I shot him.

1
dearvalentina•

I'm nitpicking but...

You didn't save Aglaya.

You didn't save best girl.

1
Q2ZOv•

Hm, while I am impressed that you managed to do that good I think the mechanics of this game suggest that you got really lucky with infection/death rolls. I have just finished the game and am checking out other people experiences and in my playthrough the two people that were in first infected districts (i even do not remember their names sadly) got infected the first day even though I gave them immunity tinctures and both died on a second day even though I gave them right antibiotics. This was an interesting lesson since I was low on resources and needed these tinctures/antibiotics for characters I already cared about and I felt that these kinds of events are completely intended and expected to happen over the ten days of epidemic.

1