YMMV / Pathologic 2

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Though it's not intended to be scary, the various townsfolk who run up to you to deliver messages can cause unintentional Jump Scares.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: No named character is immune to this, not even the town's children. The three main healers can be especially subject to this.
• Angst Aversion: The game's formidable reputation and oppressive atmosphere has put people off from playing this game.
• Critical Dissonance: A look at the game's Metacritic page will tell you that while critical response to the game was mixed, players have responded much more positively.
• Cult Classic: Like its predecessor. According to Word of God, the game didn't sell well- especially at the outset- but had a long trickle of purchases over time.
• Demonic Spiders: Odonghs. They're much more durable than humans, being able to take three revolver shots before going down. Worse, most of the situations where you end up fighting them put you in danger of facing several at once.
• Difficulty Spike: The game is pretty tough to begin with, but the last few days are noticeably more difficult:
  • The biggest change is that all the children are now gone. Children request items commonly found in the trash, making them easy to trade with. Adults often want items that you yourself need, meaning that an easy source of food is gone.
  • While the Town Hall doesn't stop being a source of food, you would certainly miss this if you only looked at the mind-map hover/end of day messages. ("They shut down the hospital. They shut down the fund. There is no-one left to save.")
  • Except for one shop, grocery shops stop using money as the currency.
  • Unless you've been clever about fixing water pumps, water is also extremely tough to find towards the end.
  • And on top of all of this, time itself moves quicker than it did at the start, meaning that you get hungrier, more exhausted and thirstier faster. Good luck!
• Epileptic Trees: Based on the knowledge players have of the previous game's plot twists, there was a lot of speculation on whether this game would end up having the same twists, or if there might be differences. Generally, they are the same in broad strokes but the details can be very different. Most notably, while Oyun still killed Isidor, he now has a sympathetic motivation rather than doing it for purely selfish reasons.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The philosophical, abstract dialogue of the game, and the fact that most of the named characters are embodiments of some concept or school of thought make it easy to interpret the game in this fashion. The game's framing device as a play being staged by Mark Immortell means this is almost certainly the case in-game as well.
• Even Better Sequel: The game takes all the great atmosphere, dialogue and intrigue from the original and manages to make it even better with a stronger art direction, improved localization, and redoing the gameplay to such a degree that Gameplay and Story Integration is in full effect for every second you play.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Many fans are fond of the Haruspex/Bachelor pairing, who spend most of their conversations together getting on each other's nerves.
• Fridge Brilliance: In the original Pathologic the two characters you weren't playing as would still go through their main story, but without you in control they'd be completely incompetent. Of course the prologue Day 12 is the worst possible outcome - the Bachelor, Haruspex and Changeling just went through the entire game without you playing as any of them, so all three of them were terrible!
• Genius Bonus: The flavor text for items often makes obscure references to literature and mythology.
• Intended Audience Reaction: The writers not only anticipated that players would want to criticise Mark Immortell, but gave them many dialogue options with which to do so. Let no one say that Ice-Pick Lodge does not appreciate honesty.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Much like the first game, some players are turned off by the game's difficulty. The developers would later release elaborate custom difficulty sliders to address this, albeit recommending one to try the 'intended difficulty' first, while also allowing players to make the game even harder.
• LGBT Fanbase: The game has amassed a contingent of LGBT+ fans who relate to the game's themes and mood.
• Memetic Mutation: Rock Paper Shotgun's review of the game became a source of unintentional hilarity within the fanbase, due to bizarre comparisons to Dark Souls and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Made worse by the fact that Rock Paper Shotgun was also responsible for bringing the original game recognition in 2008 with Quinton Smith's famous article series Butchering Pathologic.
• Memetic Loser: The Bachelor can come off this way in some fan portrayals.
• Obscure Popularity: Although the game is relatively obscure, it has a thriving and passionate fan community.
• One-Scene Wonder: Noukher (the talking bull that Artemy can buy as a pet) only shows up a handful of times, but is disproportionately mentioned by reviewers because, come on, you get to buy a bull! What other game lets you do that?
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Quite a few, and some players attempt to do one or more of these in the same playthrough
  • No Casualties Run: Don't let any of the named NPCs die of the plague
  • No-Damage Run: Finish the game without taking damage/dying
  • After the update giving the player sliders to adjust how quickly meters fill, players have completed runs with all the meters set to max difficulty.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • In the first game, the Haruspex was widely considered to have the toughest scenario of the three protagonists. He started the story with a town-wide bounty on his head and low stats across the board that made surviving the first day a struggle and put him at an immediate disadvantage in the following days as prices for goods skyrocketed. In this game, he has a much easier time accruing resources while they're still cheap, avoiding hostiles, and fixing his reputation that make the whole issue more of an annoyance than a life-or-death struggle.
  • It is very rare to actually become infected if you're at all paying attention due to the revised immunity system. Unlike in the original game, you can only become infected if your immunity is completely exhausted, and even then you have a short grace period to restore it. As long as you're carrying some form of immunity booster, you'll be fine — and regular immunity pills can be easily amassed from bartering or just buying them from pharmacies.
    • Additionally, unlike in the first game where dodging homing plague clouds was nearly impossible, now you can dispel plague clouds by lighting the lantern.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: While there are some modern conveniences, the fact that characters can be infected at random rather then just when the player screws up or due to plot makes it a lot harder. The child NPC type disappearing later on also contributes, as they have some of the simpler trading requirements.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The trading system is big enough to comprise its own game, encompassing dozens of useful items and several NPC types with distinct preferences and locations. Some players forgo quests entirely, focusing only on amassing themselves enough goods to survive the plague.
• Tear Jerker: Near the end of the game, all seven children on Artemy's list will become infected. Depending on the player's actions, luck, and foresight, you may not be able to save them all. Each kid has a different reaction to their infection, and Artemy's responses range from reminiscing with them about any adventures they had together, raging against the disease, or apologizing to them for being unable to save them. Murky and Sticky, two kids who have more or less adopted Artemy as their father, can be particularly heartbreaking.
  Artemy: Let me guess, now's the part where you say you don't need me and that there's nothing about me to love.
  Murky: No. I always loved you, from the first time I saw you.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some fans complain that due to having less dialogue than the previous game, and dialogue that is slightly easier to parse, it is not as complex as the previous game.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Though it's more useful than in the original game, you're still unlikely to get much use out of organs and their associated brews. While you can at least use healthy organs in brews now, both them and the antibiotic brews are very inefficient, as they take up twice the inventory space as store-bought drugs yet are only marginally better (or worse, if you use blood). Especially given that extracting organs ruins your reputation, you're usually better off ignoring this mechanic entirely.

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