I have a relationship with the pathologic games. I played them on release order just by mere coincidence, I found pathologic classic HD on steam recommendations and was captvated by how eurojank and artsy t looked and I loved the atmosphere, how uncanny it is and how just off and cryptic everything is, and backed up with an equally uncanny and stressing gameplay loop, barely scraping by and the tense jank that fights have just bring everything together, I love the sense of trying to make the best out of a shitty situation, games like pathologic and pathologic 2, fear and hunger, darkest dungeon have loops that are directly geared toward putting you in those edge situations where you are scrambling for food or just a little time. Well, I was shocked with how the whole survival aspect of pathologic 3 was completely missing and replaced by… a binary emotion bar which is kinda fun in it's own way, I don't think it's a horrible idea, put the execution of it is a bit weak to my liking, basically there is no reason to want to be aphatetic in this game, it drains a rare resource, which s critical to the most important mechanic in the game and it slows you down, wasting what precious time you have and thus have to use up more of your most important resource. But how is the story? It's the same events of course of every pathologic game, now from the perspective of daniil dankovski as it has been for all the series of games, with slight changes, rehearsing the same play over and over again trying to make it perfect. Ice pick lodge has been, I think running into the same mistake I try never to fall in the pathologic games, to just be OK with something that is not perfect, it is sort of the meta narrative of the series and I do find itt quite clever that now basically save scumming is a real mechanic in the game, a limited, kind of save scumming, but I can't help but feel like that is what it is, a more legitimate way of save scum which eliminates the survival aspects of the game in favor of a complex web of interdependent and interconnected events that come together to form a grand narrative, which put that way it is a great idea, and to be frank I think it is, but I think not one for me who liked to just roll with whatever shitty situation I found myself in, I maybe am not the kind of person that this game was meant for. I must admit that whenever I was about to open pathologic 2 I felt absolute dread of how stressing every choice is, how much time could be wasted and I wanted to wait for me to be in the best condition to play it, awake, with time to think, and maybe while having my morning coffee, but now, I don't know if my age got me to dread playing a game for hours to find that a character died and not knowing exactly why, in retrospective I do feel a bit silly about that blunder in specific and every time I think about pathologic 3 I find myself wanting to like it as I did the other two installments, but whenever I play it I feel just this feeling that something is missing, it's a visual novel with time travel basically which I need to play in a very specific way the devs wanted me to. But is it a visual novel? Well, in a strict sense it is of course not a visual novel, it does have game-play and very fun albeit atomized game-play sections, the combat, infected district and hospital examinations are all competently and in case of the hospital examinations excellently designed, loved every case and section of this game play section, having once worked as a medical interpreter hearing patients obviously lie about their health conditions brought back memories that are at the same time incredibly infuriating as they are funny. Combat here is too clean, being only like a little know game called “I am alive” where you hold people trying to mug you at gunpoint, managing them so you can get away. It is a good system but a bit basic, being able to be manipulated very easily. One more thing before going into my biggest gripe with the game, is the models and animation of the characters. The models I think are all beautiful, I specially like the new eva yan model which we get to see a lot, and the rest of the characters still look the part, in this semi-stylized look they all have, sadly I cannot say the same about the animation and facial expression they have, while some of the morphine addicts in the game may look well having stiff animations, it becomes quite jarring when some of the more sober characters move like crackheads. What is the issue with pathologic 3? I think my main issue with pathologic 3 is that I don't get it, I don't really understand what is trying to tell me at all, is it an exploration of power dynamics in a town both local and from the extended government? Is it telling me about lack of importance given to investment in scientific research? Is it talking to me about how in theater you cannot redo scenes but in cinema you have editing magic? Is it all, is it none? I after some time felt exhausted with how much I needed to redo certain events because they did not fit together into an acceptable ending for the devs, sometimes blocking me from time traveling to some days. I think after talking to my partner about this that this game was made not for fans of the game, but for video essayists, streamlining lore dumps and retries to get all the lore bait that we have that seems to barely serve a narrative in favor of a meta-narrative. I really was looking forward to this game, I got it on release date, I was exited for akira yamaoka to score some tracks, but I just feel like this was not made for me, I can't say it's bad there is so much I love about his game, some clever moments, but I feel like the different sections of this game, they are disconnected from one another for a narrative that at the same time wants to be as meta as possible. Pathologic has always been meta in it's storytelling, but in a way I leaves the in-universe storytelling fall by the wayside in favor of the meta-narrative? I feel for the devs, I can tell they went through so much to get this game done, I have no doubts that the people at ice pick lodge were under a lot of pressure to even get anything developed because of the war in their country and the pressure inherent to following up pathologic 2. but it feels like they wanted to go all out they left any restraint to their narrative behind.