Playing pathologic 3

[u/ComplexSecretary3057]

I’ve recently just finished my first run through of pathologic 2 and enjoyed it a lot once doing a deep dive into story and playing both endings. I don’t think I could play another run of pathologic 2 for a while because it is genuinely a draining experience, but how far does pathologic 3 differ?
I’ve heard it’s a bit more forgiving in the sense that it’s not “as hard of a game” I’m interested to play it but if it’s anywhere near as crushing as pathologic 2 can be I think I may just need to take a little break and come back to the series at a later point.

[u/tellemarc]

If you can, avoid all spoilers before going in. I managed to not know anything and the plot twists ended up being incredibly effective for me. Once you decide you're going to give it a shot, stay off this reddit, avoid discussion, just get in there.

But as someone who has 75 hours in P3 now... it's a game that is taxing mentally and psychologically but all of that is purely narrative. In P2, Artemy's journey is harrowing and difficult, but what exacerbates that is the constant balancing of meters. It's hard to keep Artemy alive and if you fail, the game becomes harder. You know all this.

With Daniil, the meter you need to track to keep him alive is "how many calomel do I have on me" with a side of "is my mood high enough that Apathy isn't going to drain my time travel juice." For real: Apathy will ruin you faster than Mania.

But to me it feels like the devil's bargain for not having to handle the survival meters is two-fold. One: This game is extremely good at simulating the mental strain of being a time traveler. Esp from day 7 thru 12, trying to line up events the way you need to requires you to remember a huge amount of information and to predict the effects of your interference accordingly. (Unless you use walkthroughs, i guess. I didn't touch one until I hit a questline I just could not solve and guess that, none of the walkthroughs cover it anyway! Ha.)

Two: This is purely subjective but I think the horror of Daniil's Fun Steppe Vacation easily outstrips the horror of Artemy's. I love Artemy to death and I will never say he's got it easy. But the sheer amount of "oh what the actual fuck" moments in Daniil's P3 route is just worse.

The reason all that avoids being as crushing as P2 is, again, lack of the survival meters as a heightening tactic, but also: the game has multiple moments of actual levity and comedic beats. (On Day 6, go figure out what Artemy is doing, trust me.) It knows when to let you take a breath. And your forward momentum is so player-driven, curiosity-driven, I think that mitigates the strain.

That's my more-than-two-cents.

[u/Previous-Ad-1542 → u/tellemarc]

Which quest did the walkthroughs not cover? I used one for later days because I was so confused, and now I'm wondering if I missed some plot line

[u/tellemarc → u/Previous-Ad-1542]

OP, don't look, this is literally Day 12 spoilers.

I really wanted Khan and the Dogheads to evacuate to the New Nutshell instead of the usual location. I thought it was simply a matter of making sure that the Crude Sprawl was not infected on Day 11, which took no joke an hour of rearranging decrees. But it still didn't trigger. I have two theories on what is needed to make it happen, so that's on my current To Do list.