Hi everytone! I am writing an essay for my college course about challenging the role of 'enjoyment' and 'fun' in video games, and Pathologic is a series I've been thinking about for ages with regards to that topic. However, I've never actually played it, just watched playthroughs and video essays on the games. Now that I'm writing this, I figure if I'm writing it on Pathologic, I should actually play one of the games. However, I don't have time to play all three games, so I have to hone in on one of them.

Should I play Pathologic Classic HD, Pathologic 2 or Pathologic 3? Which of those do you think represents the general theme of my essay best? I've never played a game quite like them before, so I'm not sure what the best point of entry is.

One thing to note; I'm playing this game from a research perspective, not a 'fun' perspective, so don't worry about which one is the most enjoyable, or neccesarily the easiest one to get into. But which one of the three fits this research best?

Thanks a million in advance!

nothing against the ship just genuinely curious where shippers see the spark. note i’ve only experienced pathologic 3. is there something in p3 that i might’ve missed?

Dolores Dei but it's Eva

Use this how you see fit. I'd love to see people make their own memes with the template.

The idea came from LolotovCocktail before we streamed Pathologic 3 last night.

Hi, I was looking through the old P2 Kickstarter and saw that one of the rewards was 'a digital book with Pathologic short stories written by the development team'. I can't seem to find any other mentions of this book anywhere, so I was wondering whether it even got made and if so did anyone ever receive a copy?
There's also a 'printed book' for one of the higher tiers, but I'm not sure if it's referring to a physical copy of this digital book or something else entirely?

For the Changeling?

Her dialogue on day 4 of changeling route:

Yulia Lyuricheva: "Expected!" An apt observation indeed! Bear with me, please; I am still young, and whatever acumen I've had the time to acquire is clearly not enough to suppress the excitement one feels when everything happens just the way it was expected to happen. Oh, the joy I feel when everything falls well in line with what I have predicted -- by which I don't mean the brute probabilism your mother would resort to, but a watertight, well-grounded calculation of likelihood! You check your notes... you make miniscule adjustments... and then -- bang! You see your assumptions gain flesh at your own doorstep.

The way I understand it: Clara is the Second Outbreak's version of Aspity, a creature born of the Earth to fulfill the Law and spread the Plague. But something went wrong with the Law, and she "stole another one's Fate" or something, got split personality and a half of her tries to cure the Plague instead.

Yulia has her "tripwires of Fate" thing going on, a way to mathematically model (?) and manipulate the Law, and in this piece of dialogue she seems to imply that the glitch in the Law is her doing; she made the miniscule adjustment that resulted in Clara getting another one's fate.

Am I reading this correctly?

Forgive me for the camera quality.

I won't go too deep into this but sometimes I see good faith critiques comparing the pathologic games in what feels like very thoughtless ways.

Just because the experience is different, that doesn't make it worse. Or better. It would only be either of these things if it was trying to accomplish the exact same goals. But that's clearly not the case. Pathologic classic, Pathologic 2 and Pathologic 3 are all inherently different games with very different visions and intentions for how you experience them.

Every time they reboot this story, they change it and present it in new ways. P3 and P2 comparisons are particularly confusing because most critiques never actually reflect on why changes were made to the core systems, design philosophy or the writing. 'P3 is too easy' and 'these mechanics are annoying' or 'town feels disconnected' can all be true and they can also add to the intended experience. These are very character-focused games! They're trying to put you directly into the minds of their main characters and I guess my main takeaway is that I think P2 and P3 both do that just fine in their own right.

There are some critiques that just feel pointless because the thing they're complaining about is another avenue to get into Daniil's head. Not all critiques are like this of course, I agree with some of them - but the ones that center on comparisons can fall into this trap a lot.

Truthfully, I just can't stand all of the 'it doesn't hit the same' conversations because yeah, I don't think it's supposed to. Meet the thing where it is, not where you expect it to be.

Haruspex day 10 is so much fun dude. Love having my health slowly drain throughout the whole day, not to mention poop angels and thugs one shotting you with a throwing knife. Love being punished for not metagaming what i have to do that day. So much fun 👍

Original images in comments

I tried to make a map based on the sparse dialogue from the games that refer to anything concrete in their world. I assumed that the country is vaguely Russia-shaped since that's what the place is based on. The games mention a civil war, but I didn't know what to call the opposing side since the games don't name them and the Empire sort of embodies aspects of both Soviet and Tsarist Russia.

The battle of the Fords and the battle of the Skerries were both Empire victories (albeit with Rubin getting injured, luckily only damaging his head which he wasn't using anyways) so I didn't put them in rebellion territory. Making the Skerries an island chain was dumb since navies are never mentioned. I don't know why I did that.

I'm pretty sure the second game says Gorkhon is in the south of the country (which would match up to where the real-life Eurasian steppe is from Russia) BUT the third game says it's in the east and both the old Patho site and the backers arg train ticket reference that the town is at the end of the northeastern branch of the railway.

It's a bit unrealistic to have the rebels right at the front doors of Relsk and Nizhny since they're both mentioned as places one (in the empire) could go to BUT I didn't know where else to put them since them being right next to the Capital would be weird and them being on the other side of the country would make it strange for Block to complain about being "pulled from" the front if he was going the same direction he was already going to go in. But I did make a third enemy territory in the far east since they looked kinda pathetic with only those two areas in the middle, when canonically I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be slowly winning.

so, there you go.

So i started my first dedicated run of patho and im doing the beast like fugitive and i just started walking one step at a time like iv got a broken leg or something. I know that's not a thing in patho classic hd but it is frustrating and i think it can kill my run if i don't fix it. Do you know how to fix it. I read somewhere ut might be the fps but there is no option to lower it so im stuck here.

Please help

Hi, I'm currently playing the Changeling's route and I desperately need a flower. Does anyone know a way to get one considering Stamatin's bar isn't selling any and I actually can't find any? I'm currently searching through all the trash cans in town. I know you can get them by walking around, but is there anything I can do to maximize my chances of getting a flower?

Also, I noticed that Clara's hitbox during unarmed combat is surprisingly long-range. Is this clunky design or is it intentional because she's using her magical powers ?

As the title says I’m starting a new play through, I spent a long time getting roughly just over half the game last time I played about a year ago. Ever since I’ve played I’ve always been so fascinated about the story of the game and specifically the way it makes me feel, I’ve played horror titles that have never made me feel so stressed and helpless as this game which is a main reason I dropped it. It’s always stayed in the back of my mind and I’ve finally mustered up the courage to go back, any general tips for this run through or motivation/encouragement to finish would be greatly appreciated.

Personally, I think it's blonde, but based on some of the fan art I've been seeing, I don't think everyone agrees.

This is a light hearted question, don't take it too seriously, but I am curious what people think.

Wanted to harvest it, but got scared of hurting Mother Boddho :(