The difficulty with Pathologic 2's difficulty

Pathologic 2

Pathologic 2 is a groundbreaking open-world horror RPG. Resist the plague. Make medicine. Heal people. Perform an autopsy. Trade to get what you need. Fight and kill if necessary. Survive. Struggle with an outbreak in a secluded rural town that is rapidly turning into hell.

“Nikolay, right now, what do you think about Pathologic 2? Was it a successful experiment?”

“Oh yes, of course! Certainly it was! Moreover, due to the conditions in which we constructed this game, it was a miracle that we released it. But I wouldn’t say it’s the game we wanted to release.”

Even now, over a year after Pathologic 2’s release, Nikolay Dybowski and Ivan Slovtsov have differing opinions about the surrealistic survival game they played leading roles in making. In fact, they’re still unpacking their thoughts about what they created, particularly in light of the changes they made after launch to its difficulty setting, a system which lies at the centre of a game which sets out to express the struggle in death and life.

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