Recent reviews by Archias ℞

Possibly my GOTY for 2024, this game is amazing. Dwarf fortress-esque simulations with gorgeous aesthetics and lore and everything it does it does well.

Hands down possibly my favourite game, at least in regards to multiplayer. It's like the best parts of battlefield 4, spread over a persistent continent. There's an endless amount of ways to play and places to play, great community battles, great interlocking gameplay systems across multiple different scales, and all around amazing. Please never stop being fun.

Not only one of the best looking, most well designed and well written games of all time, but I'd say it's arguably the best of ALL time in many respects. I'm contextualising it with the original game, but this re-imagining does everything the original did well just as good and in many cases better.

The way gameplay elements integrate is pretty unheard of, and the trading system, haruspex' medical procedures, and all the little ways items are used was commonly a point of confusion and frustration for people who tried to get into the original, and in this game they're explained fairly well unlike the original which lacked the pretty well-polished tutorial prelude of this one.

Things still feel mystical and theatrical, and there's detail in ways that both build on modern graphics and capabilities but also never sacrificing the ambience, the mystery and the otherworldliness that the first game offered, I'd argue it goes far deeper in some ways. Even all the added dialogue and situations you see around the steppe town all feel perfectly placed, it's truly a labour of love and an amazing feat to get so many things right. The new soundtrack is great, although I miss some of my favourites from the first that I don't think got updated in the p2 ost.

Given how integrated all the mechanics are with one another, though, it is a game you have to learn because it does things on it's own terms instead of giving the player freedom within typical game conventions. Themes of fatalism and metaphysical interconnectedness present in many of the other Russian greats influence everything, even the way you give people medicine. There's a diagnostic process that's based on approximating symptoms for example and often choices your character has to decide on have no 'right' answer, sometimes the only things you reasonably can do are bad and the game (and some of the characters) is well aware of that, which is way more interesting and allows for more depth than basing things off a good and bad morality slider like in mass effect. The game has things to say and it knows how to say them.

Ice pick lodge break a lot of game conventions that other games don't really go in this interesting of a direction with when they do the same, it gives the game the freedom to have a survival gameplay loop that outclasses every other survival game I've played because of all the layers which interact with eachother without feeling overbearing. It's still pretty darn jaw-dropping that a lot of these ideas were from the 2005 original, but even more impressive that the design philosophy has grown in the right way so many years later. There are a lot of great essays about Pathologic on youtube I'd highly reccommend to learn the basics from but much like the original dark souls in it's hayday; Pathologic is a game you need to put in an initial effort to engage with (which p2 makes easier than p1). But if you do, the game world will suck you in and immerse you like nothing else. I'm only frustrated it isn't more popular with the people who would like it, if you think games are art then please give this or p1 a chance, it's up there with Dostoyevsky.

My game of the year 2018, hands down. I want a sequel so bad.

This is probably one of the deepest RPG's ever written. It doesn't play the plot too loose like some shallow RPG's do, and doesn't confine you within it's world at all. My second playthrough is immensely different and in that I can understand the pure depth of the choices you can make, true to Obsidian writing as it's ever been. Let's say you want to betray the army you're working with, you can either straight up start to take everything for yourself or you can work with them up until any major plot point and choose to betray them, much like some of the options in KOTOR 2. I highly recommend this game to anyone and everyone who likes plot, choices, rpgs or any other Obsidian games.

They broke all their promises. This game is a steaming heap of cowshit that I can only reccomend to people who play ♥♥♥♥♥♥ games for fun. I feel truly hollow after realizing I payed 27 AUD for what is functionally an alpha of a mediocare game.

I CAME.

Won't save, what a piece of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash.