It's a little funny that I feel as relieved as I do about finally finishing Pathologic considering I didn't even play the game myself--I watched a playthrough. And some of that is probably why I can't give Pathologic 5 stars; I know the game would frustrate me to no end. I'm not someone who likes the grind in video games (except for in Lob Corp, for some reason), I'm not someone who likes to feel frustrated when I'm trying to get through the story, I hate sidequests in games, I hate feeling distracted by things external from the main plot, etc. and this is literally all Pathologic does for its entire gameplay loop across every route. You pick a character who is bogged down with the tedium of meaningless requests from side characters--characters who, in some cases, softlock you into losing the route if you deny them their whims.

So yeah. I didn't play Pathologic myself. And that meant I couldn't sit and pick through the letters the characters receive, that meant I couldn't decide which lore I thought was interesting and pursue that further--all for the sake of watching the LPer, who has played Pathologic Classic more than a handful of times, say, "Oh, I know where this is," and steamroll her way to the next quest point so I could see the route carried out to completion. Sort of an antithesis to what Pathologic asks of its player, but at least I got to experience the whole thing like this!! But it also meant some things just didn't fully hit for me in the way the devs probably intended, or the way I wanted them to, even if I could rationally understand everything or follow the train of thought--I just didn't have the same emotional connection someone would have if they struggled through those 12 days themselves.

Anyway, Pathologic is good. It's weird and uncanny and things don't always make sense and characters will go out of their way to interfere. "Why do you care?" Pathologic asks when it throws your fifth plague cloud in your face. "None of these people are grateful for your help," Pathologic says when you complete a quest and take a hit to your Reputation and get attacked in the street even while you're doing everything you can to help the townsfolk, "The town's probably doomed anyway," Pathologic chides you when you're trying to juggle your healer's survival as well as your Bound's.

Pathologic INSISTS to you that nothing in its world matters. The town is doomed. The game is a play put on for your, the player's--not your character's--entertainment. Your healer, a mere avatar, doesn't matter. But that's not true, either. Because your healer does matter. Why would they tell you that the Bachelor is named Daniil--or name any of the healers if the Powers That Be simply refer to them as their archetypes?

This game is a paradox. The Town-on-Gorkhon is not an inhabited world; it's a children's sandbox for us to play in. But it, in equal fervor, demands that you care about it anyways. And to ask yourself, "Why am I fighting so hard in a game that wants me to lose so bad?" What does that say about a person?

The healers all have different answers to that question. It's why routes work so well in this game. To understand their own answers in the face of futility, and encourage the players to understand those answers and see how the ending of their paths were the only decision each character could come to respectively. I remember feeling baffled at Artemy's insistence of preserving the town when I finished Daniil's route, but as I got further through Artemy's route, it was so apparent that there was simply no other choice for him. This is also why certain things land in routes but don't land in others. The Powers That Be hit much harder in the Bachelor's route than the Haruspex's, for example.

But this facetedness is what makes Pathologic so god damn brilliant, even if the game is definitely not for everyone. Even if the game is punishing and relentless in its cruelty (said the guy who didn't even play the game himself). You care. Or you want to care. But why? What do you want to fight for? What do you want to preserve? Find that, and hold onto it forever, no matter how much people berate you for it, no matter how much the world kicks you for it. Because if it matters to you enough in a video game, it should matter to you enough in real life, too.

There's still some stilted stuff to the game, and not all of it ended up fully meshing for me, and I was often confused or baffled by the dialogue choices or certain phrasings being used but overall this barely mattered to me.

I wish that there were a better way to translate Pathologic's Russian title, More. Utopia, into English, because "Plague Utopia" seems far more fitting. A fake world with a fake plague that you want to save despite it all. That's Pathologic, babey!!!