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Erm... no startforce on demo, that's for sure. Not so sure about final game, but I cannot tell anything about it.
And, one side note:
Make sure to read the manual.
Well, I've played about half an hour of it. The voice acting isn't that great. The translation is god awful - I can hardly understand what the hell people are saying when they talk to me. Subtitles for the beginning part would have been nice. Actually, I'm taking a step back - I want to stress how incredibly difficult it is to make sense of conversations. I feel like I'm uncovering a strange alien culture. I haven't read the manual, so I won't speak on gameplay. All I've really done is spoken to people.
The graphics aren't the best out there, but they're okay. The exterior looks...barren. It's adds to the atmosphere, but it looks really empty.
Shit, i realize Russian Developers don't have millions to invest in localization of games all the time but don't some of them have an English speaking buddy that they can run the game by just to see if it's passable?
From my experience in Russia, Russians are only slightly more likely to speak English than Americans are to speak Russian.
And sometimes the ones who think they can, well...
::Old man in a rural town approaches me while I'm standing with my student group::
Old man: Are... you... America?
Me: Da, ya amerikanka
Old man: Are... you.... (looks frustrated)
Friend: Mui govorim po-russki! (We speak Russian!)
Old man (ignoring friend): Are... you... Pushkin?
Me: Ah... nyet?
I got called Pushkin for the next three days. No idea what the guy was trying to ask me.
The problem with not speaking a language is... you have no idea how well your "English speaking buddy" actually speaks English.
I was thinking more of a buddy in the States, England, Austrailia or even a fluent Western Europeaner. I dated a Russian chick for awhile and i loved how she left "the" and "a" out of her sentences.
The translation really is a barrier here - its not like Space Rangers 2 where its just a phrase here or there, it really is difficult to understand. It feels like its been put through babelfish a couple hundred times.
I'm pretty sure the game would be good if i could understand it, but considering the stroy is clearly going to be important, unless someone releases an englifiying patch i can't see this being fun to play, which is a pity.
I hate to label games, but it's more of an adventure. At least it's not what people usually call RPG. You can roleplay to a some degree, but you don't get experience points and you don't have any permanent attributes, which could be increased.
The translation really is a barrier here - its not like Space Rangers 2 where its just a phrase here or there, it really is difficult to understand. It feels like its been put through babelfish a couple hundred times.
I'm pretty sure the game would be good if i could understand it, but considering the stroy is clearly going to be important, unless someone releases an englifiying patch i can't see this being fun to play, which is a pity.
You said it a lot better than I did. And dammit, I'm actually really interested in this game, too. Hopefully the final product will wrinkle out most of the translation issues.
I would hesitate to call the Russian version weird in a good kind of way, though it probably has its charm. In fact, the language used was similiar to that of the infamous 'gothic poetry' - barely understandable and pretentious beyond reason. Imagine a whole village filled with archetypal insane prophets, at times it all looks like a huge joke.
The only way to make Pathologic appealing to a non-Russian speaker is to adapt it in the same way certain titles were adapted for Russia (Odium / Gorky-17, for instance). All the dialogues should be re-written by an English-speaking author and the plot might be completely revised, too. The player must be sure that all the dialogues actually make some sense. Otherwise it would be almost impossible to sort out properly translated lines from pure gibberish, and all the fun will be lost.
You have twelve days in the town, you are told. There's no pretence that it's not defined. The people don't know, but they only exist because of you, you're told. But you knew that too. You're the player. And this is no one-off smug reference at the start. Every night, after midnight, your quest log clears, and the Masks at the local theatre puts on a play based on your day, and your internal turmoil.
...
It's not excusable to release games poorly localised, and Pathologic falls short of the 7/10 I so desperately want to give it because of this. But when it works, it works so beautifully. And when it doesn't, it's occasionally, accidentally, amazingly poetic. It's just so full of ideas, and ideas on which it delivers.
The understanding of the theatrical works of Bertolt Brecht is so very clear. This is a game that wants to create critical self-reflection in its player.
Anyone given this one a shot yet? Sounds mighty interesting, but hearing about localization issues always gives me pause, although I did hear that the poor translation actually serves to heighten the atmosphere in places.
Well, shame on me that I didn't pick it up yet, however I think that it CANNOT be translated 100% correctly. Based on what I've read, it's really complex in that regard... however, I agree, feeling of 'strangeness', as though the story was written by unhumans, is present even in Russian version .
I doubt that it will be 'right' strangeness, though.
There's a demo - I tried it, and although the actual gameplay seemed interesting, i just couldn't get into it at all due to the horrible, horrible translation - (much, much worse than, for example, SpaceRangers 2) and considering its story-driven, not knowing what the hell is going on is a big problem. Pity, becuase it seemed like it could be an enjoyable game.
The translation is plain horrible. You should know russian well (and play original version, of course) to see it tho. The game itself is... unusual, not for everyone's taste, actually. So, if you know what are you buying, go for it. If not, wait for price drop. In that case you wouldn't be disappointed much if it's not up your liking.
My fickle connection couldn't handle the demo, so I'm having to rely on you folks. Anyhow, from what I'm hearing this one seems like its going to be a pass:
(much, much worse than, for example, SpaceRangers 2)
Pathologic was mentioned here and there couple of times, but it's usually described as some "weird artsy game with lots of flaws". I'm playing it right now (3d day for the first character). I want to say that this description is misleading.
First, the game is not weird for the weirdness sake, as are most of the "artsy" titles. It has very strong internal logic. In fact, it has more of it that most of the modern games.
Second, such description ignores and, indeed, undermines the fact that Pathologic is an example of very good design.
Let's see what it achieved.
It's the first game I know that makes time an important factor in everything you do. It doesn't just start a counter to screw up your quest. Time goes on independently of what you do. Events happen on their own. Events follow one another, rather that follow the order in which you "activate" them, as in most of the games. This by itself is a remarkable achievement.
Then, it has a full-scale town, which is the best in-game settlement I've ever seen. It's not just a bunch of randomly copypasted buildings. It is designed with the culture of inhabitants in mind. The freakiest thing about it is that it's not very far off from real life.
Overall, the setting of the game isn't just some licensed conglomerate of weirdos. It has detailed and unique culture. Which doesn't boil down to pieces of flavor text, and has very tangible and significant effects on things that happen in the game. In a sense, the setting is part of the storyline, not vice versa.
Characters are designed properly too. They aren't quest slaves. Anyone of any significance appears in the storyline many times in many roles and situations. They are part of the world with their own connections, agendas, plans and so on. The same goes for the main character (at least for Daniil Dankovsky). It's kind of ironic that a bachelor of medical science with 3 bullets in revolver is treated with more respect (and, sometimes, fear) than some medieval superhero, who occasionally kills an army or two.
(So far) the game doesn't have self-contained mini-games that take a life of their own. Killing people isn't a damn hobby for the main characters. Neither is looting. Both are methods of survival, as they should be.
Also, the game doesn't stay the same for very long. So far each day had something that changed the behavior model for the main character.
First day, everything is normal. Second, prices go up several times. (Which is remarkable in its own right, since economics is part of the storyline. I sold half of my inventory to get some food.) Then the disease starts to spread.
This provides much better sense of progress than any kind of leveling.
The game uses non-intrusive scripting.
You are encouraged not to reload by the design itself.
Caution is not punished. Superhero stunts are.
Paying attention to things and remembering conversations pays off.
Etcetera.
RPG designers could learn a lot from Pathologic. I recommend it to anyone interested in game design or in story-based games. Can't say there are any significant flaws so far. I'm playing Russian version, though, so I don't know how bad is the translation.
A word of warning to English version users:
Sometimes, wierd language and strange words are NOT translation flaws (at least you might be inclined to think so at times).
There are plenty of those in Russian version too... however, while it may look wierd, it's organic and not clumsy. Latter, I fear, is the result of bad translation after all.
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