Pathway - Two Reviews

Purchased this tonight but got distracted before I had a chance to play. Halfway was one of the best designed games I've ever played though, so I've got high hopes...
 
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I'm a little skeptical of those scores. Some posters on other forums are reporting that the combat is very simplistic and too easy. Supposedly it's even simpler than Halfway. I'm going to hold off buying until I see some more impressions.
 
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FYI, if you already own Halfway on Steam you can get Pathway a bit cheaper in the bundle offer.
 
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User reviews on steam are not too positive. Most negative reviews make valid remarks for giving a thumbs down. I might buy it on sale one day..
 
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I only played the first two adventures yet (second one consisting of 3 maps). And so far I can agree that the combat is rather easy and simplistic. Something similar could be said to the world map.

They are both working fine though. I just don't see a big depth in either one.

The issue with the combat is, that it's basically the 2-action system from firaxis X-Com (or their other game Half Way). With the simplified movement/action system you also kind of need a simplified cover-system.
The "key" in these combats is to flank. The characters have a wide movement range. So that means that most of the time you try to get enemies somewhat separated, so that you can run into the one enemies face without offering the option to another enemy to flank you. Usually after 2 shots any enemies are dead (at least on the maps I played so far where I also increased difficulty by 20%).
Now the second issue with the combat is the lack of variation. So far most battles, are very, very similar and solved within 5 minutes.

The issue on the world map is, that there aren't many mechanics which work woth each other. You have the fuel and ammo as limited resources, and you need to buy medicine and stuff to repair your armor. But in the end in the vast majority of events you will either find loot directly or a combat with loot. But there isn't much of "Hopefully I will find X, so I can do Y…now I found Z, what options do I have now?"
I FTL for example you could find different weapon systems and aliens on your ship which could change not only the gameplay significantly (e.g. stone aliens can run into fire, these insect aliens were great for boarding), and you adjusted your ship extention slots accordingly, as well as the plans for weapons you want to buy.
Pathway has some of that (you can also fill up your crew) but it doesn't bring a huge variation.

Edit: Forgot to mention the unlocks and the loot. All of that is cool, but it only enriches the "meta" and not really the current play sessions. While it makes significant differences which weapons you find in FTL, most of the stuff you find in Pathway is crap and only worth money. And the few times you find some item upgrades they will not have a significant impact. They will have a significant impact over time, like in the next game and so on, and you will need them to beat later adventures. But in the map you found them, they don't change as much as any found weapon system in FTL.

It's still a cool game. But I can understand some criticism.
 
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I only played the first two adventures yet (second one consisting of 3 maps). And so far I can agree that the combat is rather easy and simplistic. Something similar could be said to the world map.

I have to agree. The system is similar to Halfway, which I feared. It is functional but not very deep.
What I also see as a problem further narrowing down tactical play is the wiiiiiide movement range of enemies. You will be hard pressed to find a position that will not be flanked soon.
It's fun for now, but I am not sure for how long...
 
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I have to agree. The system is similar to Halfway, which I feared. It is functional but not very deep.
What I also see as a problem further narrowing down tactical play is the wiiiiiide movement range of enemies. You will be hard pressed to find a position that will not be flanked soon.
It's fun for now, but I am not sure for how long…

That's working fine for the most part though. Fortunately you can let the game display the exact movement range, so you can plan ahead. And the only opponent with extremely huge movement range (the dogs) are only doing melee attacks and rather low damage, so that it's not a big issue.
 
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Reading the comments here I expected the combat be better. Devs recently posted their plans, so I'll wait, until they realize & patch everything they said.
 
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From the fear of it being too roguelike to the pit progression is too easy.


I FTL for example you could find different weapon systems and aliens on your ship which could change not only the gameplay significantly (e.g. stone aliens can run into fire, these insect aliens were great for boarding), and you adjusted your ship extention slots accordingly, as well as the plans for weapons you want to buy.
Pathway has some of that (you can also fill up your crew) but it doesn't bring a huge variation.

FTL is meant to be played RT. As so often, players use spamming pause as an exploit to increase their performances.

By old gaming standards, FTL is not a great game. Gameplay expectations used to be as a game is learned, options are made more meaningful.

FTL is the opposite: as the game is learned, options are made meaningless. Which brings down variations.

Weapon loadouts that can carry up to the end game are not that numerous. And runs often boil down to try and look for these loadouts.

The way FTL is designed, planning ahead and fishing for a handful of loadouts should not happen. From one run to another, not much variation.
 
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Well...as always I disagree with the one half you wrote and don't quite understand what you are saying in the other. So...I'll leave it at that.
 
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I'm a little skeptical of those scores. Some posters on other forums are reporting that the combat is very simplistic and too easy. Supposedly it's even simpler than Halfway. I'm going to hold off buying until I see some more impressions.
That is comment from incompetent players that either grind to cancel any difficulty, either didn't tried anything else than default difficulty, or tried higher difficulty only when already when equipped with a significant amount of Legendary items.

As an exempla for now Vigilentes combats are lame in comparison, I hope it improves later. Expeditions games have lame combats in comparison. Halfway has quite less good and less diversified combats. I won't say Pathway combats match best tactical combats that few games achieved, but they are better than many and much better than those of Halfway. This is hidden because the dev didn't worked enough on difficulty aspects. But then start a profile, and play all adventures at max difficulty since the start and skip lame easy grinding.

One point is a quick list of mechanisms used by the games:
  • Cover/Half Cover/Full obstacle/Side step shoot/Range/Hit chance/Line of sight/Fog of war/HP/Armour/Evade/AOE/Critical/Double shots/Grenade/Heal kit/Armour repair kit/Overwatch for Sniper/Sprint/Crouch/Trench/Bleeding/Sticky/Armour piercing/Barrels exploding.
  • Two phase movements move and action in any order, or two actions but not two shoots nor two moves.
  • Damages types with different efficiencies against HP and armour.
  • Pistols/Shotguns/Assault Rifles/Sniper Rifles/Energy Weapons/Blade Weapons.
  • Weapons varying from classic parameters range/clip size/precision/special attack/damages type/for some an attribute penalty.
  • No timers which is in fact more a rarity. :)
  • Sneaky progression, it's only possible in some combats or contexts, and it is based on not be seen by any enemy.

To highlight some aspects most players that did only a quick run of all adventures didn't noticed:

Sneaky progression.
The game has sneaking aspect, not stealth. It works through not be seen by any enemy. Then enemies Ai have different behaviors, some like dogs just don't move at all, some will make a slow cautious progression to last position seen, some will do a sort of random small patrolling, some will rush once to last position seen but will stop is there's still no party detected.

Agro
There are some aggro management but I haven't yet decipher yet the rules or if some random variations are involved. The most clear example are the dogs, but I don't have a constant clear rule. It's like if most often, they target in priority only characters they have seen attack an ally, and they'll ignore other characters.

But there are other cases I noticed because I played quite a lot Shani which is a close range only character i tend use as a gambit, and still noticed weird case where she just be ignored despite a close target.

Event choice and combat start setup consequence
I can't say choices in events is the strong point of the game, but many events will involve a three choice possibilities:
- Ignore and continue.
- Take a random risk, if succeed get reward and no combat, if failed get a combat start more surrounded.
- Attack and get a combat start less surrounded.

Enemies with different AI
It's not about playing like against humans, no game achieve it anyway. it's about noticing some specific enemies behaviors to exploit the through small tactical choices, some examples:
- Some units will flee if too much damaged.
- Some units will be much more cautious from player characters position threaten. That is position of you characters will tend block many more positions to those units.
- Some units will lost their attack to heal them in priority.
- Some units cannot jump above walls, for example some maps allow ignore dogs during multiple turns.
- Some units will be more cautious and stay in background, waiting a better opportunity, when some units will rush in priority to attack.
- Some units exploit covers in priority, some units don't.
- Some units will never move if they are threatened by an overwatch, some will always more, and for some it depends.
- Some more.

Difficulties change the game
It not just more or less difficult it's gameplay aspects are changed from Normal difficulty to Max combats difficulty (for ammo/fuel setup the influence is more minor). At max difficulty ammo management makes sense very often, at Normal difficulty it's very rare. At max difficulty, many combats are deeply changed because units you can one shot kill are more rare or involve some/more gambling. I discovered the sneaky aspects at max difficulty, and this becomes important only at max difficulty.

No it's not just HP, Armor and damages
I haven't read that many wrong comments on a tactical game. I would admit the dev are involved in the problem by not offering clear difficulty levels, and even a max difficulty higher, and by having a default difficulty a bit too low for a tactical game.

It seems have push many players to superficial conclusions, and particularly that only HP/Armor and Damages count. It's total non sense, mobility, precision, bravery, range and tactical possibilities linked to weapons types are very important. The only two aspects I wonder about are critical chance and damages, Endurance for KO duration before death, and Energy weapons real utility.
 
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I have to agree. The system is similar to Halfway, which I feared. It is functional but not very deep.
What I also see as a problem further narrowing down tactical play is the wiiiiiide movement range of enemies. You will be hard pressed to find a position that will not be flanked soon.
It's fun for now, but I am not sure for how long…

The system is very different from Halfway, some key points:
- No more boredom abuse of static turrets.
- Enemies are much more mobile, this creates a much more dynamic gameplay, and more complex.
- Enemies have much more different Ai routines, better diversity, more tactical possibilities.
- No more awful enemies spawning abuse, in fact no spawning at all.
- Enemies don't have anymore radars to know where are characters, at reverse you can exploit sneaky progression (not stealth).
- There's a lot more enemies diversity if you don't stick to graphics and don't cancel a part of diversity through abusive Legendary collecting.
- There's more special attacks, including Overwatch (not only counter attack in Halfway), Bleeding, more AOE diversities, attack types I don't remember that in Halfway or less types.
- There's more special actions, I don't remind Sprint/Crouch/Trench in Halfway, Repair Armor.
- There's quite more diversity, and no more boredom abuse of fake diversity with enemies that take hours to kill.
- A quite good Bravery points system.

Yes it's not matching with best tactical games but those aren't so numerous. And it is much better turn based combats than many including most RPG and any single character turn based game.
 
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Well…as always I disagree with the one half you wrote and don't quite understand what you are saying in the other. So…I'll leave it at that.
He means FTL is real time so based on players skills, and with pause so based on pauses abuses.

Abuses will easily cancel options offered by the gameplay, because many players are lazy to find new possibilities when they already have a way to solve problems and repeat it.

Players skills make player abilities more important.

But yeah it's only arguing half working, so not really working, more plays with words that bring some thought or light on key elements, but not right conclusions.

Anwyay, compare this game to FTL is a total absurdity. For a little bit of game history, FTL no way invented a global map with a global management and random events, I would quote King of Dragon Pass or even Total War series.

And if it's absurd to link FTL and Total War series, it's as much absurd to link Pathway and FTL.

Pathway is party Tactical turn-based shooter with RPG elements, Roguelite elements, persistent elements, and a fixed roster of heroes.

EDIT: And to make it clear, FTL got big crowd funding Pathway hasn't, check next game dev did, tiny campaign, tiny amount of contents, not much mood, more a brainy tiny puzzle game with sophisticated procedural generation and high level gameplay tuning.
 
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The system is very different from Halfway, some key points:
[snip]

Yes it's not matching with best tactical games but those aren't so numerous. And it is much better turn based combats than many including most RPG and any single character turn based game.

Yes, there are some differences between the two games, but they are similar enough to be too shallow. There are some things Halfway did better and there are some things Pathway did better. But only in comparison to each other.
As much as I wanted to like both, I have to say there are much better games to waste your time on.
 
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That is comment from incompetent players that either grind to cancel any difficulty, either didn't tried anything else than default difficulty, or tried higher difficulty only when already when equipped with a significant amount of Legendary items.
Wait.
So grinding is players' fault? Difficulty ticks too?
It's not design fails? Or should I use your word - incompetence?
 
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