Pathway - Review @ IndianNoob

Pathway Review (PC) - Indiana Jones, One Turn At A Time

DETAILED REVIEW
Tactical RPGs are so hard to pull off. They do not usually have the power of strong storytelling to fall back on and has to depend solely on well-refined combat mechanics and balancing. Pathway from Robotality tries to mix it up a bit. By providing the player with dynamic, choice-driven gameplay and tactical turn-based combat encounters with the charm of an Indiana Jones flick, Pathway aims to find its cozy spot in the not-so-populated list of well-made strategy RPGs. Well, let's put that to the test.

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VERDICT
Pathway is a game with a lot of missed opportunities. While the first few hours are really good, the Repetitiveness and shallowness of the gameplay soon set in. Newcomers to tactical RPGs might have a good time with Pathway but veterans of the genre are better off setting their sights on something else for the time being or until it receives a major overhaul.

Score: 6.2

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Carnifex said:

It is a tough genre, but when well-done with decent combat and a great story, it can make for a truly memorable game. I've not tried this one myself, but it's still on my to-acquire list.

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• Default difficulty is too low for the genre, would have been fair for a RPG, not for a tactical game.
• The first adventure is somehow too easy, and perhaps too short.
• No clear difficulty levels, the game doesn't even remind difficulties setup, it's easy start an adventure and forget change the default.
• Not enough work on a max difficulty not letting open some easy abuse cancelling difficulty, like grinding or easy ignoring of injury system.
• Try merge some persistent aspects and tactical game is a very bad idea because persistent aspects mean the more you play the easier is the game, which is at opposite of a Tactical game that should make you feel achieve better because you progressed in mastering and knowledge of the game.
• The random drops aspects like a light Diablo touch doesn't match well with a tactical game that need let more control on difficulty from design and for players.
• No permadeath mode which is a problem for a game that communicates on some Roguelite aspects.

• Heroes death penalty during an adventure is a good design but the KO timed system remove a lot of the immediate thrill from combats.
• The injury system is too fake and too easily cancelled.
• It's too easy to grind without counter part.
• There's no penalty from abandoning an adventure when there's no more fuel.
• No campaign design which pushes to grinding and lower difficulty, and remove a layout favoring better a challenge approach which match better a Tactical game.

Kordanor said:

Patch 1.09 was ok and an improvement. They fixed some bugs and increased the drop chance of items.
However that's also kind of part of the problem in the first place. The continuity in this game isn't a good and working feature. Adding additional drops basically decreases the necessity to need to repeat missions over and over before being able to go to the next one.
So basically in best case you would just do the first mission, do the second, third, fourth, and fifth and finish the game. Mabye retry one or two of them.

Now you got rid of the grind…and the "rogue lite" feature which actually made it "special".

Instead in this case it would now be a linear and not very interesting tactics game without a decent story as this was sacrificed to have these roguelite features in the first place.

Imho Halfway, which was their previous game, was a good example on how it works just right.
Unfortunately the sales of Halfway didn't work out at all as they mentioned in some blog post. So their attempt to do something different was understandable.

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