Here let me spoil a bit of the FEAR & HUNGER 2 TERMINA storyline.

Im going to make this my steam review.

In the intro, you have a weird dream, where half skinned monsters are forcing you to make boxes, he cuts off your legs, and you crawl around and he kills you.

Then you are standing in front of an evil moon 🌙 🎶
The servant of the moon restores your limbs.
And tells you about the festival of terminus.
14 enter, but on the third day if 1 survives, they are granted entry to another world 🌎.

So I wake up from the dream and everyone had the same dream. I walk out of the train, picking up randomized items.

I come outside the train.

All the characters I could have chosen are standing there.

I notice immediately that I can attack them, talk to them, or pursue my quest hiking into the woods.

I am a female occultist.
And it is the terminus festival after all.

I find the soul mage, a black dude, and I try to kill him, to see what happens, but he's too powerful, he kills me in a round or two, with powerful magic.

Then I think to myself, first time I tried this on pc, I was the girl in a wheelchair ♿.

I restart and get to the same point.

I attack the girl in a wheelchair, she complains as I kill her.

Then they all tackle me,
And tie me up.

I struggle for about 2 or 3 minutes, then some people wander in, talking about what they're going to do with me. They wander off to find an officer to arrest me.
The train staff all stopped the train in the middle of nowhere and wandered away.

Then I get summoned to the moon again. The servant of the moon congratulates me on killing the first of the 13, he tells me that although I am free to do what I want, it's probably better not to survive until day 3. He gives me a save point (a rare find) and sets me off on my mission to kill the other 12, and that's what I'm going to do.

But that was only one path I could have taken. I could have stayed with the people waiting by the train. I could have wondered through the forest towards the large and foreboding tower in the distance, within the walls of the city. And I could have been any of the other characters, including soul mage.

A VERY STRONG START.
5/5 ON THE FIRST 20 MINUTES ALONE.

[will update after I win the game]

[based on the older version]

Pathologic is my favorite game of all time. It is a critically acclaimed game from Russian Developer Ice Pick Lodge, who also made The Void and Knock Knock. It has absolutely everything I want in a game, it is dark, bleak and violent, but also beautiful and intelligent. The story is mysterious and fascinating, full of twists and turns. It is an open world, survival horror, RPG adventure FPS, set in a strange and wonderful town. The game wants to kill you, not only that, it wants to destroy your save files, make all of them unusable. The game tracks a variety of player data, Reputation, Health, Immunity, Hunger, Exhaustion, and Infection. If your reputation is too low you will be attacked on sight by the townsfolk, you lose reputation by killing innocent people, you gain it by doing good deeds and killing criminals. If your health is too low, you die, obviously, however, gaining health is not always an easy thing, even a small fight can put you in a dangerous situation. The only way to heal is with bandages and tourniquets which you get by trading bottles of water with drunks. You get water by taking bottles out of garbage cans and filling them with water. Immunity determines your ability to fight plague. Hunger is a constant enemy, as the situation deteriorates, the economy changes, a loaf of bread may cost 4 times as much on the second day, and if you run out of food, it begins to eat away at your health until you die. You can buy food at stores or break into people's houses and wreck up the place, stealing all of their food in the process. Exhaustion is your tiredness, like a normal person you need to sleep at night, if your exhaustion is too high, you can die. Maybe you need to sleep, but if you sleep, you'll starve. And infection determines the effects of the virus taking over your body. If you savescum you can avoid getting infected for a while, but certain story segments may force you to. Infection can be treated with medicine, and cured with a children's powder, a rare and important item which can save you in a pinch. At night the knifebums run free, stabbing people to death and rifling through their pockets, and you as well if you're not careful. As the game progresses, the town is slowly devoured by plague, and each day is worse than the last.

But hiding among all this evil and punishing behavior, is one of the most beautiful and amazing stories ever told in a game. It came to them in a dream. The characters are spectacular, it has branching paths and meaningful dialogue options. It is filled with warring factions and groups, all plotting against each other, your friend today can be your enemy tomorrow. In Russia, this game won awards for it's storytelling, but their earlier release suffered from a terrible translation. I didn't think it was that bad, I felt the translation made the town seem more foreign, it was still an amazing game, but we can finally enjoy the game as it was meant to be played. This is a much better translation that makes a lot more sense. There are 3 playable characters totalling 70+ hours of gameplay. In the earlier version the Devotress's path was unplayable due to the state of it's translation, but this time they used an in house team to make sure they got it right, and now her path is fully playable. You unlock her by completing the path of one of the other players, she's the woman as reward.

The only caveat I would add is that I actually prefered the opening scene in the theater from the original version. I felt it had more emotion, and better acting, but the new version is defintely clearer, and probably a lot closer to the original Russian.

Each character's path is different. When you choose one character the others plot against you. The bachelor walks into town a celebrated hero and immediately begins mingling with the town's ruling elite. The haruspex shows up and is immediately beaten to a pulp and wanted dead by the entire town, he is starving and tired, and the only mission he can initially find is a hit job against a small child. In the original release this mission was changed to have you murder a dwarf. It made no sense but they did it because they were afraid, but in this release they returned this mission to it's previous condition. And after pulling out a gun and shooting a random child on the street just to see if it was possible, I can assure you that this game has been restored to it's original Russian state. It is actually a pretty damn bold decision in the current climate. I don't know about the devotress's path because I didn't complete the game yet to unlock her, but I suspect it is the most interesting part.

When you begin the game you are given a list of adherents, each character has their own adherents. If you fail to complete your missions during the day one of your adherents will get sick, and they will die if you do not provide them with a children's powder. In order to see the ending of the game, at least one of your adherants has to be alive at the end, and you can save before it to see the different endings each adherant has to offer. Some are incompatible, for one to live, the other must die. Although I have not seen the ending yet.

The graphics are a little nicer, and everything has been polished to perfection. The music, incidentally, is heavenly. Even the console mode is baked into the game and looks a lot prettier. The number one criticism of the previous version was it's translation, well that is gone now. Hopefully people can finally enjoy the game as it was meant to be. It really is one of the hidden gems on Steam, it is probably the most underrated game in all of history. It is so good, it is actually important, it gives us a glimpse of what games could be like some day. It is an artistic masterpiece which I have enjoyed more than any movie, book, tv show or music I have ever encountered. It is glorious, on par with the great works of literature, and you owe it to yourself to try it out. This is by far the best version of this game and a nice warm up to the full on remake in 2016. I'm hyped.