Jump to content

The Pathless Review


Recommended Posts

ThePathlessboxart.jpg.cdde095809f684274e3c604937c94259.jpgFrom Giant Squid, the developers of Abzû, comes another stylish yet minimalist adventure game. Originally released on other systems back in 2020, Switch players can now explore this world of vivid colors, sprawling forests, and archery-based puzzles in The Pathless, all with an emphasis on fluid movement mechanics. It makes for an intriguing little game that is surprisingly repetitive through its short run time.
 
You play as The Hunter, an archer who has traveled to the edge of the material and spiritual worlds to investigate a dark curse that threatens all. There she meets a god-spirit in the form of an eagle, who tells her to release four other god-spirits from the cursed influence of The Godslayer, who seeks to consume their power and destroy the world. From there, storytelling isn't a priority in The Pathless, or at least not cutscene-style storytelling. This game is more about ambiance and peppering in light lore elements through bits of information that you can collect. However, their scattered, optional nature and the lack of other NPCs or significant scenery—outside of forests and ruins—does make the lore feel inconsequential. You're not likely to get pulled into this game from its world-building.
 
ThePathlesseagle.thumb.jpg.31f0dbe1292d52d35eabb8c4baa42abe.jpg
 
You may get pulled in due to its exploration mechanics, though. Fast, fluid movement is a focus of The Pathless. You can sprint on land for a limited time thanks to a stamina gauge, but if you shoot floating targets you'll recover stamina and gain a burst of speed. You'll automatically lock on to nearby targets so you don't have to execute fancy trick shots, just keep shooting arrows to maintain your stamina and momentum. The sense of speed is definitely satisfying, though the simplicity of hitting targets does make the exercise feel a little pointless—you're literally just pressing ZR every couple seconds as you run. Still, cruising through the environment thanks to these bursts of speed is pretty fun.
 
Your goal in each region is to free the resident god-spirit, and to do that you'll need to collect spirit tokens. You'll complete various puzzles scattered throughout the environment to earn tokens, then take them to glowing towers to activate them. The puzzles vary quite a bit in terms of difficulty and engagement. Some can be tricky and satisfying to solve, but many are simply time-consuming as you activate various switches to line up the correct arrow shot. While running through the environment is fast and fluid, walking around to move switches into the correct positions is slow and plodding. Sometimes you'll even solve the puzzle early but actually executing the solution drags on and on. The upside to all of this is that there are more tokens than you need available in the area, so if you're truly not enjoying a puzzle you can simply leave and tackle a different one. That freedom of choice nicely reflects the game's freedom of movement.
 
ThePathlesswaterfalls.thumb.jpg.27fd543bd0c31d9916408fc13ca5edb9.jpg
 
The caveat to all of this running around though is the cursed god-spirit roaming the land. In each region you'll need to be wary of the giant red cloud of evil energy that wanders around the environment (and also teleports sporadically). If you're caught in the cloud you'll need to survive a quick stealth challenge to escape, otherwise you'll lose a bit of the energy you've collected over the course of the game. It's cool to have a roaming threat in the area—there are no other monsters or enemies to speak of—but the stealth sections are almost antithetical to the game's other themes: all you can do is slowly walk to avoid being spotted, and oftentimes the god-spirit will stumble into you anyway and there's little you can do about it. It's a boring, unsatisfying threat that is more of an annoyance as you avoid the red cloud while exploring or sometimes run away from it entirely in what feels like just a way to waste time, not challenge the player.
 
Boss fights are also a bit mixed. There's definitely a thrill to them as you chase down each god-spirit boss and shoot arrows at their giant glowing weak points (classic), but for some reason these fights are really long in The Pathless. After the chase sequence you'll need to shoot the weak points again in a smaller arena battle, and then there'll be a third phase to contend with as well, sometimes another slow stealth sequence. The fundamentals of shooting the weak points never change though and these drawn out boss fights completely overstay their welcome in The Pathless.
 
It's also a bit surprising that a relatively short game can have such long, tedious gameplay moments. It only takes roughly five hours to finish The Pathless, or at most about ten hours if you're chasing down every piece of lore you can find. Even across that short amount of time though, there are some unfortunate repetitive gameplay moments.
 
ThePathlesscliffs.thumb.jpg.9edc939b8612cc1a9e05985a6de0cf41.jpg
 
In terms of presentation, The Pathless is stunning, though its performance on the Switch isn't doing it any favors. The limited but vivid color palette makes for a stylish visual design, even when the environments are pretty open and empty. Sadly though, poor frame rate on the Switch doesn't let the game shine quite as much as it's clearly meant to. The soundtrack meanwhile is pretty solid. Though the music tends to only really pick up during boss fights, even the more light exploration tunes add a ton to the ambiance.
 
The Pathless is a brief and stylish adventure that turns running from objective to objective into a satisfyingly speedy endeavor. The gameplay loop grows repetitive entirely too quickly though, with almost nothing to distinguish the four main areas of the game. Still, if you're looking for a game that takes the thrill of exploration and scrunches it down into a quick one-afternoon or one-weekend experience, The Pathless offers a fun and fairly simple journey.
 
Rating: 7 out of 10 Spirits
Link to comment
  • Chrom featured this topic

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...