Pathway

 Switch
Pathway Image
Metascore
69

Mixed or average reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

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  • Summary: The year is 1936...
    In a time of global turmoil, Nazi influence spreads inexorably across Europe and the Middle East. Rumors are abound of secret excavations and mysterious artifacts, not to mention the odd whisperings and tales of gruesome occult rituals...
    It's up to you to assemble a    The year is 1936...
    In a time of global turmoil, Nazi influence spreads inexorably across Europe and the Middle East. Rumors are abound of secret excavations and mysterious artifacts, not to mention the odd whisperings and tales of gruesome occult rituals...

    It's up to you to assemble a team of bold adventurers, and journey through the deserts, explore bunkers, and temples of Northern Africa to discover their hidden treasures and secrets before they fall into the hands of Nazi forces. You and your companions must work together to overcome overwhelming odds - the fate of the world depends on it!

    You haven't heard this one before...
    Every campaign is generated when it begins, so no two adventures will ever be the same! You never know what's around the next corner - so stay on your toes! Even the most seasoned adventurers can uncover new and exciting discoveries.

    Adventures full of mystery
    Journey into the unknown and uncover hidden secrets, treasures, characters, and events which have been buried away. There's a wealth of discoveries to be found, and surprises to excite you throughout each adventure!

    Learn from your mistakes
    In Pathway, defeat isn't necessarily the end of your adventure. Characters will retain their experience after defeat, so players can invest into building a team which will get progressively stronger! There's even rare equipment and advanced skills and abilities to unlock for every adventurer.

    Features:

    * DYNAMIC ADVENTURES - Discover 5 different campaigns of varying difficulty, with each and every attempt generating a new web of encounters and unique storyline.
    * TOUGH CHOICES - Every explored location presents you with one of over 400 hand-crafted story events. Search the well? Save the villagers? It's up to you!
    * DECISIVE CONFLICTS - Use cover and positioning in exciting turn-based squad combat. Learn to make the best use of your equipment and your team's abilities, to vanquish a relentless foe, in ruthless and clever ways!
    * BUILD YOUR TEAM OF ADVENTURERS - Each of Pathway's 16 unlockable characters has their own skills, weaknesses and quirks, from the almighty melee strength of Brunhilda, to rifle expert daredevil Jackson, and knife-wielding huntress Shani.
    * HIDDEN TREASURES - Unearth riches untold, from common weaponry to rare and unique items with special abilities. Perfect your load-out and cash-in on your high-value treasures for a tidy profit.
    * THRILLING VISUALS - Classic 16-bit pixel art enhanced with unprecedented depth, lighting and shadows using Pixel/Voxel Hybrid Technology.
    * RECOVER & REPLAY - Sometimes failure is the best path to winning. Progressively explore the procedurally generated world, and grow stronger and learn more with each defeat, taking your loot with you even after death.

    With soundtrack by the critically-acclaimed composer, Gavin Harrison of Halfway fame!    … Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Hey Poor Player
    Jun 27, 2021
    80
    Pathway has a lot to offer. It’s got aspects of a tabletop roleplaying/board/resource management/strategy game all in one. And while that may sound like a confusing mash-up, it’s executed quite well. Really, my biggest complaint is the steep difficulty curve, as each mission seems significantly more difficult than the one before it. While there are options to reduce the difficulty, even still it felt needlessly hard at times.
  2. Impulsegamer
    May 26, 2021
    80
    The game is good but not perfect. The menus are clunky, and the navigation of character skills armor and weapons needs work. These issues only slightly take away from the magic and overall polish of the game. That being said. You can do a lot worse when choosing a game from this graphical genre. Pathway is not perfect, but it is a fun time and will eat up hours of your day. Even with the clunky menu design.
  3. NintendoWorldReport
    Jun 2, 2021
    80
    Pathway still overall does a great job of feeling like a procedurally generated Indiana Jones adventure, as you take a motley crew of 1930s adventurers on a quest to beat the crap out of Nazis and prevent cultists from unleashing doom. The variety of options, whether it’s the lengthy list of characters, possible events, or combat scenarios, help make this game a joy to play and even revisit. There might only be five campaigns, but the well-done procedural generation makes each run unique enough to warrant a repeat viewing.
  4. Game Rant
    May 28, 2021
    60
    Pathway overall feels like a lite version of a turn-based game, and the monotony sets in fairly quickly. There are no plot twists to keep the story engaging, because there really is no story but rather the shallow foundation of one. Although the game can be beaten in 10 to 20 hours, it's questionable whether many gamers will see it through to the end. It may suck players in for a while, but the game simply is not dynamic enough to maintain interest long term. In the end, Pathway feels all the more dissatisfying because it had such potential. Robotality’s creation can be compared to an itch under the skin that can almost be scratched, but not quite.
  5. Starbit
    Aug 18, 2021
    60
    There are several good ideas put to work here, including a wide cast of characters and a simple but functional combat system. At the same time, Pathway's ideas don't quite live up to their potential, and while the game is indeed a competent effort, it loses appeal rather quickly and won't captivate many players to pick it up again once finished.
  6. Switch Player
    Jun 2, 2021
    60
    Pathway flexes plenty of stats amongst its RPG elements, but the turn-based combat can become quite repetitive. The presentation is gorgeous however, and there’s plenty of adventuring on offer if it’s the sort of ride you’re looking for.
  7. Nintendo Life
    May 27, 2021
    50
    Pathway is a competent game. Just competent. Definitely not great, maybe not even good, but certainly competent. It’s blend of randomized storytelling and XCOM-style combat is well done, but it doesn’t prove to remain consistently entertaining in the long run. Those of you who are absolutely starved for this kind of game may want to cautiously investigate. Otherwise, just pick up the XCOM 2 Collection or Mario + Rabbids for a much more enjoyable take on the genre.

See all 10 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. NindieSpotlight
    Dec 17, 2021
    8
    Elevator pitch time: Set off on an adventure with a party of your choosing with a wide variety of skills. Every step of the way is filled withElevator pitch time: Set off on an adventure with a party of your choosing with a wide variety of skills. Every step of the way is filled with the potential for fortune or peril, with you sometimes being forced to make tough decisions about how to proceed with the hope it’s the right one. Whenever you’re thrown into combat it’ll be pretty solid (if a bit on the well-worn and generic side) tactical fare, with your needing to carefully manage your people, their cover, and supplies in order to survive. Oh, and Nazis! All in all while I wouldn’t say Pathway does anything that strikes me as revolutionary, I really dug the narrative elements, the diversity of the characters you can set out with (with quite a number to unlock), and the tough but fair challenge I typically faced.

    https://www.nindiespotlight.com/2021/06/mini-reviews-june-2nd-edition-nintendo.html    … Expand
  2. coreygeier
    Jun 27, 2021
    6
    I love the game art, and it's the first thing that brought the game to my attention. The combat is very fun. The style and theme areI love the game art, and it's the first thing that brought the game to my attention. The combat is very fun. The style and theme are interesting. The music is very boring. There should at least be a new music theme for each mission. Overall it is a good game but I have some specific complaints of aspects that bring my score down.

    This game relies on lots of menu navigating since you'll be checking and comparing weapon and character stats often, however the menu system is very clunky and often frustrating. I constantly lose the cursor as the visibility is poor and it jumps all over the menus. It seems on top of this, there are several bugs I've encountered where certain menu areas are at times impossible to access without closing and reopening the menu or doing some other arbitrary ritual. This game suffers from some avoidable user interface issues.

    Why is all of my pre-mission item arranging undone if I go back to the mission selection? After only twenty minutes of playing, I just quit the game to write this review after mistakenly undoing minutes of item placing and selling two times.

    Why is it so incredibly easy to accidentally skip my turn during combat? I've just finished mission 2 and have done this at least 5 times. This problem could be fixed with a quickly skippable window reading "You want to pass your turn? You have remaining moves left." I actually skipped two turns consecutively at one point while still becoming familiar with the controls which got my healer killed and ended with me losing the mission halfway through.

    Why when using the X button to compare weapon, armor, or item stats does the currently selected tool's toolips window jump from right to left of the tool being compared when switching characters? Why isn't it always clear which is the new tool and which is already equipped? In the pre-mission recruitment menu, why do I have to re-open the storage view each time I cycle over a locked character? If I want to check one tool against every team member, I have to re-open the storage menu, navigate to the tool, and open tool tips each time I pass over a locked character. Consider grouping the unlocked characters together in the team members menu if this must be the case.

    Maybe some of these issues are less on the PC version of the game. It seems that most of the selection in the Switch version should use either a mouse-style cursor or the menu should be broken into blocks that could be entered and exited, so that the player isn't forced to constantly move across the entire menu one item at a time while getting lost along the way.

    In the early game, when introducing the "Tumult" combat mode where the player can only place their characters before the enemy's turn, why would you explain that rule only after the player had already placed their characters, removing the only opportunity for them to strategize?

    These things are additionally frustrating because they seem to be simple to fix and obvious errors in design. I can't think of when I've been as frequently frustrated with a game. Maybe I'm just bad at navigating all these menus and staying organized, or maybe Chucklefish needs more people with ADHD on their design team so I can read this stuff.

    All that being said, It is a good game and worth the price. Sorry to whine so much.    … Expand

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