The Pathless Reviews
For all of its grandiose stylings and ambitions of being a pure reduction of the open-world formula, The Pathless never feels greater than the sum of its parts. It feels like more of a small-scale time waster. It's fine for momentarily taking your mind off of things, but those wanting a consistently strong and engaging experience may want to follow a different path.
The Pathless is an open-world exploration title with unique puzzle-solving mechanics and one of the year's best soundtracks. The tense and enjoyable boss encounters were a delightful surprise. The free-form approach to the exploration and plethora of puzzles to solve, most being optional, give you the sensation of freedom while traversing. It's simply fun, aimlessly soaring through the air with my eagle, bouncing across rivers and down snow-covered mountaintops shooting at talismans. It's not a long experience, as I clocked my completion at roughly eight hours, but there are plenty of trophies to earn by collecting all of the relics, along with completing various other tasks.
The Pathless is a wonderful balance between puzzles and boss battles contained in a giant landscape. The gameplay design, specifically the boss level design, demonstrates the possibilities this new generation of consoles might offer.
The Pathless is the next great indie adventure. Whether the joy you take from it is in its unique and super-slick traversal mechanics, or the arresting world and faultless artistry, there's no denying that Giant Squid has absolutely nailed it. If I could somehow travel back in time and get lost in this game all over again, I would. While I can't speak to the experience on Windows or Apple devices, I believe this is one for the PlayStation 5 players most of all. This world needs to be taken in at its most visually rich, and the unique properties of the DualSense heighten its gameplay even further. If you only pick one, non-AAA exclusive for your next-gen PlayStation, pick this one.
The Pathless focuses on style and fast-paced movement and does it well, but leaves a bit to be desired on the Nintendo Switch.
Is The Pathless worth picking up alongside your PlayStation 5? From the creators of Abzu, The Pathless is a captivating open-world exploration game with unique movement mechanics, but don't expect a Zelda killer. Oh, and I hope you like puzzles, because The Pathless is filled with them.
The Pathless suffers a way too linear narrative and game structure, but has an inspired art direction, more game features than Abzu, a great work and a great way to tell the players more about it.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Pathless offers players a beautifully heartbreaking way to revive a dead world by forging a bond between you and an eagle alone. Every so often, you come across the corpses of the fallen and you can see their final thoughts moments before death, which elevates the tragedy and sadness of the world around you. Even then, you never really feel lost, both literally and figuratively, mainly because you'll feel like as long as you have your eagle by your side, you're going to be just fine.
The Pathless knows where its biggest strengths lie, and it constantly leverages those strengths to craft a hypnotic, rhythmic, beautiful, and captivating adventure.
The pathless is a beautiful game, running around and fighting with every BOSS is enjoyable. But the world is so empty and lack of interaction that might make you feel bored soon.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
The Pathless is an enjoyable adventure to a serene island filled with satisfying puzzles, mesmeric traversal and gripping boss showdowns. Some small frustrations, including unnecessary stealth sequences and little reason to deviate from the main objective, hold the game back, but the polished moment-to-moment gameplay combined with the inspired soundtrack make for a pleasing and fun experience that's easy to recommend to fans of open world and puzzle games.
Lastly, there were a few frame hiccups here and there, most notably when entering a new plateau for the first time. These problems are relatively minor, though, and I still found the game to be incredibly fun to play regardless, but if they're a deal breaker for you it'd be a better idea to look to other platforms for your Pathless experience. Overall, The Pathless is a game those looking for some action and exploration should definitely give a try.
The Pathless is a worthy addition to the minimal release list this early in the PlayStation 5 lifespan. It delivers engaging gameplay, as well as frankly beautiful visuals. The issue is that feeling of familiarity *cough*Zelda*cough* coupled with a lack of activities to indulge in. Too often does this feel like a template of greater things to come, and it's a massive hope that this will spawn a sequel. So many great ideas needing to be expanded upon, mainly the excellent movement, as no game this year has given a greater feeling of speed in its unique traversal system, and along with the excellent boss battles, this comes recommended. Here's to The Pathless 2: Less Travelled.
The Pathless is simple in principle, skillful in application and mesmerizing in looks, it's a gift you reward yourself with.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
The Pathless is a charming indie adventure with a strong atmosphere, engaging exploration and a myriad of fun puzzles that is too good to be forgotten amongst the next generation hype.
The Pathless is a unique and good way to start your journey in The new generation of consoles. Creators of Abzu have made a great game once more and invited you to an amazing and of course, challenging experience. Platforming and combat are very well combined and Austin Wintory made a beautiful soundtrack again. Finally i must say, If you play it, The Pathless will be one of the most enjoyable and unique journeys in your gaming life.
Review in Persian | Read full review
The Pathless is yet another brilliant game from Giant Squid, one with great harmony between almost all of its elements that sends you on a short adventure in its unknown and strange world.
Review in Persian | Read full review
There is so much beauty and feelings in this game. Creators of ABZ& 219; made another masterpiece.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Ultimately, The Pathless is somewhat an uneven experience. Its epic boss battles are thrilling, and the majority of its puzzles are enjoyable to solve. It’s just a shame that there’s so much aimless running around between all the fun. Even dashing around at full speed grows tiresome after a while. Providing some sense of direction may go against what The Pathless strives to be, but it would help make your time with the game feel less wasted, and more fulfilling.
The Pathless has a slow start, but the journey is rewarding. The technical part, the soundtrack and the game world are incredible. It can be considered repetitive later on, but the gameplay and the boss battles make up for that. It's hard to say in words, but the "experience" of playing The Pathless is unique.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review