The Pathless Reviews
In trying to apply the formula behind games such as Journey and Abzû to an open world, The Pathless ends up overstaying its welcome
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 fun for a bit, but I didn’t find any of the detail or smoothness our reviewer loved about the PS5 version. I would recommend avoiding the Switch version over any of the other ones. It’s a game best played docked anyways. If you’re at all curious, you might enjoy The Pathless, but its presentation is far from breathtaking on the Switch.
Many lights and shadows for this simple, small, dynamic and striking adventure. The Pathless, in a way, brings us closer to the indecipherable and unrelenting beauty of nature with a usual, but functional, sensibility.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The Pathless ultimately buries anything it might have to say in a stupefying level of cliché.
Whether in a boss fight or out in the wild, one area where The Pathless does deliver consistently is in its score. The music by Journey composer Austin Wintory is somewhat sparse, but never fails to ramp up the game’s feeling of danger and adventure whenever it swells up. The Pathless may have a bit of an identity crisis, with its disconnected segments never really combining to their full potential, but its impressive presentation and exhilarating speed make it worth a try nonetheless.
I’m fully prepared to see the entirety of gaming journalism as a whole take the opposite opinion of The Pathless as the years go by. There’s a giant list of titles that my peers absolutely love, then I play them, and I swear we’ve experienced two different games. That being said, I can see how someone could absolutely love The Pathless, even if it didn’t do anything for me.
The Pathless is still a beautiful, well-designed game on the Switch. If this is the only platform you have available to play it on, it’s still well worth your time and an easy recommendation. Players who have other options may want to consider them as performance is an occasional issue here, and the DualSense implementation on the PS5 is some of the best on the system, but I still enjoyed revisiting The Pathless.
I am sure that there are people out there (completionists especially) who will love this game as it is, but I cannot help but feel that a bit more inventiveness and a less cliché story would have made it much better.
The Pathless may not be my favorite game, I found quite a bit wrong with it, but the messaging was clear and resonated with me.
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.
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 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 does one thing extremely well, which is to create a sense of racing – almost dancing – through its huge open world. The player's journey is mainly one of getting to know that sensation and learning to harness it to traverse epic environments. However, the protagonist's journey has little to do with that feeling, which is perhaps why the story doesn't land. The game sounds exceptional and looks great in this impressive port. However, the puzzles rarely stimulate the imagination and are fussy to play, while boss encounters are overlong and repetitive. Although it has its significant successes, The Pathless unfortunately doesn't manage to become more than the sum of its parts.
Pretty early in the game players will get a bird companion who will also help with puzzles. She can be instructed to pick up and place items and will use other things in tandem with The Hunters bow to open new routes and solve puzzles. The Pathless is a very solid action-adventure game, one that arguably is something that Xbox lacks. While a two-year-old game won’t set the world on fire in sales; I can recommend this to those folks who may have been waiting for this release on Xbox, the bright colors and almost anime-like graphics and exceptionally well-done soundtrack make for a chill and mostly rewarding experience.
The Pathless is clearly one of the better early PlayStation 5 games, though it has some issues with repetitive content and padding.
I would prescribe The Pathless to anyone feeling numbed and locked by our days of inanition; it's perfect if you feel your home becoming an isle on the edge of the world.
The Pathless is not a big game and doesn't want to gamble too much, but knows which aspects to really bet on. The heart of the game experience is exploration and does a good job of making you fully enjoy the rides and flights over its small but fascinating world.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Open-world exploration is the central idea and purpose of The Pathless, and its beautiful world rewards embracing your wanderlust.
The Pathless is a really entertaining game from the creators of Abzû. The game lets you explore a vast world with a huntress and her eagle. Saving the world is no terrible job since the world is truly amazing, but the lack of enemies and the lack of unlockables don't really invite you to do. Where everything in the game is balanced really good from the puzzles to the boss fights, you get the feeling something is missing eventually. The game is great but could be much, much more than this.
Review in Dutch | Read full review