Pathway is by no means an amazing game, but it’s also not actually a bad game. It’s an adequate game with really cool style. Exactly like the kind of fiction the game tries to emulate, I guess. But some things are badly explained at the start of the game, so these are some very basic things that might smooth your starting experience.
Cover system
Simply put, if you put your cursor on a square, one of three symbols might appear on the tile’s side. Half-shield, Full shield, or a wall.
Either of those shield symbols means, you are somewhat covered from that side, AND you can see and shoot over it. When you’re behind a cover with shield symbol, you’ll crouch behind it and automatically stand and shoot whenever you attack.
Wall means you are completely hidden from line of sight from that side. Both you and enemy can’t see through wall, and can’t shoot through wall. BUT you can still shoot enemies that are in line of sight and in range of your gun. When you hide behind a cover with wall symbol, you will hide behind the wall and step one tile sideways and shoot whenever you attack.
If there’s no obstruction between a shooter and the target, it will ALWAYS hit. If the target is in adjacent tile, it will also ALWAYS hit (in other word, melee attacks and point blank shots always hit).
Cover objects will still somewhat protect from the 100% hit chance even if you’re not actually directly beside it. In other words, there needs to be an actual, clean line of sight without any cover objects, for a shooter to get 100% hit chance (not including the cover they’re hiding behind, since they will stand to shoot over it).
It is sadly quite hard to distinguish which objects are which and what side they protect from and whether something count as clean line of sight in the game, so there’s nothing much to do other than gaining experience in real combat situation.
Healing and repairing
Healing and repair items are quite limited in the game. They won’t get replenished between adventures, and there’s no way to buy them between adventures. But there are some things on your side.
1. Anyone can use healing/repair item in travel screen. In other words, character with healing/repair skills only mean they can equip healing/repair item in their item slot, and can heal in combat (which is by no mean a small help).
2. You can heal/repair in between dialogues. That means, you can travel to a node, to see if there’s a camp nearby. If it turned out the node is a combat node, you then can press ‘i’ or click your inventory icon in the pre-combat dialogue/story window to heal before combat.
Special actions
There are quite some special actions, and they need bravery to use. They tie to your armor/weapon, in other words everyone who wear light armor or use a pistol have the same special actions. Most are quite self-explanatory, but there are some important things to note.
1. Killing enemy, healing, repairing, and evading, increase your bravery. In other words, when you wear medium armor, you can use one bravery to increase your dodge rate significantly, then when the enemy shoots you will dodge and regain the bravery back. When a character have healing/repair skill, they can heal/repair themselves to regain bravery, then use whatever defensive skill they have if necessary.
2. Ambush stops enemy in track. Sniper rifle damage is for some reason quite low, but characters with sniper rifles are the only ones who can do the equivalent of “overwatch” from XCOM games. And when an ambush activates, it will basically make the ambushed enemy skips one turn. A lot of the time, simply shooting an enemy with the sniper rifle is the better choice, but you can imagine that there’s a lot of time when stopping them from doing something is more important (especialy since you will also damage them if the shot hits).
Tips and Tricks
1) Chosing the 2 team members is very important, you should pick different characters
2)They have different movement speed, armor, gun and skills so don’t expect 2 similar characters to do better or close combat specialist to do good at range
3) Before starting the adventure read how to unlock the other characters
4)Don’t be afraid to die and try the adventure with another team, 1 team can save up money and the other team can actually level up and finish the job
5)You keep all items that are in your jeep and on your characters so to die is just to not use the team for 1 adventure.
6)Keep money for next run or buy everything you cna
7) Avoid buying expensive stuff, mostly buy fuel, healing/armor
8) it’s hard to judge what fights are harder but sometimes it’s better to wait for an oassis rather than use items to heal/get armor back
9) You can return to shops but you will use fuel
10) Sometimes it’s better to use your bravery points in the begining so you don’t risk a lot
11) Ammo is not such a big problem
12) Fuel is a big problem
13) For me, the best succes i had with the sniper and omar(the one with the rare pistol) since i would set up ambushes and people who got through got double tapped by the guy with the rare pistol
14) Check what items each character can use and what skill(heal, armor kit etc), sometimes it’s better to use more money for a strong character than to waste money on a weaker one.
15) Be patient, some fights and events are put there to slow you down and make mistakes
16) So far….combat seems better than skils/ encounter skills since you do a lot more combat than special events so….focus mainly on combat.
17) Daggers/melee can kill dogs in 1 hit even on hard so move your team around so you get the most damage out of it. Throw grenades when you see the enemies bunched up but they can be pure gold near the end
18) Guns: pistols have the double shot and do good damage, very good when you flak, seem over powered if you don’t face a lot of enemies
Related Posts:
- Pathway: Stats Guide
- Pathway: Characters, skills and attributes Guide
- Pathway: Weapon of Choice Guide