Pathway

Pathway is a turn-based tactical combat game where you play an Indiana Jones-style strike team adventuring in the desert fighting Nazis and cultists.

In addition to combat, the game has an overland adventure mode where you move from point to point toward a destination. Each point of interest has some kind of encounter, often but not necessarily a combat encounter.

I beat the game in about 15 hours and then didn't really feel motivated to replay the chapters. It seems to me it might be fun to unlock all the heroes, which might give an extra 5 hours of play time.

THE GOOD:

• The game captures the feel of Indiana Jones quite well. The translation to a tactical squad format also works surprisingly well.
• The tactical combat is generally well done (with the exception of the cover rules, see below). It often feels risky and challenging but it also feels really satisfying to beat up Nazis and blow up zombies.
• Each chapter has a unique story that fits the theme well and is reasonably well-written.
• There's a lot of variety in the environments where you fight enemies (e.g. airfields, vineyards, sewers, temples, etc.). It forces you to adopt different tactics and also looks nice.
• I enjoyed the visuals during story encounters, where little pixel versions of your heroes act out the text you're reading.

THE BAD:

• The game includes historical anachronisms like disintegrator guns, as well as very overt magic in the form of the large-scale raising of zombies. I find this to be a totally unnecessary thing. I feel like the game would have been better with more subtle magic (albeit retaining rare instances of unpredictable/dangerous magic), in keeping with the original Indiana Jones source material.
• In combat, the cover mechanic is really janky and it took me a long time to understand how it works at all. For example, if your enemy has cover on their left, then all your heroes to the left of the enemy on the screen, all the way up and down, will have a penalty to hit the enemy. To flank the enemy you actually have to move into their vertical column or further right of them. This often means jumping out of cover to attack even though it looks like you've flanked the enemy. It's so weird and leads to really bizarre situations in the game. A simple line-of-sight mechanic would be much more intuitive and make more visual sense.
• On the overland map, most of the points of interest are randomly generated. This can lead to strange situations where you e.g. encounter 4 lost temples in a row along one amazing stretch of desert.
• The random encounters get pretty repetitive pretty quickly. They also seem to be shared across chapters, making each chapter feel less unique.
• The items you find are generally not that interesting. They just progress along increasing levels of strength (e.g. a level 1 shotgun, then a level 2 shotgun that does slightly more damage, etc.).
• Similarly, the enemies themselves just get stronger without changing. Literally, the Nazi Enforcer I in Chapter 1 becomes a Nazi Enforcer II in Chapter 2. You're not required to change your tactics in any way, you just have to upgrade your characters and equipment to keep up.

THE UGLY:

• The game got accused of having a colonial attitude toward non-Europeans, and I'm inclined to agree. For example, one of the plots includes a fake historical figure called the Black Pharaoh. It's kind of hokey and seems to make a mockery of the local Egyptian culture. I just learned that this particular character was an invention of H.P. Lovecraft, which does not help their case...
• As another example, your characters wantonly rob tombs as they maraud across the desert. While this is historically accurate, the lack of any sort of guilt on the part of the heroes, or recognition that this is wrong through interaction with the locals, feels a bit tone deaf to me.
• Surprisingly, in Pathway the Nazis don't have swastikas. The game studio that made Pathway is based in Germany, where it's generally illegal to display Nazi swastikas (however, I'm given to understand that it would normally be permitted in this case). Would this historical inaccuracy bother you? It did seem strange to me, but displaying Nazi symbols would also be gross. It's a catch-22.