Pathos: Nethack Codex

If you like dungeon crawlers/roguelikes, you’ve hit the jackpot. Pathos is a Nethack clone, but one that refines the original in all the best ways to bring it up to date. Other iOS nethack ports treat the keyboard-input interface like it’s some kind of sacred and essential part of the experience, awkwardly forcing you to bind keys to touch buttons, rather than just scrapping and replacing it like the dated and obsolete remnant if the past that it is. Here we have a full touch interface. You want to move somewhere? Touch there. Want to pick up a thing? Touch it. Want to check it for traps, open it, kick it, lick it, meet its parents? Just touch it. No “q for Quaff, w for wield, period for inspect, comma for take…” it’s all touch menus now, like it should have been since 1990.

As of 30 March 2021: tldr: Be Nethack or don’t, but address the GUI’s widgets and add an in-game accessible manual for the game mechanics since they differ enough from Nethack’s to make it unwise to assume similarity. Only leaving this review after I ragequit this game (after my first 5 sessions) because the only 2 problems this game has are EASILY corrected, and I really hope that happens because I would be playing this, and only this, if that happens. What seems like a minor problem, is in fact, a major one for a 20yr+ Nethack player like I am - namely, that the “Nethack Codex” thing implies a familiarity for the Nethack player beyond just object labels - and yet the mechanics are massively different without ANY way to even interpret results of actions (let alone the info to judge whether or not to take the action in the first place). That, and having GUI widgets be fixed in size and position is just rage-inducing when one or more of the widgets needs to be open constantly but can’t be left open without impeding gameplay. Having to open and close the “tile” widget so often is the same level of irritating as games with player inventory governed by ridiculously few “bag slots.” These widgets should be customizable in position, size, and opaqueness - and it would be a nice bonus if we could reorder them in the widget bar. The GUI widget issue plus the lack of a tutorial, in-game manual, or context for what little info there is, was just too much annoyance in too short a time for me to keep playing.

I love this game. I’m always on the look out for a good RPG thats similar to tabletops and this is it. I’ve been playing for a few weeks and I’m still sucked into the game. It does have a steep learning curve but as long as you are prepared to die a lot in the beginning it becomes easier. I do have a couple suggestions about pets/companions... 1.There should be experience sharing for party members and pets. Right now experience is only gained by the specific character/pet that kills an enemy. I’m doing the most killing so my pets and mounts are quickly outclassed by monsters and end up dying very quickly. The way it works now it also makes some character almost useless. Necromancers and Druid’s for example are supposed to summon minions to do the actual fighting but then they don’t get any experience if their minions do the killing. 2. I would also like to see a way to improve pets more and resurrect them easier? Maybe a higher riding skill could let them share your resistances? Maybe pets could give you different talents to make them more useful? For example, having a dog companion could give your character ‘searching’ or ‘see invisible’. I realize the game was not designed as a party system but improving pets and mounts would make certain classes and races more playable. As it is, pets/mounts die at almost every boss level and don’t survive beyond 5 lvls making them almost worthless.