In Pathway, your goal is to survive to the end of a long trip in order to stop some nefarious folks from unearthing powerful artifacts that have been hidden for centuries. Whether it’s Nazis trying to uncover relics that can help them achieve world domination, or evil cultists looking to resurrect ancient gods of destruction, someone has their eyes on a very dangerous prize.
However, getting to the end with all your party members healthy and ready to fight isn’t an easy task. You have a lot of things to keep in mind, and the bad guys aren’t going to go down without a fight. That’s why we’re going to help you stay on the right path, and help you make your way through Pathway.
How To Play Pathway
Choosing Your Party Members
You’ll need to choose which characters you want to have in your party to start the adventure. You have a certain number of characters to choose from to begin with, and other characters can be unlocked later by completing objectives like killing a certain number of Nazis.
Each character has different skills and attributes that affect how they play. Some characters are more accurate with sniper rifles, while others can use medical kits in the heat of battle. Characters can also have negative traits as well. For example, some units are deathly afraid of zombies, so if you’re about to tackle a campaign that’ll have you chasing after cultists, maybe someone afraid of the occult is a bad choice to take along.
Your characters have an inventory, and can equip weapons, armor and an additional item. Certain characters will have skills that will allow to equip different items. One character may be able to equip sniper rifles, knives and light amour, while another could equip shotguns, grenades and heavy armor. Their loadout depends on what perks, stats, and skills they have, although over time you will get the option to level up your units. So if you wanted someone to be able to equip assault rifles, you should pay attention to their skill tree to see if that will even be an option later on.
Surviving And Thriving In Combat
Pathway is a tactics game that plays kind of like a 2D XCOM. This means placing your units on the board, and making sure they’re behind cover so they’re not shot up by the enemy. The cover system works in a similar way to XCOM, with some cover being better at protecting you from gunfire than others. Being behind solid cover is going to shield you completely from damage, while half cover is a little less efficient at preventing bullet holes in your characters. Still, any cover is better than no cover at all.
Your chances at hitting someone with your bullets is also given a percentage to hit, based on the enemy’s location and what kind of cover they’re behind. Flanking an enemy so you can get around their cover will always lead to a better shot, just make sure you’re also not out in the open.
During battle, each character will get two actions on their turn. An action typically involves firing your gun, moving to new cover, using an item, reloading your gun or using any skill your character may have. For example, you could move and then shoot an enemy, or you could use a health kit and then use a character’s skill.
Ammo is a major commodity in the game. All your characters share the same pool of ammo, and reloading your weapons is a big part of combat. If you forget to reload your gun, then you can’t fire your weapon, and you’ll have to waste one of your characters’ actions shoving bullets back in their gun. If you run out of ammo, then get ready for battles to be extra difficult, as your only options will be to roll up on enemies and hope to punch them to death. Some characters will have the ability to equip knives, which would allow them to do decent melee damage. Guns are still the easiest way to battle the Nazis in Pathway, so keeping an adequate supply of ammo is a necessity.
If all your characters die, then you have to start all over again from the beginning, so try not to be too reckless now.
Travel And Understanding The Map
The entire story is broken up in 5 different campaigns, each with a different length of play time. You have an overworld map with various locations that you can travel to in your truck. At the very end of the map will be an X, which will your final destination for that adventure. Depending on the length of the campaign, some maps will have multiple parts, so the X will lead you to the next section.
Most spots on the map will be unmarked, so you’ll have no idea what to expect moving across the map. However, there will be certain locations with special markers that can tell you what to expect there. Spots with a crosshairs symbol will lead to a battle, a tent symbol will be a place to rest, a question mark symbol can be a special event, a sack of gold symbol will be a trader, and so on. So depending on what you see, it may be worth the trip to head to head over there.
Just keep in mind, each time you move to a new location you use one unit of your fuel. If you run out of fuel, then you’ll have to hoof it on foot, which will cause you to take damage for each location you travel without your truck. So it pays to plan out your route carefully, because any extra stops could cost you the game.
As you travel across the map from location to location you’ll stumble across different events for each spot you stop at. Some of these events will pull you into a battle, or they may just be a bit of flavour text with nothing really happening. Some will even allow you to recruit a new character to add to your party, which will mean an extra character to use in battle. However, that also means there’ll be an extra character using up ammo, so choose carefully.
There will be times however when you come across a story event that gives you a choice on how to proceed. For example, you may come across an ancient temple and be given the option to enter inside or walk away. If you want to play it safe then you can simply leave.
However, going inside could score you some good loot. There are different items you can find in some of these events, including extra supplies, or even rare guns and armour. There’s also treasure which will be added to your inventory of valuables. At the end of the adventure your valuables will be converted into cash, and that cash can then be spent with traders on the next adventure.
Some characters may also have special perks that can affect how these events play out. Someone with the “Daredevil” perk may have an option to do something crazy like leap onto a moving Nazi truck, while someone with the “Brute” perk may be able to lift or push heavy objects out of the way. Characters can also gain new perks via their skill trees, so keep an eye out for new perks when leveling up your characters.
While you should certainly take a chance on these events, there can be negative consequences. You usually have a 50-50 chance of something good happening (like finding some rare equipment, treasure or supplies) or something bad happening (like being drawn into a fight, taking damage, losing supplies, or even taking on a negative status effect such as blindness). These events can play out differently each time, so if you play through a new campaign, you may get an entirely different outcome for the same event.
Now that you know how to forge your way through Pathway, you should be able to handle yourself no matter how many Nazis or zombies stand in your way. Hopefully if you come across any tough decisions to make along the adventure, you won't choose poorly.