The Pathless Review: The Path To The Switch

The Pathless launched back in 2020 on PlayStation consoles and PC and was actually one of the highlights of the PS5 launch window for me. Featuring a beautiful but cursed world, with giant unstoppable guardians roaming around, it combines elements of a variety of games I love, such as Shadow of the Colossus, with an interesting movement mechanic that feels great. It’s just a beautiful game.

When I was told it was coming to Switch though, I admittedly got a bit concerned. This is a game where fluid motion is everything, and performance truly is important. Getting a game made for stronger hardware running smoothly on the Switch isn’t always a smooth process, even with several years having passed.

Restore The Land

You play as The Hunter, who has come to a corrupted island to try to lift its curse. You quickly meet the Eagle Mother, who is responsible for protecting this land and is dying due to the curse. After seemingly freeing her from its power however, The Godslayer who placed the curse shows up and seemingly kills her.

Thankfully, that death isn’t permanent as the Eagle Mother reincarnates into a regular eagle who will join you on your quest to cleanse her children and lift the curse for good. The story of The Pathless is surprisingly moving, with a ton of interesting lore hidden throughout the land for players to uncover.

A Mostly Solid Port

Does The Pathless manage to overcome my concerns regarding the Switch? Some of them. Most of the time, The Pathless runs rather well on Switch. Even in large open areas, the game often feels great, and while my opening moments with the game felt slightly off, I soon adjusted and found the game worked rather well on the system. The issue is that you definitely hit frame drops at times, especially in large open areas, which the game is filled with, and they do take you out of the game. They aren’t constant, but they happened more than I was comfortable with.

Which is a shame when this is a game that, at its best, feels so good. The Hunter’s movement is one of my favorite parts of The Pathless. Your normal movement speed feels just slightly too slow, but that’s by design. Throughout the world of The Pathless, you’ll find orbs you can shoot with your bow. Doing so gives you a boost of speed and allows you to zip around at a more than satisfying speed. Keeping your character boosted and the joy of movement are a huge part of the game, and at its best, that still works great on the Switch. I did miss the DualSense implementation from the PS5 version of the game, where the adaptive triggers just feel incredibly satisfying when firing your bow, but movement still feels good without them.

Using Your Brain

Where are you moving to? Each area of the game has one of the Eagle Mother’s corrupted children as a guardian and features a number of obelisks. The guardian moves freely through the area, unable to be fought. If you can’t avoid them, you’ll get stuck in a sequence where you have to use stealth to escape. These are atmospheric but, in truth, aren’t my favorite sequences simply because they get a bit repetitive over time. Good planning, though, will help players avoid them most of the time.

Solving environmental puzzles gets you the tokens you need to cleanse the obelisks, and after doing it to all of them in the area, the formerly invincible guardian becomes available to fight in an epic boss battle. These fights are fantastic and make you use all the skills you’ll develop along the way. The puzzles are great too. Some of the early ones are fairly simple, requiring only that you shoot a specific point or stand on the right platform. Eventually, though, you’ll get some puzzles that require you to manipulate a variety of different aspects of the environment and really make you use your brain.

You’re Not Alone

I love the implementation of the eagle to help you solve these as well. The bond I eventually formed with my eagle companion is wonderful, and I loved using them for movement, puzzles, and even just cleaning their wings of the corruption in the air.

The beautiful art style The Pathless features on other platforms still looks fantastic on the Switch. That’s one of the advantages of such a stylized look, its not dependent on pushing a set number of polygons to look fantastic. Draw distance here is impressive for the system as well, an important part of being able to navigate through the game’s large areas.

Conclusion

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.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Available on: Switch (Reviewed), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, iOS; Publisher: Annapurna Interactive; Developer: Giant Squid; Players: 1; Released: February 2nd, 2023; ESRB: E10+ for Everyone 10+; MSRP: $39.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of the Pathless provided by the publisher.