There's a great story to be told here that unfortunately is mired down by technical and design issues
Art is more than something you just simply look at; it's something you experience. It's designed to both convey the emotion of the artist and provoke an emotional response in you, and there's this wonderful sense of satisfaction once you get it. It, in case you're wondering, is that moment of revelation where the whole thing comes together and you completely understand the work as a whole.
But just because you get it doesn't mean that it's actually any good, and that sense of satisfaction can throw you off when you're deciding if it was really worth your time or not. It's a red herring on an otherwise clear trail, and this is exactly what The Path does to you.
On one hand, Tale of Tales did a terrific job job coming up with a unique way of telling a story, disturbing you without actually showing anything obscene or grotesque, and causing you to truly think about what you're looking at. Basing the entire game on Red Riding Hood was an outstanding choice for the message they wanted to convey, and it's important to give them credit for this and recognize their accomplishments. The sense of mystery they manage to create is rather outstanding.
It's what's on the other hand hand that destroys everything. They completely fail in the game's execution, and that sense of discovery and accomplishment isn't enough to gloss everything over. The grand story that the game wants to tell gets completely lost in the poor pacing and mechanics, and it feels at times like you're banging your head against one of the many trees within the game's forest.
The Path's many characters spend almost the entire time as if walking through water with an impossibly choppy framerate, and this is an absolute kiss of death for a game that gives you no direction whatsoever other than tell you to "go explore." You end up spending a few hours literally pushing young girls through the woods, wondering when something is going to come along and kill them just so you can be put out of their misery. And that's the sad part, really, is that you're glad when it's all over.
It doesn't help matters much that the environments are incredibly stark and repetitive, with no real points of reference whatsoever. You wander around the woods, aimlessly, with small cues on the outside of the screen giving you a general direction of where to go. If these cues were in any way helpful this would be alright, but instead they simply don't track around the screen as they should. If it shows something is behind you and you turn around, it still looks like something is behind you. Even when you manage to successfully follow these prompts, in many cases they only take you back to where you were before, so you find yourself cursing under your breath as you've just spent an extra five minutes running around in circles.
There is a little girl in white that runs from place to place in the forest and tries to help guide you, but the problem is that when you try to run yourself the camera forces up and away so you can't track where she ran off to. It's even worse that many things in the environment simply disappear when you start to run, so there are even fewer visual cues than you had before. It's irritating and enough to make you quit the game before you ever finish.
Every other technical aspect, including the controls and sound, is mediocre at best. Many times your character wanders off on her own, interacting with something in the environment for the tenth time that you don't want her to. And while The Path's minimalistic soundtrack is appropriate for the game, it becomes abysmally droll after spending two or three hours dragging around the forest.
Sadly, this is one of those cases where a beautiful game turns into a complete disaster because of the lack of follow-through. It tries way too hard to be a piece of art, when gaming is already art in and of itself. Unfortunately, Tales of Tales missed the point that part of that art is making sure the gamer enjoys the journey.
The only types of gamer I can recommend this game for are those with eclectic tastes and those with extreme amounts of patience. Everyone else should stay as far away as possible, as the story just isn't enough to overcome all of its technical faults.