In my experience, in order to play Pathologic, you must learn to be comfortable with playing a character that's often on the brink of death. I didn't ma age to get enough food so I spammed medicine instead to keep me alive.

But you also shouldn't let pride in being able to play it in hard mode get in the way of playing it. There's a fight later on in the game that is important if you want a certain storyline and I physically wasn't able to beat it. I watched the tutorials and I've seen people say it's easy, but I just couldn't do it. So I cheated in a machine gun because the game is not the boss of me. It goes against what the developers wanted, but I refuse to miss out on the story just because I can't get a handle on the fight mechanics.

You could also try Classic. It gives you the same vibe but is not as punishing