Games should absolutely be a chore to play.
Need more games like pathologic 1 or 2 out there.
Only if yout are actually aware of what you are getting yourself into.
Pathologic 1 stretched the mentality of artificial difficulty as a "means to and end" to a breaking point, all the while not indicating that it's full of
so much pointless walking without knowing where you actually had to walk to more often than not. It is one of the reasons - together with the poor state of release outside of Russia - why the game remained so obscure in the first place. Pathologic 2 at the very least clearly states (begrudgingly added after a patch I might add) that the high difficulty of the game is the intended experience while also providing you with information on what you potentially have missed with the simple press of a button. This sets your expectations right from the word go.
If you get thrust into a situation that feels vastly different from your set expectations it can quickly feel like an unfair shift with barely any room to adapt in, then people will inevitably feel like their experience took a turn to the worse.
On a note regarding the game, I did certainly enjoy the update and surprisingly hunting for clues, with the exception of a single riddle which left me utterly stumped and I'm absolutely not a fan of solving riddles in the first place, so if even someone like me can get gratification out of hunting for clues despite not being an inate fan of it, that should be considered some praise.