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Pentiment 2022
Log Status
Completed
Playing
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Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
November 27, 2022
Platforms Played
Pros:
- Excellent presentation and art style reminiscent of the manuscript illustrations of the 16th century
- It's a bit difficult to discuss the story without mentioning specifics, but it's interesting. Initially Pentiment sells itself as a murder mystery, but really it's more focused on the village of Tassing and how the events that take place and your decisions gradually affect the people who live there over a 25 year timespan. More than anything, it succeeds in being as authentic to the time period as possible through its setting and characters
- General dialogue is very well written, and has a unique way of presenting itself with the use of different text fonts that represent how Andreas perceives the social status of the characters
Cons:
- While I liked the direction the story goes, I have mixed feelings on the pacing. In general it's a very slow burn, but this is particularly so in its third act which compared to the first two felt like a drawn out epilogue that was hours lengthier than it needed to be. I also wouldn't really say I was satisfied with how the mystery wraps up either
- Exploring the town is pretty dull, Andreas is clunky to control and every area is separated with a book flip load animation that, while cool at first, wears thin very quickly. You'll also be walking through the same few areas for the entire game which got exhausting by the end
- I can't say I was into the way the gameplay was structured. Deciding how you spend your limited time between the characters was cool on paper, but this was only prevalent in Act 1 with the next two being more linear. And even despite that, you only have very limited time to speak to characters because two events of the day are spent sitting down and eating with someone. This became annoying when I was trying to uncover evidence close to the deadline but I couldn't pursue it cause other events weren't open during these times
- I know this was a relatively small project for Obsidian, but I wish Microsoft invested more into it as a first party title. It would've greatly benefited from voice acting, and while I usually don't mind that there aren't any voices for a text heavy game like this, there's also very little music to make up for it. Most of the game is just ambient noise and silence as you read through its dense dialogue, which made it feel like it was missing something to me
- Excellent presentation and art style reminiscent of the manuscript illustrations of the 16th century
- It's a bit difficult to discuss the story without mentioning specifics, but it's interesting. Initially Pentiment sells itself as a murder mystery, but really it's more focused on the village of Tassing and how the events that take place and your decisions gradually affect the people who live there over a 25 year timespan. More than anything, it succeeds in being as authentic to the time period as possible through its setting and characters
- General dialogue is very well written, and has a unique way of presenting itself with the use of different text fonts that represent how Andreas perceives the social status of the characters
Cons:
- While I liked the direction the story goes, I have mixed feelings on the pacing. In general it's a very slow burn, but this is particularly so in its third act which compared to the first two felt like a drawn out epilogue that was hours lengthier than it needed to be. I also wouldn't really say I was satisfied with how the mystery wraps up either
- Exploring the town is pretty dull, Andreas is clunky to control and every area is separated with a book flip load animation that, while cool at first, wears thin very quickly. You'll also be walking through the same few areas for the entire game which got exhausting by the end
- I can't say I was into the way the gameplay was structured. Deciding how you spend your limited time between the characters was cool on paper, but this was only prevalent in Act 1 with the next two being more linear. And even despite that, you only have very limited time to speak to characters because two events of the day are spent sitting down and eating with someone. This became annoying when I was trying to uncover evidence close to the deadline but I couldn't pursue it cause other events weren't open during these times
- I know this was a relatively small project for Obsidian, but I wish Microsoft invested more into it as a first party title. It would've greatly benefited from voice acting, and while I usually don't mind that there aren't any voices for a text heavy game like this, there's also very little music to make up for it. Most of the game is just ambient noise and silence as you read through its dense dialogue, which made it feel like it was missing something to me