Pentiment Reviews
Pentiment's vivid art style, tight narrative, and choice-driven gameplay are a treat to experience. However, the restrictive save system and constant clicking to finish dialogue conversations can be detrimental to your enjoyment.
Pentiment won’t be for everyone. It’s bookish, sometimes a bit dry, and demands you take its questions about the nature of religion, art, and other heady subjects seriously if you want to get the most out of its narrative. If that sounds like your sort of thing, you can look forward to a rich, well-researched world you'll truly feel a part of and a fantastic story that serves up numerous memorable, moving twists and turns. Pentiment will leave an indelible mark on you if you just give it a chance.
With its style, Pentiment is a playful work of art that is second to none, but can also inspire with its story.
Review in German | Read full review
Obsidian Entertainment looks at European history with respect and lots and lots of study. "Study" means first of all commitment, passion, enthusiasm. It means love, and in Pentiment, there is so much love.
Review in Italian | Read full review
As a story-driven adventure game, Pentiment is a history lesson come to life, with some intriguing mysteries to solve and tricky decisions to make. It's a vertical slice of history, and it provides a glimpse into a turbulent period through the experience of a small town. The experience can be a bit sluggish because it sometimes values historical accuracy over player comfort. Your choices impact the Bavarian town of Tassing over a quarter of a century, all while uncovering a truly interesting mystery. Tassing is the actual protagonist here, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being an integral part in its community and participating in its struggles. It's a bit special and stubborn in its delivery, but Pentiment is an interesting and worthwhile investigation of the period, its customs, and its issues.
Pentiment is an excellent narrative adventure with Obsidian's quality seal. No fan of the genre should miss it. It is a unique game thanks to its incredible visual presentation and historical background. The studio manages to move away from the hardcore RPG to give us an alternative and great vision of role-playing games. It is clearly a niche game that probably not everyone will appreciate.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A journey to medieval Bavaria with its human joys and numerous sorrows – not without routine and uneven pace, without any intelligible gameplay, but authentic, vividly written and with a deep message.
Review in Russian | Read full review
The adventures of Andreas Maler, a 16th century artist in a bavarian village and its murder mysteries are just captivating. Obsidian Entertainment goes off the beaten tracks with Pentiment and delivers a slow-paced, beautiful medieval visual novel with a lots of choices while playing. The attention to detail with displaying the game in the look of a medieval book is excellent and sets the mood perfectly. Though there were some smaller bugs present and the absence of voice acting is a real shame, the quality of the writing and the graphical presentation really compensates for that. If the setting and genre is to your liking this title absolutely deserves a closer look.
Review in German | Read full review
Pentiment is a game with a modest budget and equipment, which does not mean that it does not achieve a high standard of quality. During the approximately fifteen hours that Pentiment can last, we will be able to immerse ourselves in the life of a 16th century abbey and in the life that surrounds it. Its peculiar style helps to achieve this and, if we approach it with the right mentality, we can enjoy it from the audiovisual, plot, environmental and development perspective of the adventure.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Pentiment is an excellent "artistic" game, although it suffers from overly simple puzzles and poor replayability. The excellent narrative section, combined with a very successful technical presentation, creates a title that is as playful as it is educational.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Pentiment delivers a thoughtful, intriguing story with a wonderfully compelling cast of characters.
For a title so reverent of history, it feels like divine justice that Obsidian's special narrative adventure earns such a high spot in the annals of its own.
Pentiment is mature in a way few games are. It exudes passion for the time period and subject matter, treating every character and issue with respect and reverence. If you want an adventure game that responds to your choices and trusts you to discover its narrative on your own terms, Pentiment is a must play.
A beautiful and heartfelt historical fiction with heavy themes of religion, purpose, and the influence we have on others over time.
Pentiment is, for better or worse, a sort of big interactive comic book showing a huge love for European medieval history, with an intriguing plot but with a great deal of text to read and interactions limited mainly to map exploration and dialogues. A fascinating title, mainly thanks to its subject matter, but definitely not for everyone.
Review in Italian | Read full review
At least visually, Pentiment is unlike any game in the marketplace, and its execution is never less than impressive. As a reflection on the role of the artist and the fundamental, unchanging nature of the human experience, it can be thoughtful, amusing and moving. The game’s mechanics, some of the writing and pacing definitely take a back seat to the aesthetics. Taken as a whole, playing Pentiment is another great reminder that not every videogame experience needs to overwhelm the senses, challenge reflexes or be the product of market research. Pentiment might not be for everyone, but that’s ok. Not for everyone is sometimes exactly what we need.
Pentiment did not give off the best first impression. But the more I played, the more I was engulfed with the game’s layered narrative filled with mysteries and intrigue. Dialogue choices were well realized, but the consequences didn’t garner the expected reactions. Despite being off-putting at first, the game’s visual and audio presentations complement its 16th-century art style well. Although the game’s limited scope is quickly apparent, Pentiment’s narrative design has a lot to offer and is another feather in the cap of Obsidian’s story-telling credentials.
Even if it's not a particularly ambitious production, Pentiment is a small gem that shows all the love for the late Middle Ages and its art in every single aspect.
Review in Italian | Read full review
A Dark Ages mystery whose gameplay and dialogue are as unique as it's daringly unconventional premise and visuals.
Pentiment is an excellent dialogue adventure that takes all the best aspects of Obsidian's previous titles and marries them to a distinguished aesthetic. The whole game feels like a medieval manuscript brought to life and there is very little out there like it. While an interest in the historical setting would obviously add to the experience, the writing alone is good enough to draw any fans of adventure games in and there are so many superb details that really show the depth of the developer's engagement with their influences. If the past is a foreign country, then grab your passports and get ready to be illuminated.