Skatz Pentiment Review

There are two things that I think can sum up my thoughts with how damning they are: 1) Despite being critically lauded on Xbox Game Pass since its November 2022 launch and only about 15-24 hours to beat, only ~8.3% finished the game 2) The Fandom page is very barren What this tells me is that people got bored with this game and bailed, and even those who stuck with it found most of the characters so nondescript and insubstantial that they barely cared to write about them further in what is supposed to be a character- and dialog-driven game. And I can't blame them. This was EASILY the most gorgeous slog of a game I may have ever played. There are about 2% where this game hits, and the rest is somewhat unsatisfying while shooting itself in the foot with design or production choices. You run around a ton with little to do. It wants you to care about 30 characters, but when you engage, you do not have enough time to connect with bland conversations with little personality. It wants you to be immersed while rushing you to act upon "solving" two murders using the same unsatisfying approach. It wants you to create two diverse protagonists, but there is seldom much point in doing so. It loves showing off how they got these songs sung but can't dedicate audio to someone crying during a pivotal scene. Wrap this all in a cloth of astonishingly boring religious talk where the game is more interested in bragging about how they read history books. I'm left with one of the only good things: they gave hints to piece together the real culprit very well and logically. Otherwise, I can't recall a game that made me consistently shout "DO SOMETHING!" more in quite a while