This post will be mostly spoiler free until one point which I will point out as I think this game is good and I think it is entirely possible someone will appreciate the positives of this game more and my dislikes will matter to them less. If someone told me this was their favourite game of the year it released I would not think that is a crazy opinion.

When I started playing this game I had very high expectations as people often say on social media this is one of the best recent Obsidian games and I really liked their other games too. It has a very good metacritic score and many content creators I watched really praised this game. I also enjoy slow game with lots of reading so this seemed perfect.

The main element of this game is the story and while I think it has very interesting ideas and themes the story drags on with too much repetition, dropping themes and replacing them with new ones quickly and without enough connecting elements. There are some pretty bold story decisions which are fresh, but also they are often unsatisfying. And this would still be very compelling if it was not dragged down by gameplay being extremely slow and making the game a lot longer. I loved about half of the time spent with this game, but half of the time I just wanted it to end.

Spoilers ahead:
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I played the game spoiler free until close to the end where I got some minor things spoiled to me. After I finished the game I looked on reddit for some information about the story.

Story:

So the story is set in 16th century Swiss Alps village where in the first act you are a young artist working in the local abbey scriptorium when a visiting nobleman gets killed and you decide to investigate as the abbot decides your mentor who is almost certainly not the culprit as a scapegoat. You talk to people around the town, you inspect items and you have some speech checks based on actions and your background you choose at the start. There is an in game timer and you find 4 suspects while you have time to investigate about two and a half. You give your findings to the official and then one is executed. Also there is this (in my opinion a bit contrived) element where there is a "thread-puller" in the village who gave the victim and suspects a letter to meet to set up this murder which seems so likely to fail. I also did not like that you investigate this element very superficially despite getting a lot of information for potential leads at this point.

The game seems at first like a murder mystery game, but you realize during act 1 that it is really not about that. It is a story that asks questions what to do in life that has a lot of uncertainty. Results of our actions can have long reaching consequences and we have to make decisions with imperfect information. And what to do with this? Is being always honest the best choice? Or should you lie to implicate the most likely culprit? Should you even interfere? And during the investigation doing obvious things might lead to best evidence, but often it does not. Sometimes illogical things and chance (or Providence) might lead to clearly bad decisions having best outcomes. Does anything really matter at all?

This being about the narrative and not the mystery itself becomes very apparent at the end of act 1 where you realize you have to make a decision with very imperfect information and the killer is not confirmed and the game just continues. This plot twist of an accusation based on so little and without a resolution is very interesting and the story (and gameplay) peaks here in my opinion. If the game ended right here or shortly after I would absolutely love it.

Then act 2 begins and you choose another set of background traits and come back 7 years later and you try to solve another murder and this also ends up quite badly with bloodshed with many peasants dead and the abbey destroyed and many characters dead. The same existential themes remain and I think they outstay their welcome as it just becomes too repetitive and less effective. In my opinion these themes are way better in shorter form than a longer one.

Another element here is introduced and that is main characters melancholia / depression which I did not like as an addition here. It is obviously interesting and makes sense as a result of act one, but a lot of happens to the MC between the acts and that felt really cheap. We just briefly read about the tragedies instead of exploring that at all. Roleplaying these parts about events we know nothing about felt awkward.

Then we move to Act 3 which seems divisive to some and not just me. As the MC is seemingly dead we move to a linear story with a new PoV some years later where our new characters explores the history and decides what to record with the information we got. I thought this really just drags on and is really another repetition of the same theme until the very end where some reveals and emotional scenes really hit. And there is some satisfying character development and seeing the results of our choices. Also I do like that the game gives some answers to the questions it asks us.

Setting The setting is interesting and I think it is covered with detail in a lot of places, but pretty shallow in others and the potential is wasted quite often. I for roleplaying chose my background very similar to myself in real life and often special dialogue choices would be quite obvious things in my opinion. And often observations would be like that too.

And all my story critiques about pacing and repetition would be much less important to me if the gameplay did not slow the game just too much.

So the days are spread into times of the day when you do your investigations and villagers and events happen around the village. So after each time progresses you should check every place because you might encounter a npc with new dialogue, some

This is a very good summary of my thoughts for the most part (just finished it a few weeks ago). I thought it was a good game, but based on the combo of vibes and it being on Obsidian game I expected great, not good. I felt like for an all-roleplaying, no-mechanics game, it struggled to make the characters distinct and evocative (partially due to the devotion to realistically drab peasant and friar clothing). I loved the twist near the end, absolutely saved the second and third acts for me.

The premise of there being no "right answer" to the mysteries is something you have to sit with for a bit, and I can definitely see it being a turn-off for many people, but ultimately I kinda liked that ambiguity.

The incorporation of speech-bubble fonts into the characterization was genius and I gasped when it snuck its way into the actual narrative.

I'll add from myself

I would appreciate it more if it was a book. The text reminded me of Remarque, specifically "the Black Obelisk". Same "big questions in small town" format, same sad melancholy about inevitability of death and life that will continue no matter what, same people who are just being people.

However

It's a game. Which means gameplay. Which means I have to physically travel between those great dialogues, press buttons and do stuff via gamepad. Which is boring to do, especially in third act

Also wtf is this ending?!

Spoiler

I intentionally tried to stay. I picked appropriate lines. I thought it matches very well with the message "we endured and lost too much. So let's accept that and move on together". Big Jorg says something similar on Christmas Eve in third act. The final touch with the mural, which will remain partially empty, because life goes on - is brilliant. So why tf she leaves town and move to Prague??? Also I don't like that Andreas survived. I understand why, but the ending of the Act 2 is now much weaker for me. And we don't see much of Caspar in act as 3 for some reason

P.S this game made me think how almost all my favourite stories in games would be much better if they were in a book/film format. But that's a conversation for another time

I agree with your PS. Sadly it seems many good videogame stories do not use the potential of the medium (visuals, choices) and instead get worse because of meh gameplay.

I had no problem with anything you mentioned. It is a game where you cannot get all the best outcomes, or even know what all the “best” outcomes are. This feels particularly apt for a time period in which so many people were poor and sick and suffering and the church and nobility controlled everything and science was in its infancy.

I also loved that it is related to the real-life Matthias Grunewald, subject of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, and that it asks great philosophical questions about the role of art in times of conflict.

there is just not enough content in the village so you spend a lot of time rechecking around 40 areas where only 1-2 have something relevant and just 1-2 have some flavour. A lot are used for nothing or just tiny details.

yea, if you don't care about "flavour" then you aren't going to have a good time. A lot of the dialogue and interactions in the game are almost completely irrelevant to the plot. They are there to flesh out the world and to allow the player to immerse themselves in the little village. If you aren't down for that, and just want to see the plot progress, its going to feel like a slog. for people who are up for a little medieval life-sim in a setting that is very rare for video games, its a real treat. personally i was kind of lucky to discover the game at a time when i was learning a second language. I played the game in Spanish and didnt mind chatting with the villagers because not only was it interesting enough but it also felt like language practice. I actually have a mind to play the game again in the future when i learn another romance language.

I was going to play this with a guide to try and get some of the different endings, and because I heard there was some trial and error I don’t want to deal with. Do you think I should still go in mostly blind or in hindsight would you wish you had a guide

Go in blind. Things change but the overall plot will stay pretty much the same. There will be times when you feel like you've fucked up and did the wrong thing, that's the point. You should feel like that

I don't like that it predetermines failure for you. I didn't finish the 3rd act, because the 2nd doubled down on the problems of the first. You must choose someone to accuse, and you cannot choose right, someone who is innocent must be accused and die. Twice. You cannot guess lucky. The game prevents it. You cannot discover who really did it at that stage, but there are enough hints that none of your potential suspects did it. You cannot pick the right guy, even if for the wrong reasons, i.e. by mistake. Again, the game prevents it.

To choose murder mysteries as the setting and to force that kind of failure is a rather poor game design. The game might have made more sense from the perspective of the assistant who watches his master blunder about without ever getting it right despite your own best efforts. That way you can still tell the same story of incomplete knowledge, groping for answers and grappling with failure, but you make the failure less personal.

I don't like that it predetermines failure for you. I didn't finish the 3rd act, because the 2nd doubled down on the problems of the first. You must choose someone to accuse, and you cannot choose right, someone who is innocent must be accused and die. Twice.

What do you base this on? The game does imply that one of the "accusable" characters did it, even if they might have been manipulated into it. The game doesn't reveal whether you were right or wrong, but neither does it force you to fail.

I kinda felt the opposite: I think Pentiment is an unambitious, but very well executed game.

Despite what you might expect from an Obsidian project, the game is way more of a straightforward narrative game/visual novel than it is an RPG, and people expecting otherwise will be disappointed. Gameplay is very thin: there's that murder-mystery element, which purposefully doesn't give you the satisfaction of a murder mystery, and there's very light RPG elements that are only there for flavor. But really you're only there for what is a largely linear story.

That said, the game has top-notch (though not necessarily flashy) writing, it's detailed, it's very thoughtful and it's full of neat historical tidbits for people who love European Medieval history. It's a real passion project, and it feels like it. The game sketches out a community that feels genuine and contains characters that I found myself caring about. I particularly appreciate that they were able to write historical characters that felt relatable without feeling modern, which is something authors can struggle with. Overall I was very satisfied with the story.

There were a few annoyances here and there (it would have been nice for travel in the village to be a bit snappier). But nothing major, really.

Still, it's very niche, and not something I'd recommend to everyone. It's for gamers who love to read, and have an active interest in history.

Playing this game with a guide would be antithetical to some of the ideas it is exploring.

I hated the way the speech bubbles took so long to appear so I bailed after a few hours both times I tried. The game is just way too slow. Glacial. Needed some fire and passion. Instead it's just tedious to the point of absurdity.