Pentiment

Pentiment is one of the best games I have ever experienced. It tells the story of the made-up town of Tassing throughout 25 years, divided into three different acts. While the trailers advertise it as a mystery game (I love Ace Attorney games), I found that the murder mystery takes a somewhat backseat at many times, specially in the last act, which causes the people who got into the game because of the mystery feel out of place. In truth, the game is about the people of Tassing, the politics of the Holy Roman Empire from 1518 until 1543, the preservation of history and how it is always skewered to look more favourably on some, the sacrifices that are sometimes done to improve the living conditions of people, and how life improves slowly for the common folk, if sometimes it gets worse, when looking at the big picture it gets better in the end. It talks about books, about religion, but most importantly, Pentiment is a game about time and life. MUSIC The music is really well done, it feels very apropiate for the time period, and some of the songs are actual real life songs from the Baviera region of Germany at the time, like the Christmas song. However, most of the time there is no actual music and it is just the environment sounds, which are also really well done. My favourite songs would probably be the song that plays at the end, the song that plays when you enter Kiersau Abbey in Act 3 and specially the Christmas Song. ART STYLE Let's be real here, the first thing that took everyone's attention was the artstyle. It is absolutely impecabble, the animals all have this uncanny look to them where you can recognize the animal but it looks weird like a monastic book, children have a cartoony style, elderly people look like they are straight-up from a manuscript, while adults have a style that mixes the two. The older the person is the more damaged the paint is, when you press select you can see the part of the book where everything takes place... There is a character that comes from Ethiopia, and the artstyle in which they are drawn reflects the artstyle of the area at the time, and it feels like everything was well respected and investigated to do the period justice. GAMEPLAY AND STORY I put this two together because Pentiment is practically a graphic novel, however, your dialogue choices have a lot of impact in the future. You can not end the game as a noble lord, the game is based on reality and you can not end up higher on the social scale than where your parents where, but you can affect the lives of the people of Tassing, who dies for the murder, if somebody gets married, if somebody develops their career further, if somebody leaves the convent to live a life for themselves, if a character improves with time or ends up an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥... That is in all honesty all the freedom the devs could have allowed if they wanted the game to feel like it has impact while at the same time it is realistic, and they nailed it. Depending on what you say you will see the "This will be remembered" message that means that decision will impact on wether you can convinve someone or not, or if they end up in the end one way or another. It comes out of the blue, which makes each dialogue choice feel heavier because you don't know if they may be feeling particularly conscious or it is just a casual conversation. SUMMARY If you love dialogue-heavy games where your choices affect everyone in the game, and you like murder misteries, Pentiment is going to be an easy pick for you. If you prefer more action in your games or the power fantasy of starting from zero and having infinite posibilities for growth, then I am sorry, that is not how history works and you will not like Pentiment. It is a game that understands that history is built upon the infrastructure built by everyone before us, even if their names are lost to time, those people impacted the people around them, who in turn did the same to their children and people around them, and so on... Words can not really explain how the game will make you feel, and while I achieved 100% achievement completion, there are entire background choices I have never experienced, that's how many little changes the game can have for the people of Tassing.