Pentiment Review
It's been an age since I felt so captivated by such a simple adventure game as Pentiment. A rousing, steadily-paced detective thriller set in the Late Medieval Bavarian countryside, the storybook art style inspired by colorful manuscripts of the era is downright enthralling. While the gameplay basically consists of looking around for clues, questioning townsfolk, and trying to draw your own conclusions about the evidence you find, that minimalist approach works excellently for the rich and complex story Pentiment tells.
Our inquisitive lead is Andeas Maler, initially an idealistic aspiring artist who comes to the picturesque, rustic town of Tassing to further his career in the nearby abbey's scriptorium. He quickly becomes embroiled in a macabre conspiracy that delves into the town's shrouded past, enticing you to uncover secrets many would rather keep buried. You get to define a lot of elements of Andreas' backstory, such as where and what he studied, which I really enjoyed and adds an element of replayability. Having a university degree in theology helped a lot when pesky monks and nuns tried to quote the Bible at me to get their way and I was able to do so right back. But my background choices didn't open up new paths quite as much as I would have liked, with their impact on a conversation most often boiling down to some different options for flavor text.
Thankfully, there aren't many unintuitive puzzles in the traditional adventure game sense where you have to find bits and bobs out in the world and combine them to make a key. So the challenge of each mystery is talking to the right people, convincing them to tell you what you know, checking their story against others you've heard, and perhaps most importantly, using
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