God, what an utterly wonderful, deeply moving game so full of humanity. In truth though I don't believe Pentiment to be perfect and without flaw, I have enjoyed it so much despite its shortcomings I can award it nothing short of the maximum possible number score.

Pentiment is one of those games that only comes around once every many years. Its clear that Josh Sawyer and his small team were given rare freedom to pursue a fairly niche idea, heavily researched (though I am not qualified to evaluate its accuracy) and thought out. Pentiment really stands tall on the merit of its writing and art. A period drama so full of wonderfully flawed, well rounded characters reflecting on so many of the issues of their time, as well as their relation to the past from which they draw and how in turn their stories relate to us in the present.

Its hard to really explain what makes this game so wonderful, in all honesty I think I could never do it justice with words alone. This game is of course very text heavy, and unfortunately some may not appreciate what its doing with its various RPG mechanics and player choice, expecting a "choose your own adventure" style whilst missing the point entirely, though I cannot blame them as I really don't know that I can fully explain it myself. Its an adventure game with RPG elements which is in theory a murder mystery but its more of a framing device to show how events change the course of the town. For example you are never told who the actual murderer is. Like in real life you must make the most of what little time you have to uncover whatever flawed understanding of events and make decisions which for better and for worse will affect the course of history; importantly you cannot uncover everything on any one playthrough. The accused is executed yes, but life goes on. People will remember what happened, the family of the executed may stop talking to you but there is no omniscient hand of god to say "you did it".

One early indication of where the story is going with all this is after the first time skip when Andreas comes back a few years after the murder of the Baron and stays at a local inn that opened up during the timeskip. The local innkeeper will mention the events of the murder and the details of the execution of the guilty party but in a very flawed, slightly wrong way. Even just a few years ago when this is within living memory what little truth there was is already being twisted. In Pentiment the truth is really not as important as the perception of what the truth is. Another is the sheer amount of retellings of the same story of the founding of Tassing and Kiersau abbey, the stories of the "saint" etc are all told by many different people at different points of the game in slightly but importantly different ways depending on their background and education : the old timer who keep the pagan ways, the monks at the abbey, various people of different beliefs all tell the story in a way that suited them and the people who told them said versions, all of them intermixing and getting tangled in the great game of telephone that is the oral tradition.

Coupled with the semi anachronistic elements of the Scriptorium giving way to the printing press for good and for ill related to the reformation and the German Peasant's War and even the archeological evidence you find of Kiersau being founded on top of roman ruins on top of earlier pagan settlements all pointing to the titular theme of Pentiment (referring to a painting being made on top of part or whole of an earlier painting) of the present always building on the past even when we dont know it and GOD! Pentiment is so goddamned good I would voluntarily write a Uni essay on the themes of history and truth in it. I'll just summarize here before I make this an even bigger mess of a review : Your choices reinforce the narrative of the incompleteness of history and the choices we make with what time we have.

I don't think the gameplay is unimpeachable, in particular I thought Disco Elysium did a much better job of making your dice rolls failing feel as compelling as them succeeding. I like your dialogue choices weighing the dice rolls, it makes just choosing what to say feel much more deliberate (unlike in New Vegas where choosing the high speech option was the most optimal thing to do pretty much always, here using certain traits can be very much the worse thing to say). However what I dont like is having done everything right and having like a 90% chance to succeed and getting a failure anyways (the game autosaves to prevent save scumming too). And sure, thats always the case with this type of RPG but it didnt feel as discouraging in DE. On the one hand, I can see the argument that "Pentiment is a game about making flawed choices based on incomplete information much like the practice of history and indeed life itself is based upon such things, we rarely have the complete picture and Andreas himself is tortured by his choices in life, what he didnt do at various points and etc etc you get the picture" on the other hand : "Go fuck yourself you goddamned motherfucking fucker, get fucked you fucking swine! Fuck your stupid fucking dice rolls!"

Other than that, the backtracking can be a bit annoying especially when the cute little loading transitions stop being cute, walking back and forth trying to remember where everyone lives in this stupid village especially after everytime jump when people die or move or marry or what have you.

However, these are mere drops of water on an ocean of outstanding meditation on history and human drama. The night before finishing this game I had a dream involving some of the characters, this should tell you something about my investment in the story.

I think the best thing I can say about Pentiment is it has made me think about the history of my own corner of the world. Though I live in Spain The village centre has a statue of San Martín and the streets are named after places in Argentina, I vaguely remember hearing this town was founded by argentinian immigrants but now I think I should do what best I can to try to investigate, see what little I can find about the history of this place for good and bad, and who knows what may come out of it? The wheels of time keep spinning, so do what you love for however long you can : "Love is the only reason to do anything in this life"