✓ pixelated
✓ synthwavey
✓ retro style
✓ cool as hell gameplay
✓ cool as hell story
perfect game
waiting on that "to be continued" tho

One of the coolest dungeon crawling rougelikes I've ever played. Truly just throws you into the dark and lets you flounder till you find your footing but in a good way. It feels great to learn how the systems work in a natural way without ever having to feel guided every step of the way. The aesthetics with regard to the sound and look of the game are obviously great. The story itself is very unique and while most of it went over my head again it still feels good to try to figure out what's going on yourself.

After seeing the reviews for Pentiment, I grew more and more curious. After seeing that this was a new RPG, point-and-click from Obsidian, as well as seeing the phenomenal art style, I knew I had to give this game a shot; especially after seeing in on Gamepass. My curiosity was warranted, as Pentiment is one of my favorite games to have come out in 2022.

Pentiment is alllllll about the story and writing. Think of this game as a less-RPG heavy Disco Elysium-esc experience, where your choices in dialogue, as well as your background and strengths, play a role in how your character interacts with those around them, as well as how they solve the mysteries at hand. Being a murder mystery game, you'll spend most of your time talking to people and digging up clues as to who could've done it. Its extremely entertaining, as the writing is some of the best that I've ever seen in games. The writing is also held up by the stellar art style and presentation. Characters write in different scripts depending on their occupation, education level, and/or their personality. It is such a small thing, but helps build characters' personalities in such a cool, subtle way.

I don't want to give away ANYTHING about the story, as I believe it works the best when you go in completely blind. But just know that this game does feature heavy Christiaan themes, as it explore Catholicism and its hold on communities in the 1500s. Which I found extremely interesting. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it worked extremely well for me.

Now if you're the type of gamer that doesn't care much about writing or storytelling and just wanna get down and dirty with some gameplay, don't bother playing Pentiment. The game is all walking, talking, investigating, and choosing. There are some "puzzles" here and there, but they are really simple and not in the least challenging. You're really playing Pentiment for the story and characters, which Obsidian knocked out of the park.

More special mention needs to go to the art style. Its fashioned like the artwork you'd see in a book that was written in the 1500s. Everything follows this style, and it looks stunning. Such a simple style, but it oozes with creativity with every landscape you see in this title.

There's not really a lot to say about Pentiment without spoiling it, which again, I refuse to do. But know that if you love story-focused games with great writing and characters, you'll love Pentiment. It feels like such a passion project, and Obsidian knocked it out of the park.

It feels so odd to play a video game and have an actual reaction to the game's story like wtf?? game stories can be good???

Anyway, some parts were a liiiittle unpolished, it's missing some of the bigger advancements of metroidvanias over the past few years, and some of the combat encounters were a bit stupid in their balancing, but for a first-time team, it feels so crazy to me that this game looks and sounds this good on top of having some really fun combat and platforming sequences and a genuinely touching story. I am incredibly impressed by this game and I can't wait to see where they go from here.

I got to play this game a few days before launch and I'm already 15 hours in, I can definitely say that this game is literally a suikoden game. There are many things you'll recognize if you're a suikoden fan like me. The difficulty has been improved A LOT which was basically the weak point of suikoden. I really like lian her conversations they're so good, tbh I don't get the translation hate I think it's really fun, don't listen to the haters they have brainrot and are actually insane about it. I don't think I'll like seign and jowa better than jowy and riou though. This might be the best looking HD2D game so far, the game doesn't have annoying filters like octopath and triangle strategy, it's easy to read what's going on the screen unlike squares HD2D games. the characters are very expressive to be a HD2D game which I really like, it does a lot to make things feel alive. The blur might be annoying sometimes especially when they blur the place you're walking to, bruh why blur the thing you're focusing on it's so annoying, it feels so uncomfortable to look at it's like having bad eyesight ( I found out I can turn it off yippie ). I will update my review when I get further

Even tho this game just establishes the questions for the sequel to answer, I’ve enjoyed it VERY much.

The Press and Turn combat system is one of my favs of all time and the hunting is fun.

I’ve only wished for Serph to be a bit more talkative, as the rest are so charismatic, but is a trope in this kind of game, so its not a big deal.

Cant wait to see what DDS2 has in store for me!

Can't believe what I've finished playing yesterday. I'm still processing all that happened, but I'm ASHAMED that took me this long to play this masterpiece.

The characters are charismatic, the plot is beautifully written and the change of pace in CD2 didn't bother me. Even I thank for a more straight-forward change to start explaining everything that the game built in the almost first 50h.

The gameplay is addictive. It isn't complex, but the accessories and Gear equipment let you adapt to every situation and even do a kinda "glass cannon" build. Getting all the Deathblows for Fei and Citan (my faves for combat) was fun and did a bunch of sidequest that really liked (that Emeralda sidequest was very good even tho short).

Can't wait to keep diving in the Xeno world, as I've played (and loved) Xenoblade and now Xenogears.

Yes, I'm looking at you Xenosaga ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)