Err, this is an awesome illustrated book. The amount of detail in the Renaissance (and Middle Ages) is incredible. I learned probably thousands of interesting facts about the village and monastery life, about professions, about religion and more. The storytelling is also very good. There are interesting characters, secrets, twists and turns and complex stories are woven with novel presentation, like the nun (Illuminata) walking you through a book.

So why the negative recommendation? There is no game. You walk around, talk to people. You have to find the correct people to talk to advance some plots. And that is it. Your "stats", if we can call them that, add or remove tiny amounts of mostly irrelevant information. The entire decision tree of the game can be summarized in half a page. Even this could have worked, but then Pentiment forces you to make morally ambiguous decisions. That is not fun.

I find comparing Pentiment to Disco Elysium really weird. In DE, the entire game shifts its tone based on Harry's perception of himself. You are blocked from certain solutions to certain quests. You make decisions left and right - a simple phone call to a random number end up with a deeper decision tree than the entirety of Pentiment.

So buy this if you would like an awesome and very linear narrative experience written by experts in the Renaissance. If you are expecting an RPG, like Pillars 1 or 2, this is not the game for you.

if you don't play this game i will place a curse upon your bloodline

A great and profound narrative game. As dense as realistic, the thrill it provided kept me thinking about it even after playing it. My choices brought me both relief and regret. The inevitable facts made me feel proud, sad, frustrated and exhilarated. The visuals are astounding, with beautiful and meaningful font choices. The music and sound effects kept me in the setting. Everything is immersive and I felt part of Tassing and its community.

I will play this game again, but not because it left a void after my first playthrough. On the contrary; I don't think I could easily forget this game (even if I never play it again, which will not be the case). Big cheers and thanks to all the people who worked on it.