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.

Historically accurate to a weird degree, and full of the feeling of the high middle ages and early Renaissance. Amazing writing, and a truly engaging adventure game. You'll absolutely know if it's for you within two hours; absolutely worth a shot.

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