Recent reviews by Baffles

Have you ever booked a hotel room after looking at the owner's pictures online, only to be utterly disappointed shortly after arrival, and subsequently wanting to leave after the first night? If not, then Pentiment offers you the same experience from the comfort of your own home - hooray!

Now, I'm a sucker for medieval stuff - so a game set in medieval Southern Germany, the art style mimicking old medieval drawings from books? Of course I was excited - it sounded like some kind of clever detective novel, where you'd be collecting clues to solve a murder case by yourself, set in a charming world. Better still, things like the "mature content description" hinted at the fact that it wouldn't paint a naive picture of medieval life, instead portraying both its charm and its morbid sides. That, sadly, was the only hope of mine actually being fulfilled.

As a German playing a game set in Germany, I, of course, opted for the German language option at first - it could've added so much immersion! .. At least had they engaged an actual translator instead of what felt like Google Translate used by someone who doesn't even speak German. This might've already been fixed in later updates, but while I played it, it was laughably bad. My favorite part was "Pet -name-" becoming "Haustier -name-", which describes "pet animal", not the act of "petting" something.
Luckily, the brillant German education system my teenage years spent in the internet made switching to English no problem.

After a quite lovingly crafted opening scene, the game thrusts you into its world as Andreas Maler, a young painter, spending some time in some cute village. Now, the first hour of the game, I really enjoyed. The art style, the sound design, the way in which you can kinda choose some of Malers traits yourself - I felt like a feasting medieval king, my plate full of only the best foods.
Just walking around, relishing the way everything looks - the silly medieval-style drawings in the menu, the different fonts people talk in, the whole game looking like a medieval scroll come to life - I honestly had a blast!
Some hours in though, things already began to grow.. dull. The gameplay can best be described as a walking simulator - one who's world you basically fully explore in the first two hours. Apart from some minor stuff, like you exploring a small cave deep into the game - this village and the abbey is everything you're going to see for the next 16 hours.

That alone wouldn't be a problem - dialogue can fully carry an experience, just think of visual novels! The thing with Pentiment, though, is that you have to spend big chunks of time running around in the same old places - searching for the 1-2 people who'll tell you something new instead of repeating themselves.
For a game relying so heavily on text, new optional interactions are just.. too hard to find, resulting in you slowly walking from known place to known place, always in fear of missing something, only to mostly hear the same old stuff you already read about. It's just a weird design choice - making a dialogue-driven game, then locking the dialogue one doesn't want to miss behind sluggish strolls through a never expanding, often rather empty world.

Sometimes, you can make choices when talking to people. These, combined with some characteristics you can assign to Maler, mostly decide whether you succeed or fail in persuading someone to act the way you want them to. Now, maybe I might just be awful at convincing people - but on my first (and last) playthrough, I basically failed all of these so called "dialogue checks". Apparently, about 66% of fellow players did the same, as the "Art of persuasion" achievement (unlocking at 5 successfully done) rakes in at 33% completion as of now. Guessing there are about 20 of them, I feel like I've missed quite some stuff I would have liked to see! However, once they're failed - you failed them. Which isn't bad in and of itself, but it connects wonderfully to another problem.

The games pacing is just too awfully slow to have any replayability. Pentiment seems to offer quite some different dialogue and events based on the choices you make. Again - I would love to experience these, but having to crawl through the same old town and every slow dialogue again - only to experience some minor changes just doesn't seem worth it. So that's the feeling the game left me with - after about 16 hours of gameplay which passed slower and slower, it's like I missed out on a lot of what the game has to offer - which is now locked behind a journey I wouldn't want to redo. Great!

Whoever might have read this far might wonder - why didn't he yet mention the story? Well.. its because it basically left no impression on me. It wasn't awful or even bad, but I just wasn't engaged with it as much as a story-driven game would require for it to be more than "cool on paper" or "a nice concept". Crucify me or burn me as a witch - the games core story is mediocre at best, and loosely held together by the fluff the game offers look- and atmosphere wise.

In the end, Pentiments lovely features - its unique setting, the art style, gimmicks like different fonts, the subtle yet pleasant sound design - just couldn't carry this game over the finish line. It might serve as a prime example that video games can and should be considered art - but a game being art and being enjoyable are two completely seperate things.

To return to the metaphor of the king at the feast - after just one course, he reached satiation, blissfully unaware that 15 more courses were waiting to be savoured by him. Each one consisting of exactly the same foods as the first - but at least, differently arranged and neatly presented.

Tolle Hüte, und auch das Gameplay ist ganz nett.