when i first saw screenshots from pentiment, i was immediately drawn to its art style. at one point in my life i had a particular interest in medieval european art, so to see a whole game dedicate itself to that aesthetic was an instant win for me -- i knew whenever i got to play this, i'd love it just by its visuals alone. fortunately for me, though, is that pentiment ended up being so much more than just its looks.

pentiment is ... a mystery role-playing game, i suppose. it's a slow-paced, contemplative adventure where you play as an artist living in a small, 16th century alpine town in bavaria. it blends painstaking research of the zeitgeist with modern day language & humor, making the experience both approachable & immersive.

the detailing in its presentation is nothing short of masterful -- font faces & text colors convey intimate detail into a character's beliefs ( and what your character believes of them ); sound design is stark & moody, using music to emphasize tone as tastefully as possible; character designs are varried, memorable, & creative, with even their chosen animation style emphasizing the fact that they're illustrations come to life; even the menuing & gameflow are dedicated to the aesthetic, like you're really turning the pages of pentiment's tome to watch its story unfold.

and to speak on that story a bit here ... i loved it. i won't say too much, but i will say i was very surprised by how toe-to-tip thoughtful it was. the game's themes unfurl & interweve with each other so beautifully, it was absolutely stellar to watch things fall into place. "pentiment" comes from the word "pentimento", referring to the process of revealing older versions of a painting as its layers get stripped away, be they by human hand or time. this idea -- unearthing a secret by peeling away its surface, bit by bit -- is carried on through the game's art design, its plot, its world-building ( if you can refer to historical fiction that way? ), its everything -- and it's amazing! there is so much passion & love woven into the fabric of pentiment's narrative tapestry.

and my initial hunches about pentiment were right, of course: its aesthetic blew me away. it's been a very long time since i've played a modern game that tried SO hard to dedicate itself to its visuals. it is considered taboo -- in some developer circles -- to prioritize concept design over game design; and in a way, i agree. if your game is too bogged down by high-concept visual language, its going to make most players struggle just to do basic tasks like navigate a menu. an example of this is any of quantic dream's titles, like beyond: two souls, where your user interface is a small white dot ... which is great for conveying you're "playing" an "immersive" "movie-game", but otherwise makes actually seeing what you're doing hard, as well as poorly conveying how you interact with objects once you've targeted them.
i don't think pentiment is free of these concerns, exactly: when you want to flip through your journal, for example, you have to truly flip through the pages to read, which is time consuming & potentially aggravating if you menu too quickly & need to backtrack. but pentiment has also gone to the effort to make such immersive actions as painless as they can ( like adding tabs to your journal for quicker access to sections ) while still trying to prioritize the physical feeling of doing these actions. i am typically willing to work with a game's mechanics & what it asks you to do, but i can see this slower pace frustrating people who do not want to waste time with "in-between" actions like this.

that is my only real critique, though, beyond maybe some oversights in triggering certain dialogue trees, or the subtleness of some of its clues. nothing gamebreaking, of course ( and if i am frank, this is all just nitpicking ) but for something as tightly designed as pentiment, such minor hiccups feel more jarring than in other, more rushed projects.

the role-playing aspect of this game has me sort of wondering about what other flavors of the story i could get if i played through it again ... but truthfully, i don't really feel the need to try. despite having some things i'd want to change, i don't think it is appropriate within the themes of pentiment to try & erase my mistakes. what have i learned from this experience, if not to embrace my past & make the best of what i've got?