I heard of “Pentiment” from a youtube video about underappreciated games and I definitely think this game fits that description. It is not the type of game I normally play, but that hasn’t stopped me from playing it. I haven’t put many hours into it, but so far it is addicting.
The first thing I noticed about this game is the art style. The characters and scenes are deeply detailed and well crafted to set the mood of the game. There is also a secret big head mode in the game which allows you to increase the size of the characters’ heads. This makes it easier to identify characters when in handheld mode and can look goofy too. The characters also have their speech bubbles written in different fonts which reflect their social status. The more educated a character is, the more elegant their handwriting. The characters’ speech bubbles sometimes contain spelling mistakes that the character corrects which adds to the charm of the game. If the character you are talking to is a printer, their speech will be animated differently and will appear at the same time instead of being procedurally written out.
There are a lot of characters and historical locations in the game, so it can be hard to keep track of everything. One thing that helps is pressing the minus button when there is underlined text. This will zoom out the game screen and show it as a page in a book with textboxes on the sides with text explaining historical places, people, or events as well as showing the heads of any characters referenced. The game also points to the relevant text in the speech bubbles via a hand pointing to the text with a comically large finger. The menu for seeing your active quests can also be found in a book that exists outside of the game screen. I love this feature because it creates an immersion with your character as he draws illustrations in religious texts.
The game also has a cool way of letting you select your character traits. Most games make you go through a process of character selection or creation before the game starts but “Pentiment” breaks apart by having you select your traits during dialogue with various characters. I really like this because it helps keep the immersion while simultaneously allowing you to have an influence on who your character is in the story.
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who loves medieval things or likes games with a unique art style. This is a game I will want to try multiple times with different character traits and see how the story differs each time. I give this game a 9.5/10 rating.