Pentiment

Pentiment draws an unusual kind of review. "As a medievalist (I wrote my PhD dissertation about a manuscript produced in the twelfth-century), I really appreciate this game," reads one of its most-upvoted reviews, at 699 votes. "A long time ago, I got a master's degree in medieval literature," opens another, at 1,501 votes, going on to detail exactly why the game's period research holds up under real scrutiny rather than just looking convincing. That's a rare kind of credibility for a video game to earn, and it's central to why Pentiment sits at 94.9% positive across 5,487 English reviews.

An illustrated manuscript you inhabit

You play a journeyman artist in a Bavarian abbey town in the early 1500s, investigating a murder across a story that spans years and generations. The presentation is the game's most-praised element by a wide margin: art rendered like a hand-drawn illuminated manuscript, with dialogue fonts that visibly shift depending on which character is speaking — a peasant's blocky lettering against a scholar's flowing script — a level of period-authentic craft reviewers repeatedly call unmatched. One of the most detailed reviews compares it directly to Disco Elysium: "When I finished Disco Elysium in 2019, I said 'I have no idea how I'm supposed to play another role playing game after this one.' ... Pentiment is more."

The choice that isn't quite a choice

Set the presentation aside, and the most substantive, recurring argument in the negative corpus concerns the game's central mechanical promise. Pentiment markets itself heavily on player choice — who you accuse, how you investigate, which relationships you build — and 58 of the 100 most-helpful English negatives argue that promise doesn't hold up under a second look. "I played it through two and a half times before realizing that the game was forcing you [toward largely the same outcomes]," reads one detailed 64-vote review. Another, more measured: "as the player progresses, the illusion of choice became more obvious." A third reviewer, a self-described lover of the period and setting, sums up the frustration precisely: "It's a game centered around murder mysteries yet you're never provided options that investigate the concrete details" the plot turns on. This isn't a fringe reading — it recurs, independently, across dozens of reviews written months and years apart, from people who otherwise loved substantial parts of the game.

A second, more practical complaint concerns the game's real-time day-and-night structure and its lack of a manual save system. "Why not have a proper manual save system?" reads one review. "'Because we don't want that.' Uh, okay." Several reviewers report losing hours of progress or missing content because they didn't understand the rules governing when time passes until well into a playthrough — fifty of the 100 negatives mention the time mechanic directly, nearly matching the choice complaint in volume.

What the reviews agree the game gets right

None of this undercuts the writing and characters, which draw consistent, specific praise even from critical reviewers. "This game has good characters, great world building, and fairly decent writing," reads one review that otherwise criticises the plot's investigative structure directly. Several reviewers describe an emotional impact that outlasted the credits — "A thought-provoking work that won't easily leave your mind long after the credits roll" — and the median critical reviewer's playtime (14.6 hours) suggests most people who criticise the game did so after finishing it, not after bouncing off early.

The achievement curve reflects a game most buyers see through to completion: early milestones sit in the 40-56% range, a healthy spread for a narrative game with no combat gate to filter players out, while the hardest completion-related achievements fall to the low single digits — consistent with a substantial, single-playthrough-focused story most people experience once rather than replay for alternate outcomes.

7.5 out of 10. Pentiment is a genuine achievement in historical game design — its writing, art and research are praised by people qualified to judge that research, not just impressed by it — and its central mystery stays with players in a way few games manage. But its own review corpus makes a credible, well-documented case that its signature "choices matter" pitch oversells what the game actually delivers, and its lack of a proper save system turns a real-time mechanic into a genuine frustration for a meaningful share of players. Go in for the story Obsidian actually tells, not the branching one the marketing implies.