izigame.me

FAIR WARNING: I'm a medieval reenactor, a big history nerd, and I've spent WEEKS of my life reading about the various themes that this game touches upon. I'm very much the intended player, this game is very much scratching an itch for me, and i'm very much in love with it and very biased. But, I'm going to be nitpicky because it's a NICHE game and I want to give it a relevant review.
**To sum up:**
A wonderful game for a history nerd like myself. If you are interested in history in general, and the Early Modern period in particular, this game might be for you! The attention to detail and history is phenomenal! I can't but salute the effort and love that went into Pentiment. On the other hand, if you don't care about history then it MIGHT be a bit "too much" for you. But who knows ? It might actually push you out of your comfort zone and teach you about this very interesting, very intense period of history.
Now, for the more technical part:
The game is A LOT of reading. There are no voice overs, only text. That said, they really did a great job (imo) of conveying the background, personality, and social class of all characters. The police changes if you speak to an educated monk or to a farmer. Ink splashes around the words when the characters are shouting. The Printer family have their dialogues PRINTED instead of calligraphed! A very clever way to do without voice acting.
And, the accessibility options for texts are unline anything i've seen in a video game before: changing the size, the police, the ligatures, etc. is all supported to make sure more people can comfortably read the game. Now, I don't have any issue reading but for some people, they might want to spend some time looking through the settings before the 2-hours mark in case they need to refund it.
Now, one downside to this is that the sound of scribbling on paper plays constantly when people are talking, which some people might not like. I think it adds to the charm and style of the game, but in some stages of the game there is no music and only ambiance/scribbling noises when people talk, and it's noticeable that something is missing.
Graphics: very beautiful and immersive. The whole game is stylized as a medieval/early modern illustrated manuscript or book. Some animations could have used a bit more work (the wool spinning section has a VERY janky bit), but overall everything fits and seems appropriate for the setting of the game. It's a very unique style but if you've spent any amount of time IRL looking at manuscript illustrations especially some Books of Hours, you will really appreciate it.
Story: Well, I didn't finish it yet. So far, very promising and historically plausible. As i'm on my first playthrough, I can't say how choices influence the story, but my shitty choices have definitely closed off some paths for my story, and definitely opened others. I see a lot of replayability in this game. It reminds me of Disco Elysium and Telltale games, but it's very much its own thing. I definitely did not expect the game to go to the second act and make me live with the consequences of my actions. This game will cause EMOTIONS and FEELINGS. Be warned.
Gameplay is basic but it works: walk around the town, talk to people, find clues. Often, you have choices that will influence how other people react to you and your requests later. Everything is organised around a time cycle: you start in the morning, have to do some tasks, time passes, then you have to eat with someone, time passes, then you have some tasks, again you have to get dinner with another character, and then you have to either sleep or or do some other tasks. Some tasks are dialogues, some are mini games.
It's simple but it works, and you're going to wish you had more time in a day to track all your leads!
The game autosaves and there is no manual saving in the game. For a multiple-choices/branching storyline game, this is a bold move. And I think it works. It encourages you to live with the consequences of your choices, which is one of the themes of the story. There is no "save scumming", there is no "let me save here and try this dialogue option and if I don't like it i'll reload".
History: Now, I'm not a specialist of 16th century bavaria, but everything looks very historical to me, it's certainly convincing! The clothing are nice, the buildings look nice, the way the characters act is very immersive. They definitely did their research and were obviously helped by actual historians to make this.
The game is approaching tough topics and does a good job of being tactful and does not indulge in blood/sex/vice like Game of Thrones but keeps a realistic historical approach. I really like that they did not forget to include POC characters, and they did it in a way that makes historical sense, and threw a bit of shade at all the studios who pretend they don't put black people in their games for historical reasons (*cough* mordhau *cough cough* kingdom come deliverance*cough*). I'm not afraid to say this is THE MOST HISTORICALLY ACcURATE GAME I'VE EVER PLAYED. And i play almost every game that calls itself historically accurate.
PS: the food looks yummy, I want some swabish ravioli now.