Pentiment - RPGWatch Review

Thanks for the review, @forgottenlor!

"Also it doesn’t bury the player in information", you made me realize this difference to the other games. It's true that the lore comes in a more natural way in Pentiment, and it wasn't overdone. Yet as you wrote, they managed to touch several interesting subjects and events of the time.

I'm curious: How did you perceive the repetition, or revival, of Andreas' role while playing Magdalena? Was it interesting to get another perspective, or did it feel too much like a redundant experience?

My impression is that it was a good and original idea to bring a reflexion on what happened. It was also an opportunity to get a little extra information from other people that Andreas didn't have the time to get, or couldn't have known. It may also be another form of "pentiment" - the drawing technique - but in this case by "painting" the story with new, similar events to improve the effect. However, I think that the 3rd act should have been shorter to avoid this feeling of too much repetition.

PS: The short gameplay was not a disadvantage for me. It makes a replay easier, and the game begs for it with all the choices and the deliberate lack of time for Andreas to solve the two murders.
 
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Great review - have it on my wish list and your review reminded me I wish to get it!
 
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Encouraging. I've seen mixed reviews, but I was looking forward to this.I'll pick it up as soon as it drops below $10.
 
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Good review.

I finished Pentiment several days ago and almost the only gameplay is in dialog choices. The experience I had was much closer to reading a book than to playing an RPG.

I only somewhat enjoyed the characters and story, and the game. I'm mostly glad that I played it.
 
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Thanks for the review, @forgottenlor!

"Also it doesn’t bury the player in information", you made me realize this difference to the other games. It's true that the lore comes in a more natural way in Pentiment, and it wasn't overdone. Yet as you wrote, they managed to touch several interesting subjects and events of the time.

I'm curious: How did you perceive the repetition, or revival, of Andreas' role while playing Magdalena? Was it interesting to get another perspective, or did it feel too much like a redundant experience?

My impression is that it was a good and original idea to bring a reflexion on what happened. It was also an opportunity to get a little extra information from other people that Andreas didn't have the time to get, or couldn't have known. It may also be another form of "pentiment" - the drawing technique - but in this case by "painting" the story with new, similar events to improve the effect. However, I think that the 3rd act should have been shorter to avoid this feeling of too much repetition.

PS: The short gameplay was not a disadvantage for me. It makes a replay easier, and the game begs for it with all the choices and the deliberate lack of time for Andreas to solve the two murders.
I agree with almost everything you say. The perspective change was an advantage in the last act, but it would have been better if it was shorter. I think having time pressure and missing out on say one of 3 possible quest branches would have also helped Magdalena's act as well.
 
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Good review.

I finished Pentiment several days ago and almost the only gameplay is in dialog choices. The experience I had was much closer to reading a book than to playing an RPG.

I only somewhat enjoyed the characters and story, and the game. I'm mostly glad that I played it.
I also agree that it feels like you are role playing both protagonists, which separates Pentiment from a typical adventure or visual novel game. However, for me an RPG must have character advancement and more complex mechanics.
 
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There are too many choices for me to consider that as reading a book, and it is almost entirely made up of dialogues so it would be a poor narrative. But the way it reveals tidbits of information on the whole story could make it a good example on how an interactive book should be organized. Minus the logic flaws :p

Or it could be transformed into a normal book that reveals the same story from different point of views, like An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears in which a mystery is reported successively by several characters, slowly revealing the truth by assembling the pieces of the puzzle.
 
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I enjoyed the first act the most but by the 3rd act some of the magic was rubbing off. The main gameplay mechanic (morning/afternoon/evening schedule) was quite repetitive and I would of preferred a bit more freeform in some of the segments i.e. Cruise for a Corpse style or similar. I also encountered a suprising number of bugs like characters rendering behind/infront of things incorrectly or logic bugs like characters talking about an upcoming event that actually already happened - I did play it about 3 months ago so maybe some of these things have been fixed.
 
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Nice review @forgottenlor , very brief, but then so was the game I suppose. Yes, the lack of mechanics would put me off but I can see how it would make for a nice day or two's read for people who like this sort of thing.
 
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Thank you for this review. I do won the game but I've not manged to get into it yet. You just made me a lot more likely to take that plunge!
 
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Nice review @forgottenlor , very brief, but then so was the game I suppose. Yes, the lack of mechanics would put me off but I can see how it would make for a nice day or two's read for people who like this sort of thing.
In a game like this which is about 80% narrative, its difficult to write a longer review without including spoilers (at least for me).
 
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Flew absolutely under my radar. I'll buy it, after having read this review, for sure.
 
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Good review forgottenlor but it looks like Obsidian has all but given up on the game. As a segment of buyers cant even play it, due to a known startup bug never being fixed.
 
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