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.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 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.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.
Unfortunately not, they only released one single patch in December.I did play it about 3 months ago so maybe some of these things have been fixed.
In a game like this which is about 80% narrative, its difficult to write a longer review without including spoilers (at least for me).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.