I played through Pentiment this past week and really enjoyed it. The things that immediately stand out are the setting and the art style of course, but there are also some other aspects that I really liked. It is one of those rare RPGs that takes place in a single location (one town and it's outskirts) which allows the creators to infuse a lot of depth into the setting and characters. It is steeped in real European medieval history and folklore. There are loads of characters and while not all of them are important to the actual story, they all play a part in giving the town a feeling of being real and alive, especially because you encounter multiple generations of families through the game. There are so many small and subtle touches in the game that you will observe and appreciate. I really, really wish more RPGs focused on small but well fleshed out hub locations instead of the norm which is usually big, varied maps with nearly no depth or lots of repetition.
The second aspect of the game I really liked was that you cannot actually complete every quest in one play through. It's somewhat like The Last Express where the game world is progressing around you and there is only so much you can experience depending on your choices. The character traits you choose for your character will let you obtain some information while locking you out from learning other things. When you choose to go somewhere you will possibly miss out on something else you could have done elsewhere. That said, there are no correct answers to any questions the games asks so you are not missing out by not being able to complete all the content. It just means your specific play through is customized according to your choices.
The last thing I liked is that there is a decent amount of depth despite how simplified the RPG systems are. You choose your core attributes and skills once and you never 'upgrade' them while playing. It plays out almost like a 'choose your own adventure' as you just go to different places and talk to people without ever having to do anything more (outside of a few mini games). Despite that, you are always aware of how many ways the game could diverge from the path you are taking and also how the designers have worked to ensure that your game never gets derailed because you missed out on some information or outcomes. It's pretty short as well... about 12-14 hours to play through it. I always like that because it allows the game to have a focused narrative that doesn't overstay it's welcome. I don't actually think the game has much replayability because the story itself is pretty linear. In that regard it's a tier below a game like Alpha Protocol which was also about 15 hours long but was endlessly replayable.
So my question is why did no one play the game? It was reviewed really well by both critics and the Steam community, but from what little metrics we know and can extrapolate from, it doesn't seem like it did well. It has a 1250 peak CCU on Steam which is kind of pathetic. There are porn games that do 4x that (not to demean adult games. They just have a limited audience and are taboo in general).
There was a time when an Obsidian release used to be an event and everyone would be interested in it. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Last year they had two releases - Grounded and Pentiment - and both were seemingly ignored even though they reviewed quite well. Before this they had Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 and the latter did poorly by their own admission. I wonder what's going on. For Pentiment the reasons seem fairly straightforward. It released at the end of the busy season after all the big releases had taken away everyone's attention. Maybe everyone who was interested played it on Gamepass. I talked about this with a friend of mine who reviews games and he shared his perspective. He said that reviewers mostly don't care about day one Gamepass games because those reviews drive no traffic to their sites. Someone interested in those games will probably just play them on Gamepass instead of checking a review for them. He said Microsoft completely failed in marketing the game and sent it out to die with only a couple of tweets talking about it. Also this game (along with Grounded) are sub-$60 releases which meant no physical copies were made and that might have affected sales. He said that GOTY awards matter to get the game out in front of people and for that companies have to get reviewers to play and remember the games. Microsoft apparently just didn't do enough to ensure that. If you wanted to review the game on PC they sent Windows store codes instead of Steam keys and that's one more level of friction that might have resulted in fewer reviews. And just generally Xbox has by far the lowest mindshare among the 4 major gaming platforms. Microsoft doesn't seem to care though and they're just happy to continue to fill out the Gamepass library. I really do wonder how they do their cost-benefit calculations when it seems like they are happy to let games just fail commercially as long as Gamepass continues to grow.
TLDR: Pentiment is a nice game and you should play it.
