I want to love Pentiment, and for the first 5 hours or so I did. The art is gorgeous and you can really tell that the creators of this game poured their passion

I want to love Pentiment, and for the first 5 hours or so I did. The art is gorgeous and you can really tell that the creators of this game poured their passion into it. There are so many small but extremely thoughtful details, like a character's dialogue font changing when the protagonist's view of them changes. I found the writing to be generally compelling too. The problem I have with Pentiment is that (at least for me) the core gameplay loop is not very engaging. They intentionally stripped out anything but movement and dialogue. There are a few fun little minigame/QTE things but they're few and far between. Compare it with something like New Vegas (made by some of the same people, a game which I loved) - the combat gameplay is decidedly mediocre and the storytelling and dialogue is less nuanced than Pentiment. Nevertheless, New Vegas is way more fun because the possibilities are way broader - you can either talk or shoot your way through things but the fact that the solution space is way bigger was much more engaging for me. In Pentiment there's not really any loot or combat or stealth or trade. It's just talking. Even your "build" doesn't really feel super impactful - I suspect it's intentionally designed to be equally optimal regardless of what you choose. It seems like it's more designed to be more flavor than anything else. Also, I found the third act a slog. I see what they were trying to do but it really took a lot of momentum away from the game.