Listen. We've already reviewed Obsidian's superlative Pentiment over on our sister site Pure Xbox, where we gave it an excellent 9/10 score. However, now that we've been given the opportunity to return to 16th-century Bavaria all over again in this fantastic Switch port, we daresay it's better — worthy of a slight amendment to that scoreline, even. Ahhhhh, now, that's much better.

Yes, Pentiment pretty much blew us away when it first arrived back in November of 2022. At its core a very clever and utterly absorbing medieval murder mystery, the hook here comes through a unique style and setting that results in one of the freshest and most original games we've played this gen. In fact, this one — previously an Xbox exclusive — is a real highlight of Microsoft's Game Pass service, so it's incredibly exciting to see it arrive on Nintendo's console in such fine form.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Diving into Josh Sawyer's passion project for the first time can be a little bit overwhelming, there's no doubt about it. They've really gone to town with the historical accuracy here, you see. From the villages and monasteries you'll mill around in, to the clothing, the food, dialogue, traditions, daily chores, heck even the types of font used for the fancy stylised speech bubbles...everything here has been researched and studied and served up in glorious detail for you to pore over.

And pore over it all you must. In Pentiment you get to live a day in the point and clicky life of Andreas Maler, an artist in residence at Kiersau Abbey during a period of great social and political turmoil and upheaval. Andreas is a quiet man with a quiet plan for life that involves working on his own private artistic masterpiece, but of course as soon as we take up his story he goes and gets himself involved in a messy murder that turns out to be...well...there's a little bit more than just dead people going on, but we're not going to spoil any of that here.

The investigation that follows, and the various juicy revelations it may or may not lead to down the line, are fun enough in their own right, such is the high quality of the writing, but it's how everything is rooted in historical accuracy (or an impressive approximation of it) that sells the whole idea so wonderfully well.

If you've browsed through any screenshots of this one, you'll know it's a side-scrolling point-and-click affair that's presented as a snazzy picture book through which you move. It's not just any picture book though, it's one of those big fancy medieval texts, and it's got lots of nice visual flourishes and clever nods to artistic techniques of the time. Wood-cutting and carving and carefully worked fonts...all that stuff. It looks incredible, especially when you're playing it on the Switch's dinky portable screen.

Actually, we should really take a moment to talk about the fonts in this game, too. As you speak or converse with another character, speech bubbles will pop up on screen that use various types depending on who's speaking, and it's just endlessly satisfying to watch this play out. From the sloppily-formed and mistake-riddled sentences that vomit out of the local village idiot (watch as words erase themselves then reappear corrected) to the heavy-stamped and pressed fonts that uniformly bash their way out of figures of authority, it's incredible how immediate this visual measure is in giving you a read on the person speaking. As with everything else in this game, it's that sort of achingly clever stuff that makes you feel a bit... well, simple, but in a good way!

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

As days pass in Kiersau, and the village of Hassing nearby, you'll settle into a rhythm, leaving your home in the mornings to make your way to the abbey, strolling through the woods, chatting to the locals, embedding yourself in their way of life, and it's through doing this that the answers to the clever mystery at the game's core are revealed. It's an experience that's impossible to come away from without having learned something about the specific time period, which is really cool, but it also remembers to balance this reverence for history with a murder mystery that manages to be tense, funny, emotional and thought-provoking all the way through its roughly 20-hour runtime.

There's plenty of scope for replays, too, given the choice-driven nature of conversations and various backgrounds and educational leanings you can choose for Andreas at the start, which in turn affect your choices in conversation. We'd even go so far as to say we've appreciated the flexibility of it all much more the second time through. There are consequences to be dealt with and in giving you the opportunity to play portably, this Switch version is our favourite way to dig into this one. It doesn't use the touchscreen and it's not running at 120fps or whatever, but it doesn't need to — it looks and plays perfectly in both docked and handheld, and all for a ludicrously low entry price point given the quality.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

The game's maps and menus are very fancy to look at, and totally in keeping with the style of the rest of the adventure, but until you get used to milling around and remembering locations and landmarks, it can feel a little hard to orient yourself. We found ourselves constantly in the menus as we stumbled around in the early hours, and although you'll eventually know the place like the back of your hand, it could perhaps have been easier in this regard.

We should also point out that this is a murder mystery that goes heavy on the dialogue, too, which is fine by us, but your mileage may vary. There are some big old, in-depth conversations to sit through here — and a very handy codex should you need any explainers — so keep that in mind before you dive in looking for a detective tale that goes hard and fast on the blood and guts.

Those tiny niggles aside, Pentiment is one of the most unique and impressive games of the past ten years. It looks, sounds, and plays immaculately on Switch and, for anyone interested in something a little different, for anyone feeling the need for a razor-sharp murder mystery that entertains while it educates, this is the good stuff. We really can't recommend it enough, and with the ability to get stuck into your investigations anywhere now, this one earns top marks on Switch.

Conclusion

Pentiment is a fantastic adventure RPG that revels in a studious approach to history and immaculate recreations of the styles and traditions of 16th-century Bavaria. There's a super smart, funny, and engaging murder mystery to investigate here, but it's how that mystery is so fully rooted in the world that's been lovingly crafted around it that really elevates this experience. It's one of the best games of the past decade, hands down, and to have that experience running and performing perfectly on Switch is a joyous thing — it feels like it was made for Nintendo's console. This is about as essential as games get.