TUNIC

This game was amazing far beyond any preconceptions I may have had. Sincerely hope everyone gets the chance to experience this wonderful, wonderful game.

Great game, challenging enough. Good puzzles except maybe the end that becomes very cryptic.

Tunic, Tunic was an interesting experience. It's not one I regret, but one I wish was a bit more tailored to my preferences. I would probably end up rating it a 6/10 personally and I think the 91% that the game currently has is fair. I believe if I remember right that Tunic started out maybe as an overwhelming positive and has since dropped. Might be wrong, anyway, doesn't really matter. Let's go into pros and cons. +++ Pros: Tunic is beautiful. The presentation, the music and the overall aestetic is really well done. It's simple, it's stylish, it's retro and it's referental. The sound effects, music and all the art fits the game. Good job. The good moments of the game are great. The mid game exploration when the game opens up is fantastic. You're finding secret nooks and crannies and learning more about the game and the map. The overall pacing of the game is pretty good. The variety of enemies, unlocked tools, bosses etc is pretty good. I didn't feel bored ... most of the time, except the very end and some frustrating parts that I will get into with the cons. I genuinely wanted to keep on playing more and more once I got the sword. This is when the game truly shines. Secret path ways open up, multiple places to explore. Some visible "how do I get there?" moments and such. The moment from getting the sword until... Maybe the combat guy in the underground...? Absolutely 10/10. The booklet, the guide, whatever you wanna call it. This thing. Is genius, but not perfect. You will find pages scattered across the world containing pages to this game guide. Think 90s strategy guides with hints and information about the world, except it's not there to spoil things. It's there to give you lore, information and clues how to navigate and solve the puzzles of tunic. The guide is however pretty flawed with how you navigate it. It becomes too big once you're half way across it. I would like a shortcut menu, maybe you could hold triangle and access the table of contents and from there pick the pages you want or something. --- Cons The combat. The combat to me is just not fun. It's pretty much the same combat as early 2D zelda games plus dark souls, with the animations and stamina system. The problem and the reason this combat system is not fun in tunic is enemies like to dodge, and walk away from you. This means you end up awkwardly trying to dash/sprint towards them to try to close the gap. They tend walk away so you have to pretty much wait for them to stop walking away, and for them to come back towards you. This waiting really slows down the flow of the game. There are some mana based gap closers mid/late game that fix this problem but the early game is infurating and honestly an extreme low point of the game. The game does atleast have a accesibility menu. This allows you to put on god mode if you want without impacting achievements. I was pretty fed up with Tunic by the time the end boss rolled around and I had done everything else so I just ended up using the god mode for the final fight after a few attempts. Puzzle design and limitations. So. Puzzles. I feel like in general, puzzle games, logic, and generally how one approaches gaming is extremely subjective. Some people love FEZ, while some people think something like wind waker is too cryptic. So it's all very personal. I would say I fall somewhere maybe into the medium to light difficulty for puzzle games. This game at times is more medium to high tediousness in it's puzzle design. If you want to just beat the game the game is actually pretty easy puzzle wise. However if you want to get the good ending you should prepare yourself to either get frustrated or use a guide if you're someone who enjoys more casual-medium puzzles like me. Another annoyance with the puzzles is a handful of the puzzles takes forever to actually do. Like the golden door and the gold gate in the forest. You have figured out what you are supposed to do, but actually putting it together and then actually performing the solution takes forever and is unsatisfying. I don't know if there is a way to not make those puzzles too obvious and still make them easier to actually do, so I can't really offer a solution to the dev for that. Protip: Grab a piece of paper and pencil as having to alt tab and using a digital note taking program is annoying. Minor annoyances that build up. So the game pretty cryptic. The game has it's own language that you do get to decrypt near the end of the game, but decrypting it takes too much time and energy for anybody who isn't super into languages to do. This means most hints and lore will feel like nothing. This makes you lack an attachment to the world. I find this frustrating and demotivates talking to NPCs. I also found it quite frustrating how, near the end of the game you will go to the graveyard. The guide tells you. STAY AWAY FROM THE GRAVEYARD SUPER DANGEROUS, and at this point in the game you are nerfed so if you follow the guide you will end up looking to see if you can go somewhere else. And nope, you have to go to the graveyard. This text should be changed to encourage people to actually tackling the graveyard head on once they have to. "The graveyard may seem scary, but I believe in you little fox" or some such word instead. Language. Just to harp a little more on the language bit. I think having an ancient language that you -can- decrypt is a stupid idea. I felt no sense of attachment to the world at all like I've said previous in the review. I think the game should allow you to translate the game fully without having to manually do it, as an accesibility option. Those small lines of dialogue that zelda npcs have, add so much tone and lore to the world and having to miss out on this. Lacking dialogue creates a really stale and boring world. Having the npcs freak out about the end of the world in majoras mask is some of the most thematic and impactful dialogue I've felt in a zelda game forexample. I get that having the dialogue be it's own language is a design decision. For a lot of people it added a lot of "cryptism" to the world. But for me it didn't work. The world itself was cryptic enough and didn't need this added layer. It also didn't work in FEZ or the witness for me. Anyway; I guess you should play it as zelda indies generally do suck and this might be the best one I've played so far. Tho I've heard great things about Death's Door. Once that reaches bundle terriority I guess we will see if I end up changing my recommendation for this game. Anyway. Have a nice day and thanks for reading my review of Tunic.

A little too obtuse for me but that's clearly on purpose. It's got great atmosphere and fun enough combat. It's a lot of fun to explore but don't get too scared by all the comments online that scare you off of using a guide.

Probably the greatest game I've ever spent time on. Theres so much to do in it, and it just keeps getting deeper and deeper until you finally forget to come up for air.

Absolute garbage dash system

Simply a good game