TUNIC

I got lost and died

Fantastic game which really feels brings out the amazing feeling of discovery, and rewards you for it. Also makes excellent use of an isometric-style game in order to hide things, along with a solid combat system. The booklet is amazingly designed, as it both teaches the player along with immerses them in the world. For those just starting, no - you don't need to learn the language, and once you get to the final puzzle... well, good luck. :)

My opinion of this game swung from very high in the beginning to very low by the end. Pros: --Absolutely gorgeous in-game manual that's essential to playing the game and learning the lore/story --Nice 3D art style --Great sense of mystery and exploration for the first portion of the game Cons --The combat is sluggish and not very fun. What's worse, the game inexplicably decides to stop being a Zelda-like and instead become a Souls-like in terms of difficulty, with some obnoxiously punishing boss battles without a complex enough combat system to make them feel rewarding like a good Souls boss. --Most of the items you unlock are very stale Zelda items. Bombs. A not-bow. A not-hookshot. Different coats of paint for tools I've unlocked in many Zelda games before. --Much of the story is told as "lore" in the in-game manual, which is mostly written in an unintelligible original written language. You can kind of guess at everything just from the visuals, but if you want "the truth" you need to figure out the language. While you might be able to figure out how the language works from the manual hints, I knew after looking up the solution that I would never have gotten it despite finding many "rosetta stone" words in the world to use as guideposts. And the process of decoding the language and translating all the text has to be entirely outside of the game - there is no mechanic to translate the text in-game once you've cracked it. This would have required untold hours of tedious translation work. I would have greatly preferred a system like Al Bed from Final Fantasy 10 where the language gets uncovered late in the game once you've "earned" it. And the worst part is that the additions to the story weren't all that interesting once I read all that text via translation guides. I would have been happier if they had made the text intentionally untranslatable and dedicated themselves to using visual storytelling to create an experience like the original version of The Dark Crystal. --Beating the game the "normal" way gives you a Bad End and you're encouraged to collect all the manual pages to get the True End. I got the Bad End by about the 10 hour mark and I quickly realized after a few end game puzzles that the process of solving all the requirements for the True End would easily take another 20 hours, if not more. That's not to say that I felt incapable of solving the puzzles, but that the process of solving each individual puzzle was so tedious and time-consuming that it killed all interest I had in continuing to solve the mysteries on their own terms. For example, I would come across a puzzle, instantly know the general solution, then have to sit for 10-20 minutes laboriously recording that solution so I could input it somewhere. Repeat for 20-30 end-game puzzles, some of which I'd estimate might take an hour or more to decode. These puzzles feel designed for groups of people to solve ARG style (which was long completed by the time I played), not fun for a lone player to grind through. I feel zero regret just reading the puzzles and saving myself dozens of hours. --The last biggest puzzle was especially frustrating. All the end-game puzzles and page unlocks culminate in one big puzzle that opens a grand mysterious door that's been haunting you since early in the game. Behind that door was a massive disappointment to such a degree that I was motivated to write this review. Overall, an at-first-fantastic Zelda-like that eventually dissolves into a bad Souls-like and then into a painful ARG-style puzzle game. Rating: 2/5 - Didn't like it.

Amazing Game.

[b] Feel like a kid again. [/b] It's just pure gameplay, because when we were kids, we didn't read anything in games, maybe except the booklet that came with the game. Here, you can feel the true joy of exploring and discovering. A true adventure. Basically, it's a Puzzle Metroidvania, and I wouldn't tag this game as a Souls-like. [i] * If you're worried about the combat being too difficult, there are settings that make it a lot easier. [/i]

If you like puzzles