TUNIC

First half of the game is a solid, simple Zelda clone with nice graphics and some neat little gimmicks. Slowly piecing together the game's manual (most of which you can't read) makes for an interesting slow reveal, the map is packed with little secret items to scavenger-hunt, and most of the difficulty comes from anticipating boss attack patterns and timing your dodge rolls precisely (which the game is pretty unforgiving about). Unfortunately that all falls apart towards the late game, where all the mechanics you were mastering before are abandoned in favor of a sequence of dozens of 'puzzles' where you just tap in inputs with zero feedback from the game, with no idea whether nothing's happening because you did it wrong or an input missed or the sequence timed out after a second's delay or the game simply bugged out, and no recourse but to sit around and wiggle your controller at an unresponsive screen for another fifteen minutes in the hopes that something eventually happens or simply uninstall the stupid thing and go find something better to do with your time.

The game is very similar to Death's Door. If you like that you are going to have fun with this, until you finish it with good memories, or stop playing it out of annoyance. The combat does not really have any depth. Basically you can do a 3 slash combo, dodge, and block. The latter is seldom helpful because enemies break through it pretty fast. Except when it is vital, and it makes all the difference to realize when it is... Other than this you have a limited amount of other "goodies", which cannot be used to build a strategy upon, they act more like tie-breakers when you are close to beating a boss, to give you that extra little push, or deal with trash. Speaking of which, boss fights start out fairly easy but grow difficult rapidly. There is rarely any strategy to devise, there seem to be no attack patterns, abilities are used randomly. The small predictable behavior that there is, is based on distance, e.g. if you are in the face of a boss, it will try to put distance between you. Most of the time it breaks down to learn all the abilities, recognize their pre-animation, dodge the attack in the appropriate way, wait for an opening, land 2-3 hits, rinse-and-repeat. The fun part is, that there is seldom space for error. Most bosses can take you out in 2-3 hits. And taking 1 hit (which already hurts plenty) typically leads to taking 1-2 more. If you manage to take only 1 hit, you have potions. Except that you need an opening to drink the potion. And 1 hit usually takes 2 potions to heal, which is 2 openings. Not to mention that the bosses get nastier the lower their health is. So the amount of affordable mistakes is pretty close to none. And the main problem is that this is getting accumulated. Having one such boss is okay, but then you have another one, and another one. It may have different abilities, but you have to deal with them in the same manner. As a result you end up closing the game whenever you reach a new boss even without a single try.

In my 40+ years of gaming, i have never liked Zelda games. They just bore me to death. However i really enjoyed Tunic, and it is the best 15 hours gaming i've had for a long time. The game encourages you to think and work things out for yourself, instead of treating you like a little kid playing his first RPG by holding your hand every step of the way. I highly recommend this game.

I pirated this game to check if it was any good, played through a large chunk of it in one sitting, and bought it full price immediately after. Remember when you played Demon's Souls/Dark Souls for the first time? That feeling of relief when you found a bonfire right as your supplies were running low, and that feeling of dread when you could simply sense how the area right ahead was hiding some terrible danger? Those feelings that hundreds of soulslikes (and quite a few FromSoft games) are completely incapable of evoking? Tunic pulls it off, and that's just the beginning. The world is a lot more open than it seems, you're guided down one of the easier paths but you're free to explore and you can fight the three main mid-game bosses in whatever order you like. Player progression is incredible, consumable items are all useful no matter how far into the game you are, combat is challenging yet fair, graphics are adorable and contain quite a few subtle hints... As for the secrets and puzzles, the less I spoil the better. Final warning: this game is HARD and that's what makes it fun, if you use guides or turn yourself invincible or look up puzzle solutions you'll be disappointed.

Some of Tunic is like Zelda 1 and ALttP had a baby, who grew up and had a baby with Dark Souls, and that child found a child safe fox furry TF potion before going on their own adventure. It has the necessary but incomplete manual feeling well known in the NES days. Partially filled out data, personal notes, and huge gaps of incomplete information. A lot of mystery and exploration of the items, gear, and not just the map. But it has more depth of design and control found in something like the N64 days. You can move in many directions, dodge roll, your attacks are not super rigid like Zelda 1, but more like OoT. And it feels like a Souls-lite game with a bonfire and flask system, punishing but generally fair combat, and bosses with like 20 times your health, but doesn't feel as severe of "make a mistake and youw will die." And then it has this mild meta horror feeling, a slightly creepy one, with how the in game manual puts the "actual game" in the background on CRT TV screen, complemented by an increasingly creepy atmosphere later on. But finally, eventually, you find some of its flaws. One critical one that stumped me, the ladder into the southern area. Hidden so well behind the 3D isometric view, with only the tip top barely visible and blending in with the ground so well, I spent hours stuck unable to progress. Other minor issues: * if you complete the manual, you lose access to the main boss * golden path puzzles get obtuse, espeically the clue of rotating light from a cave pond onto the walls * once you understand each golden path puzzle, just go look up the solution to avoid input mistakes * sometimes the isometric view is clever hiding sequence breaks, somtimes it's just plain obnoxious In the end, it reminds me why Nintendo never fully duplicated Zelda 1. Not even Breath of the Wild, the trend bucker reliving Zelda 1 days, has secrets so excessively hidden as its ancestor. Tunic is definitely great, but a tiny bit too much of a link to the past.