| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 8.60 |
| Overall | 8.60 |
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Tunic clearly conjures imagery of old school Legend of Zelda, the titular tunic itself is the classic green, the hero holds a shield and sword and you traverse a magical world acquiring items to help on your quest. It seems like this would be a Zelda like indie game but the homage to Zelda is not really in its gameplay, instead what Tunic is trying to replicate was that magical feeling back in the 80s of playing a new wonderous game. There was no real direction, no internet to help you solve all the puzzles; it was you, an instruction manual, and talk on a playground sharing experiences that helped guide the players. That’s what Tunic is trying to replicate and it does a really great job capturing that feeling. Tunic gameplay wise feels more like one of the many indie pixel art 2D Souls like games. Like souls there are save points which serve as respawn points, if you die a ghost of your body remains where you left it though the penalty is minimal, just a small loss of coins. Combat is simplistic in that you have one sword attack button, a roll (dodge), a shield to block, and then items you can use. This game uses a stamina bar which is honestly is probably the cause of most of the difficulty with combat. Rolls and blocks lower stamina, if your bar hits zero you enter a tired state and now take double damage which means waiting for the bar to fill all the way up to get back to normal. This means at your worst moment in a fight, usually after you are desperately trying to avoid enemy attacks, if you aren’t paying attention to that bar you can put yourself in far worse danger than before. This isn’t an issue for most of the regular enemy fodder but it is against the tough boss battles. Personally I enjoyed the difficulty of the bosses, they require mastery of the dodge and all items at your disposal. These bosses are sometimes huge relative to your character, some times fast and deadly, always a great fight capping off a good location. I did read online that these felt like extreme difficulty spikes for many players, i can see that but the game does allow for exploration and building your character by finding upgrades and items around the world. By the end I had a combo of skills that made most bosses and enemies trivial, but early on it was a good struggle. One nitpick that I have though is how when you entire the menu to change items the game never pauses, as if it’s an online souls game. This game is not online, there is zero reason as to why the game doesn’t pause when you want to change an item. during a fight you have no time to switch an item and many times I had attack items set and needed to switch to a healing item and couldn’t. Or if I ran out of bombs I couldn’t switch to a different weapon. It’s a weird decision that limits your options during fights for no reason at all. Combat is a big focus of the game but it’s not enough to sustain it. The real fun for me came from exploring the world and discovering it’s many secrets. There is an overworld that leads to different areas that serve as the “dungeons”, so first you must head East and go through a forest to get a sword. These areas don’t really have any puzzles blocking your path, the main obstacle is the enemies and combat. Some introduce a new item like a hook shots and enemies that can be exploited using this new item. The levels are well designed in that like a souls game you will unlock shortcuts as you explore. None are that big, you don’t really spend too much time in any one area which is fine, it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome. What’s really unique about the level design is how many of these shortcuts are open to the player from the very beginning, you don’t earn a key or unlock a door every time, sometimes you just find a hidden path that dumps you right into the overworld, it was always there you just didn’t know to look behind a tree. That spirit of discovery is all over the game, most of the things you learn is knowledge, not an item gating you, it’s just you didn’t learn what you could do yet. By far the most important unique addition to this game, the reason it’s special, is the manual. This game has an old school NES like instruction manual that teaches you how to play, gives you maps and shows you clues on the many puzzles. You find pages throughout the game world, each page gives a new piece of information. At first it’s simple things like learning how to dash, or that you can upgrade at the save points. These are all things you can do right at the start but you would never know how without the instructions. This manual is beautiful, with old school like art work and amazingly detailed maps. The maps are invaluable, they come with scribbles written by some unnamed previous owner of the game who left notes on how to find the games biggest secrets; it’s such a well executed idea and totally captures the magic of old school gaming and sense of discovery. So the main quest is over in like 8 hours or so, it’s mostly combat focused but there are plenty of secrets to find all around. Still if you just do the main quest it feels like a rather standard top down action adventure, not all that special. If you are observant you will begin to realize there is a bit more to everything you see and that leads to the real reason I love the game, there is a whole layer of secrets all over and the manual is the key. At one point you get a page that changes the way you access the game world (again you could have done this from the start, you just didn’t know how) and that’s when the fun begins and this is the path to the true ending. Get ready for notepads, taking screenshots and if you are really devoted, learning an entire new language. Not since Fez have I seen a game that goes so deep into optional secrets built into the game world. I won’t spoil any of these puzzles just know many are fantastic. That said there is a big issue that holds this game back from being truly excellent, it’s how separate this second half of the game is to the first half. The puzzle quest to get the second ending ends up feeling like gigantic fetch quests where all you are doing is using the manual to find secrets all around the world you already completed. There are no new bosses, no new locations, no new enemies; the game just becomes you hunting for stuff in the game world. I ignored all enemies as I backtracked and it became annoying to travel back and forth cause fast travel takes you to just the start of each area. The reward is minimal as well, in the end all you get is a small pointless cutscene. The best games integrate puzzles into the game much better than Tunic does, I felt like I stopped playing a top down action game and instead was playing a strange puzzle game, a great one. Graphically Tunic is really enjoyable to look at for an indie game. I love the blocky almost 3D dot game hero like graphical style. Thankfully it’s not another pixel art junk game. It has some good adventure sounding music but nothing that memorable. Tunic is a great concept that didn’t get executed as well as it could have but what it attempted to do spoke to me and everything I loved about old school gaming. I was obsessed with getting every puzzle on my own, I got a good 95% of them, there are a few that require translating a language so I left that for the internet. I would love a sequel to integrate the puzzles with the actual questing part of the game, kind of like another franchise… Still Tunic is a great indie game and that instruction manual progression and hint system is one of the most unique and interesting ideas I’ve seen in a game in a while. |
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Posted by Dvader Thu, 09 Jun 2022 14:22:18
Thu, 03 Nov 2022 11:09:02
Great review. This game really surprised me by how quickly the difficulty ramped up.
Thu, 05 Jan 2023 15:46:33
Is this where you play as like a red panda?
Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:23:12
Red fox thing dressed like Link.
Thu, 05 Jan 2023 18:22:48
I want to get the similar lokong game where you play as a Raven first.
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