The difficulty really does this game a disservice. Would have been a 5/5 otherwise.
I only write reviews on this site when a game has something(s) that make me feel strongly about it. These things could be either good or bad. Tunic has both.
Let's start with the good. The metroidvania design in Tunic is extremely tight and I cannot praise it enough. To me, this means that there are a lot of things hidden in plain sight that you'll simply walk past the first time you encounter them, however when you see them again after progressing the game, you'll be able to satisfyingly put some pieces together and advance the game in ways that you would have never thought of. On top of just generally good metroidvania world design to support this, Tunic has a very charming in-game manual that you find pages of which also reveals secrets to areas/mechanics you thought you've already figured out, and these secrets aren't just written out for you, sometimes you'll have to pore over every small detail on each page to extract all the information there is (which sounds tedious but works in service of making you feel smart and like you figured something out).
Another thing of note is that there is a large number of interactions between game objects and discovering and using these interactions to your advantage feels awesome (for example. shooting an explosive barrel next to some grass so it sets the grass on fire and damages enemies standing in the grass).
The visuals of the game world and the in-game manual are cute and capture that retro feel from the old zelda games. The sound design is also really good and gives the game a feeling of depth, which I definitely felt helped out when navigating the isometric world.
Now onto the bad. The combat I found to be mediocre at best and uncooperative at worst, which wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't insist on you using it extensively with its bosses. Regular fodder enemies were relatively fun to fight but the bosses, which tested your fundamentals, were an absolute chore and after beating them I usually felt like it was more of a victory over the controls and the unruly combat system rather than the bosses themselves.
Let me break down why I don't think the combat works. It's clear that the combat system in the game is heavily inspired by the soulslike genre of games (stamina bar, dodge rolling, estus flasks that refill on rest) however I felt that the fixed isometric camera angle was often times disorienting and the lock on only made it worse. In soulslike games when you lock onto a target, your camera is controlled by the game and rotates to always look at your target which in turn makes your dodging and attacking relative to the target. In Tunic, since the camera is fixed, the lock on rotates your character to look at what you are targeting but this completely changes how your character moves in relation to the camera so you basically have two different movement control schemes based on if you are locking on or not, which is not something I wanted to be mentally keeping track of in the middle of combat so I basically played the game without lock on. On top of this, the game is in orthographic view (no depth), which made judging the 3D space when trying to dodge very unintuitive for me. In sum, The developer wanted a soulslike combat system but was forced to work with it within the confines of an isometric game. Unfortunately, camera control is one of those finely tuned things in a soulslike game that we all take for granted (until it gets us killed lol) and without it I'd argue it doesn't matter how many of the aforementioned soulslike systems you put in the game because your game will not play like a soulslike without this crucial component.
Alright I know that was all pretty negative but if you'll recall from the first part of my review, I honestly love every other part of this game and the superb metroidvania design that ties in with the in-game manual was enough for me to tough it out through the boss fights and finish it. If you like metroidvanias or puzzle games that respect your ability to figure things out, you should absolutely give this game a try.
Let's start with the good. The metroidvania design in Tunic is extremely tight and I cannot praise it enough. To me, this means that there are a lot of things hidden in plain sight that you'll simply walk past the first time you encounter them, however when you see them again after progressing the game, you'll be able to satisfyingly put some pieces together and advance the game in ways that you would have never thought of. On top of just generally good metroidvania world design to support this, Tunic has a very charming in-game manual that you find pages of which also reveals secrets to areas/mechanics you thought you've already figured out, and these secrets aren't just written out for you, sometimes you'll have to pore over every small detail on each page to extract all the information there is (which sounds tedious but works in service of making you feel smart and like you figured something out).
Another thing of note is that there is a large number of interactions between game objects and discovering and using these interactions to your advantage feels awesome (for example. shooting an explosive barrel next to some grass so it sets the grass on fire and damages enemies standing in the grass).
The visuals of the game world and the in-game manual are cute and capture that retro feel from the old zelda games. The sound design is also really good and gives the game a feeling of depth, which I definitely felt helped out when navigating the isometric world.
Now onto the bad. The combat I found to be mediocre at best and uncooperative at worst, which wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't insist on you using it extensively with its bosses. Regular fodder enemies were relatively fun to fight but the bosses, which tested your fundamentals, were an absolute chore and after beating them I usually felt like it was more of a victory over the controls and the unruly combat system rather than the bosses themselves.
Let me break down why I don't think the combat works. It's clear that the combat system in the game is heavily inspired by the soulslike genre of games (stamina bar, dodge rolling, estus flasks that refill on rest) however I felt that the fixed isometric camera angle was often times disorienting and the lock on only made it worse. In soulslike games when you lock onto a target, your camera is controlled by the game and rotates to always look at your target which in turn makes your dodging and attacking relative to the target. In Tunic, since the camera is fixed, the lock on rotates your character to look at what you are targeting but this completely changes how your character moves in relation to the camera so you basically have two different movement control schemes based on if you are locking on or not, which is not something I wanted to be mentally keeping track of in the middle of combat so I basically played the game without lock on. On top of this, the game is in orthographic view (no depth), which made judging the 3D space when trying to dodge very unintuitive for me. In sum, The developer wanted a soulslike combat system but was forced to work with it within the confines of an isometric game. Unfortunately, camera control is one of those finely tuned things in a soulslike game that we all take for granted (until it gets us killed lol) and without it I'd argue it doesn't matter how many of the aforementioned soulslike systems you put in the game because your game will not play like a soulslike without this crucial component.
Alright I know that was all pretty negative but if you'll recall from the first part of my review, I honestly love every other part of this game and the superb metroidvania design that ties in with the in-game manual was enough for me to tough it out through the boss fights and finish it. If you like metroidvanias or puzzle games that respect your ability to figure things out, you should absolutely give this game a try.