A love letter to the 8-bit era action-adventure games of our youth.

Okay, everyone's comparing this game to the NES Zeldas, which makes total sense after you find the cover of the in-game manual or notice that our main character has a Zelda costume on. However, I think it is more a tribute to the whole experience of NES action-adventure games rather than a close comparison to the early Zelda offerings. Modern techniques and style are used to capture the same spirit of exploration and growth as you hack and slash and magic your way through a slew of enemies. With the addition of the cryptic language and the pieces of the manual that "tell" you about the secrets of the world, the whole game becomes a nostalgic dream of those bygone days of sitting in a basement room decorated in too many shades of brown but living in pixelated 8-bit lands of pure imagination. Probably even more so if you imported a Japanese-language game and tried to read the manual even though you did not read Japanese.

It truly is a wonderful experience for those of us of the golden (well, maybe greying) 8-bit generation. Mostly. I found myself either too impatient or too uncoordinated to bump this up to legendary status. For example, I would constantly underestimate the reach of my sword or stick. I also spent a number of minutes just wandering, looking for what I was supposed to be doing. My -- potentially self-inflicted -- frustrations led me to get to that place in game where you "just want to finish" which takes the experience down a bit.

To avoid frustration, I started turning to the internet's collective resources instead of flipping through the in-game booklet after I had retrieved a crystal (or maybe two). Perhaps this wasn't the intended way to play this puzzler but it does kind of fit into the experience, right? Some of the ways to find treasures or unlock secrets were so obscure or complex that it would take the collective work of a number of folks to discover the solutions to them all. Maybe this is the game's multiplayer mode? Whatever the intent, if you 100% this game without looking anything up... kudos to you.

In the end, Tunic is a stellar game that's just a bit too frustrating for me to cherish forever like some of those old NES games.

Review from thedonproject.com

Yeah, I'm sad to say I'm not finishing this one.

The game, in most aspects, is pure genius. The booklet aspect of it is just an incredible experience to get through. Finding answers to questions you thought the game wouldn't bother to ask, and seeing them work. Recontextualizing the scenarios you've already visited several times with new knowledge. That feeling of "hey, this might work over there!". Often, without the use of any words.

This, however, is one of many games in recent times which have adopted the soulslike trend of revolving around struggle. Your struggle. In this case, I'm referring to its combat. It never felt good for me. Not because it is too difficult, but because it never feels satisfying. Your sword is too short, your dodge not long enough, your enemies' skin is too tough, yours is too feeble. I understand they want to give you a challenge, but I can't agree with the way they doing it. I understand the feeling of overcoming a challenge that other games, namely From Software games, give you. I beat every enemy in this game, except for the last phase of the last enemy, and not once did I find that here.

It just feels like everything the game can throw at you is a notch higher than it should be. I'm stopping at the final boss, I've made improvement and I'm almost there. I simply don't have much interest in replaying this fight until I learn how to defeat this enemy, because the only part that's left of this game for me, is the part I don't want to play.

Add to that a problem with its pacing, giving you a climax far too early in the game. The rest of my playthrough felt like crawling through the desert, hoping it would end soon.

I think most people will still enjoy this game. I enjoyed most of it myself.

A visually appealing, somewhat barebones Zelda-like relying entirely on it's single fun gimmick. Excellent soundtrack combining modern electronic production with more classic-sounding staccato trap percussion. After a while the experience of wandering around and finding pages of the manual grows a bit tiresome, especially because the gameplay outside of the 'uncover the game manual' conceit, namely the combat, is a bit of a chore. This falls around the same quality as Death's Door to me: mostly okay modern indie Zelda-like that leaves me wanting more and will keep me chasing the Hyper Light Drifter dragon.

I thought Tunic was a huge disappointment. I love Zelda games. I loved the remake of Link's Awakening. This took the Zelda formula, scrambled it up and confused "fun challenge" for "bad game design frustrating." The central gimmick of recovering instruction book pages is fine, but putting everything in a nonsense language is a ridiculous extra step that only makes things frustrating. I missed out on core mechanics of the game until late game because I didn't decipher things correctly. This is akin to putting together a shelf wrong because you only speak English and the instructions were in Chinese. Is that fun? No. Also, the game looks cool in that isometric view, but since you can't move the camera around corners (unless the game does it automatically), it would be silly to make so much of the game's main paths take you through areas the camera doesn't see. Yet this is exactly what the game frequently does! Lastly, the leveling system made sections of the game manageable, yet the final section of the game (about 20% of it) takes those leveled stats away from you, makes you go through an insane enemy gauntlet, THEN makes you reclaim the leveled stats one by one by revisiting most of the map of the full game. Oh, and the enemy AI is a hoot as well. So many enemies strike you and then run away, making you have to chase them around to get a hit in. Also, they follow you forever, so if you need to get through a section for the Xth time and want to just run through it - you'll have like 20 enemies on your tail by the time they finally chase you to a dead end and kill you. I'm surprised this game is so well-received. It's not souls-like hard. It's just bad. The fox is cute though.

Tunic is really just hiding behind the facade of a 2D Zeldalike, but it's actually one of the most innovative puzzle games I've ever played.

With the green tunic and the red and blue shield, everything in this game screams Zelda and a lot of it plays like it. But the actual gameplay with the dungeons and enemies is just the superficial part. It works well for the most part, but is dragged down far too much towards the end, in my opinion, by cheap gameplay decisions that are only meant to create difficulty. Which almost made me abandon the game.

But the real core of the game is the manual, or rather the pages of it that you find. They are written in an unknown language and you have to understand how the game works from the pictures and notes alone. I've never experienced a feature like this before and I'm amazed by it. But the best thing about it is that they fully utilise the potential of this idea. The way hints and information are hidden on the pages is so impressive. Piecing together the scraps of information and then coming up with the solutions on your own is hard to beat in terms of satisfaction.

Even when you think you've understood most of it, it still goes deeper. Far deeper than I would have the time to invest. So I can really only praise it.

Tunic isn't a game I would normaly be interested in, especially since I'm not into Zelda likes, however being free on playstation plus and from word of mouth I thougtht I'd give it a try. People I know that love Tunic, really really love Tunic. I didn't expect to fall in that camp but If I could get a decent short fun experiance out of it from trying something I normally wouldn't I would be fine with that and ultimately that's kidna where I feel with Tunic. I can see why some fans become die hards as I can see it being a really easy game to get absorbed into by it's design philosophy. In fact that kinda why I like it as well but there are some short comings and frustrations from it as well.

Tunic is a game that simply drops you in it's world without a single explanation. You are encouraged to just simply explore and find out what your goal is at your leasure. Essentially exploring the big island and finding it's secrets is the name of the game but how you go about it is left a secret as well. The game starts with a simple structure of activating a couple of points to unlock a big door but while sounding simple it can be quite the challange on how to proceed. While Tunic's combat is quite basic and simple it does have some challenging boss battles that will test the players skills and preperation, it's real challenge though is finding out where to go and remembering where things are. It very much feels like a navigation puzzle.

One of the more interesting aspects of Tunic is how cryptic the game is. Much of the world and spoken dialog is in a complete made up in game language. So getting items and experimenting at what they do is vital. You might pick something out that you really just can't figure out what it is supposed to do. Cleverly though Tunic as an interesting mechanic to help with this. Scattered throughout the world are pages to the games literal instruction manual that you can unlock and veiw at any time. Stuff like background story details, control explanation, item details, enemey descriptions and even area maps. Things that are vital in solving the games logic. It leads to a nostalgic feeling on relaying on a manual like many games did back in the day for some basic explanation and without it it's simply guess work and ingenuity that will get you through. Heck it wasn't until about half way through the game that I got the item description page on what some items do, so the game doesn't hand them out like candy. Most of the time it's through exploration or using new abilities in past areas that reward the player with more knowledge. It gives the player the feeling of discovery and knowledge that they found this on their own but at the sametime does help to give them flat information on what to do. As much as I love this mechanic and helpfullness doesn't make solving the puzzles of Tunic an easy task. I only found about half the pages of the manual on my playthrough.

I enjoyed the first half of the game of Tunic but I will admit I think the game does falter in the later half. If your a person that gets frustrated when they immeaditly don't know where to go or what they are supposed to be doing then man this game is not for you. Many times I found myself questioning, uh I felt like I explored everything and I have no idea what I didn't get. A lot of the time Tunic's semi top down view point can be extremely misleading on showing where paths can lead and sometimes straight up be hidden. If there is even a sliver of a shadow or wall that is obscured you best be trying to walk against it to make sure that there isn't a critical path there that's intentionally hidden because the game loves doing just that. That coupled with the cryptic nature of the game can lead to very frustrating times. It's like I know what I have to do but I have no idea where that place I visited hours ago was and I don't remember how to get there, so I end up walking around aimlessly trying to find that one thing. Basic mechanics I would discover very late into the game was equally satisfying to figure out and frustrating. I didn't there was a run option several hours into the game. I didn't know there were fast travel pads until halfway through. I have no idea what this item does. This is where I think the game makes or breaks people. If you like the sense of discovery and seeing things in a new light and don't mind the frustrations that got you there then I can see why some praise the game. On the other side though I can see people easily getting annoyed at every corner of this game. I think I was somewhere in the middle of that crossroads. Like I said earlier I enjoyed the first half but the last half was just too cyrptic and frustrating even when I figured out what to do. When you are playing in your spirit form was the portion of the game where it comeplety lost me. I just wanted it to end at that point as I felt I needed to look at a walkthrough to navigate to the end and I hate having to do that.

In the end, I was middling on Tunic but I can see the appeal that it has on some. However that is some niche appeal and it's certainly not for everyone. Despite that I would recommened to certain type of people but not without huge caveats.

At first you're like this is a spin on Zelda 1, it has the same mystery feel to it, it has a little Dark Souls, the difficulty, the slow fight animations, the fires and the way you discover the lore.
That constant mystery, knowing it's not hollow, there's actually something to discover, understand is just a drug.
When you discover the holy cross, Tunic shows what it's truly about.
I even decrypted the tunic alphabet, I'm just missing two vowels, just reading the manual become a task, your brain is constantly working so it gets a little tiresome, but that feel when you try to read a secret, don't know a character so you just go read some lore to try and find it is thrilling. You're just there with tens of pieces of paper of notes with arrows, lines, characters, it's crazy.

I had to look online for barely 5 secrets but it doesn't take out much of the joy.

I love the eyes the far shore.

I had to take a pause cause of life while playing the game, I had most treasures and just needed to find the golden path at that point, if I could've finished it at that time, I'm sure I would've had more to say.

(If you like this game watch the movie Trenque Lauquen, the same sort of getting high on mystery)

(Reseña sacada de mi cuenta de Steam: APolChrome)

Tunic... una sorpresa sin ninguna duda. Es un juego poco convencional, misterioso, que no te explica nada. Y siento que eso lo hace increíble. Estamos en una etapa de los videojuegos donde todos los juegos con mundos amplios tienen que indicarte con pelos y señales todo lo que tienes que hacer. Pero Tunic no lo hace. Y eso lo hace quieras o no distinto. Empecemos.

Tunic es un juego sobresaliente. En todos sus apartados es genial. Quiero empezar hablando del gameplay y todo lo que le rodea. Que pasada es el título jugablemente. Lo más superficial sería el combate, que hace una mezcla entre Dark Souls (por el estilo) y los Zeldas 2D clásicos (en perspectiva) para dar un combate que parece simple (porque realmente lo es) pero que se hace mucho más complejo. Las boss fights son increíbles. Si no has jugado nunca un juego de este estilo, la primera es súper difícil, pero cuando te acostumbras, es súper satisfactorio esquivar los golpes que te has memorizado de un boss y saber cuando atacar. Si bien he echado de menos alguna boss fight más, las que hay son un 10 absoluto.

El mapa es otra cosa que me ha encantado. Un mapa que sabe controlarse en tamaño y que está relleno sin sentirse sobrecargado. El mapa tiene muchos coleccionables que van desde objetos clave (como armas), objetos secundarios como bombas y más cosas. Tiene muchas zonas y muy variadas, con diferentes temáticas y enemigos característicos.

Siguiendo con el gameplay, quiero comentar lo misterioso del juego. TODO el juego está escrito en un idioma que le es desconocido a nuestro protagonista (incluso en el menú de pausa, donde debería poner pausa, lo pone en ese idioma). No sabemos nada, ni lo que tenemos que hacer. Pero para eso está el manual de instrucciones (la que es a mí parecer, la mejor mecánica del juego). Como si de un juego de los años 90 se tratase, tendremos un manual de instrucciones, del cual tendremos que encontrar sus páginas. Este manual tiene mezcla de idiomas, pero te va contando lo que tienes que hacer y me ha parecido una forma muy original y que funciona muy bien de contarte el mundo.

Audiovisualmente, es otro 10. Es precioso (a mí me recuerda visualmente al remake de Link's Awakening) con una paleta de colores muy amplia y en su mayoría de colores vivos. Aunque la OST no tiene ningún tema que se me haya quedado marcado, está bien.

Narrativamente, no he entendido mucho, pero lo que he entendido me ha gustado. No quiero hacer spoilers, porque tiene muchos giros y es mejor que cada uno descubra el lore a su ritmo, pero os aseguro que os va a gustar.

Me he dejado muchas cosas del juego, pero solo con esto, ya podrás ver lo mucho que me ha encantado Tunic. Cómpralo porque aunque parezca caro, es una experiencia como pocas en la industria actual. Recomendadísimo.