I had such a blast with this. Immediately upon opening the game I was charmed with its presentation, style, and character design. And I was excited to play!
I’m a big fan of 2D Zelda and Dark Souls, and these clear influences are blended excellently into a fun package.

Combat is simple yet fun, and I really enjoyed the boss fights Tunic offered. Paired with some great level design, and I was enjoying myself every time I turned this on.

But what Tunic does amazingly is its discovery and exploration. It starts simple with little secrets here and there that make you feel smart for discovering, and then it hits you with some cleverly hidden shortcuts that were always accessible to make you feel wonderfully stupid.

But then it goes the extra mile with the Manual. Letting you discover how to play Tunic with these pages that reveal JUST enough for you to figure things out is absolutely genius. Presenting mechanics this way is just so rewarding, and the scouring of a manual you can barely understand in front of the CRT-esque design of the game in the background is the best use of nostalgia I’ve ever encountered. And when you get further in the game, and start using this thing to discover some of the more enticing secrets, my mind was straight up blown. And I can’t forget to mention how charming and beautiful the art is on this thing! The manual is one of the best mechanics I’ve ever come across in all my time gaming.

Tunic is a special treat that has it all. Zelda/Souls infused gameplay, fun bosses, an incredibly cool mechanic, and some deep lore and secrets. I loved this!

Gamers I have a confession. I just can’t get into Bethesda games. I’ve tried Skyrim and Fallout 4 and just couldn’t bring myself to engage in either. But the Fallout show has come out and it’s pretty fun, so here I am wanting to give the series another go. So what better way to go than the game widely regarded as the best in the series, Fallout: New Vegas?

I tried, I really did, but I’m sad to say that the cycle repeats itself. I just can’t get into New Vegas either.

What is it about these games people like? The incredibly bland combat? The flat boring worlds? The entirely uninteresting characters with flat delivery? The mindless wandering around?

Other games I don’t jive with I simply feel are not for me. But this one…I’m completely lost on the good here. New Vegas offers me a bland world with terrible combat and uninteresting characters. Travelling miles across complete emptiness to get the thingamajig back from Raider Clan 17 for Mr Cowboy or Mr Evil Murderer wasn’t really the incredible RPG experience i’ve heard so much about. And i’m not even mentioning the amount of bugs and crashes I encountered during my hours. At least it did have the odd line that made me blow air out of my nose.

I understand that this game is supposed to be a sum of its parts, and not just its individual failures. But I just do not see what others do in these games. Why would you want to be in this world when you could be In Breath of the Wilds’ post-apocalypse, or The Witcher and Elden Ring’s fantasy? Or with Red Dead’s succinct lived in wilderness? Or Metal Gear V’s tight gun play? Is the draw the classic Bethesda completely pointless ability to pick up every item so you can ignore 99.9% of the items? Or screenshot the 34 forks in your inventory for a tweet?

I understand my severity in this review may be ignorance. I mean this is widely considered a fantastic game, so SOMETHING must be done right here. But I’ve given this game 8 hours of my life now and have found no joy in it at all. So for now I will drop this until…who knows, Fallout Season 2?

A metroidvania soulslike Star Wars game? On paper, this seems like too messy of a concept to work, and honestly in my first couple of hours, I believed it. But as the game went on, I found myself having more and more fun. My personal feelings aside, I think the quality of the game actually improves as you progress, and by the end I was super glad i played it.

The combat here is genuinely pretty awesome. I mean, any game in which i’m using a lightsaber I will be biased towards, but the souls mechanics really do shine here. Swings feel meaty and purposeful, and the parry is very satisfying, on top of dodging working well too. It even has exactly what I wanted but didn’t receive from Elden Ring, with a few moves requiring the player to jump over. Pair this with some pretty fun force abilities and you’ve got yourself a winner, and a couple of the boss fights really stand out. Fallen Order also presents the player with some puzzles. which I thought were pretty good too for the limited scope the abilities give you.

The worlds are pretty cool, with some OK lore laid throughout. You’re not going to get anything even close to the best Metroidvania or Soulslike worlds, but it’s still pretty fun to explore. My main gripe with exploration however is the rewards. Every single chest just offers a cosmetic that feels entirely unsatisfying. There’s a crazy amount of chests in this game, only to be opened to give you a slightly different tinge of orange for your poncho. I found it fun enough to explore for exploration’s sake, but I wouldn’t blame any one for passing on getting these chests. I really would have liked some more meaningful rewards here, and I think it’s my main gripe with the game.

The story and characters are pretty predictable and bland Star Wars stuff, but they’re serviceable enough. If you can ignore the fact that you have to hit basic stormtroopers multiple times with a lightsaber to kill them? and the annoying Uncharted climbing sections that honestly don’t belong in any game, you’re going to have a good time with the core of Fallen Order.

It’s definitely carried by its IP, but I think if you like Star Wars this is a great game, and even if you don’t, it’s still a good game!