interesting and addicting at first, with the puzzles genuinely making you think while still all being logically solvable, but gets repetitive and sort of frustrating from the pacing/padding between finding new corpses. the starting narrative is compelling, but once you fill out the broad strokes after the first two hours it's easy to see the full picture, and you're left with 8 hours of mindlessly combing over minutiae details, which is my main beef with the game.

on its own it's pretty cool when you realize oh this guy has this pair of shoes so i can trace it back to his bunk number!! but then you have to make the long trek back to cross check, and to make matters worse there's a lot of padding during this process, like only being able to exit cutscenes through doors or the stupid light that unveils new corpses that i hate with all my soul, because is there really a reason i need to follow it around in circles instead of just walking in a straight line to where the corpse is supposed to be? padding like this is rampant throughout the game, like having to wait way too long for new chapter details to unveil itself, and at times it felt more like a walking simulator than a detective game to me. i understand that the developer wanted more realism as opposed to it feeling too 'gamey', but when added with the fact that this game gives me motion sickness like no other, I feel that my enjoyment of the game would've been much higher if i was able to jump between discovered cutscenes easily to cross reference things.

at it stood, even though i really enjoyed the process of deducing identities (real world logic actually applies in every scenario, which is something i've only really seen obra dinn be able to pull off so well), the hassle of all those mindless in-betweens ended up soiling a lot of it for me, which is a shame.

i can't quite pinpoint what exactly rhythm doctor's charm is. maybe it's the pixelart, maybe it's the heartfelt dialogue, maybe it's the absolute bop of an ost, but i think it's a mix of that and its creative level design. and the fact that im talking about LEVEL DESIGN for a rhythm game really should say enough, the way it manages to tell stories through each level truly something amazing. act 2 is where the game peaks, but the new act 5 boss might just be one of the best things i've had the pleasure of witnessing.

this game has a constant identity crisis with what it aspires to be (zelda) and what it actually implements (dark souls, though not entirely). the zelda-y parts are amazing and the manual is an absolute standout in how it gets you to figure out stuff with little to no verbal communication at all, and i hope to see more stuff like this in future games. however, the dark souls part is...who thought it was a good idea to make combat and movement clunky as hell and then decide 'yeah let's throw some hard enemies at the player too bc that's going to be fun!'
what tunic does well it does Really well, and there's a lot to be learned from here. it's a genuine shame that it's hard to appreciate those great aspects because of how plainly bad the combat is designed.

definition of cozy gaming. the visuals are absolutely stunning and the soundtrack is definitely going in a cafe playlist or two, and the gameplay although simple has fun puzzles and the sound design makes everything feel amazing to do. the only place where it drags is in the middle where the puzzles just kinda feel stupid and tedious. the camera within an 'animated' space is so genius i can't even begin to fathom how they went about the technicalities of that. there's only one area that i felt didn't feel 3D enough, and that was in the free dlc, which was pretty good though less engaging than the main chapters.
my only complaint would be that the story didn't wrap up neatly enough and that some things didn't really add up, since there just wasn't enough information by the end for any solid conclusion about the big twist to be drawn and when the credits started rolling i was just kinda like 'wait what', which is unfortunate. Everything else in this game is polished and charming to a fault, and definitely made a great two hours spent. Would absolutely love a spiritual sequel with better more cohesive writing.

horribly optimized for pc. generic and bland story and characters. open world is laughably boring. steals basically every mechanic from another game but somehow implements them worse. accio is the only fun combat mechanic and then they render it unusable after level 20. the actual harry potter stuff like potions and beasts and whatnot is reduced down to a list of errands and button prompts with no meaning whatsoever. the hogwarts and hogsmeade area is the only redeeming thing in game that brims with life and makes you feel like you're actually a student at a wizarding school. you come to this game wanting to be a student at hogwarts. you are given a triple a amalgamation of other games with a shiny layer of ip spray paint over it. so...jedi fallen order, but to a far more egregious degree, basically.