What Tunic sets out to do, it does incredibly well. Rather than being a Zelda-like, Tunic is aiming to be more like Fez and if that means something to you, this comes with a glowing recommendation... with the caveat that the combat is actively shit and you'd be better off playing it on Easy.
The highlights of Tunic are definitely the visuals, the world and the exploration, the non-verbal ways in which the story is slowly doled out to you, the puzzles, the secrets that are pervasive and everywhere and the incredible music to accompany it all. Slowly exploring the map and opening up more and more pathways as you grow stronger and more daring made me feel enraptured with what was going on and I could scarcely put the game down in favor of going for just a few more minutes over and over. There was always a pathway that you'd remember you left behind and you'd yearn to go back there, only to be distracted yet again by another path. There are secrets within secrets and puzzles that slowly reveal their mechanics over time and you keep on trucking. I won't spoil some of the more wonderful elements of the game but the game perfectly merges exploration with everything else.
Except the combat. The combat is just actively bad. You have a fair few options but the player character just feels incredibly clunky the whole way through. I don't have any objective way of expressing this. The combat just felt really bad. One of the more egregious things I can point to is a lack of any animation cancel which means every swing of your sword, every dodge, every shield raise is a commitment and it's so sluggish and horrid when after you swing you raise your shield to deflect the incoming attack only to have it hit and stun you. There are bosses that were so annoying I relented and turned the difficulty down. But the saving grace is the combat is serviceable enough since most of the time you're just fighting grunts and most of your time is not really going to be fighting enemies. The game definitely prioritises the exploration factor over combat but it does feel crummy that combat wasn't more of a focus or there weren't more ways to improve it.
Tunic is far, FAR more than the sum of its parts, most of which were already stellar. The whole package comes together in a wonderful way even if the singular piece doesn't fit well enough. I'll once again name drop Fez, with all that that entails. There's a lot that I didn't actually bother with because I got the true ending and stopped. There's a decent chunk of puzzles that I didn't touch cause I'd just be reading guides to solve them.
The highlights of Tunic are definitely the visuals, the world and the exploration, the non-verbal ways in which the story is slowly doled out to you, the puzzles, the secrets that are pervasive and everywhere and the incredible music to accompany it all. Slowly exploring the map and opening up more and more pathways as you grow stronger and more daring made me feel enraptured with what was going on and I could scarcely put the game down in favor of going for just a few more minutes over and over. There was always a pathway that you'd remember you left behind and you'd yearn to go back there, only to be distracted yet again by another path. There are secrets within secrets and puzzles that slowly reveal their mechanics over time and you keep on trucking. I won't spoil some of the more wonderful elements of the game but the game perfectly merges exploration with everything else.
Except the combat. The combat is just actively bad. You have a fair few options but the player character just feels incredibly clunky the whole way through. I don't have any objective way of expressing this. The combat just felt really bad. One of the more egregious things I can point to is a lack of any animation cancel which means every swing of your sword, every dodge, every shield raise is a commitment and it's so sluggish and horrid when after you swing you raise your shield to deflect the incoming attack only to have it hit and stun you. There are bosses that were so annoying I relented and turned the difficulty down. But the saving grace is the combat is serviceable enough since most of the time you're just fighting grunts and most of your time is not really going to be fighting enemies. The game definitely prioritises the exploration factor over combat but it does feel crummy that combat wasn't more of a focus or there weren't more ways to improve it.
Tunic is far, FAR more than the sum of its parts, most of which were already stellar. The whole package comes together in a wonderful way even if the singular piece doesn't fit well enough. I'll once again name drop Fez, with all that that entails. There's a lot that I didn't actually bother with because I got the true ending and stopped. There's a decent chunk of puzzles that I didn't touch cause I'd just be reading guides to solve them.