Annoying and not fun combat gets in the way of exploring a beautiful world full of intrigue and puzzles.
Tunic has a bit of an identity crisis - is it Fez? A 2D Zelda? A Souls-like? It attempts to answers all of those questions with "yes" and then trips over itself while trying to deliver one cohesive experience. If this were a 2D Zelda with Fez-like puzzles to solve, this would be a dream. But for whatever weird reason, the devs decided they wanted this to have ultra challenging combat encounters that are frankly just not fun.
Across the board, every podcast I listened to recommended two things with the game.
1. Don't look up any guides if you can help it
2. Put the game on "No Fail" mode.
It's a pretty wild that the best way to experience this game is to not engage with 50% of the mechanics in it.
I loved bumming around the beautiful world finding stuff and solving puzzles, even if sometimes the weird geometry of the world made finding secrets more about running into every hidden corner and less about carefully studying the world to discover things. There were a few moments in this game where I figured something out and I openly laughed out loud at the brilliance of it. It's got some incredibly cool stuff in it especially if you like solving puzzles but boy do I wish I could make the combat easier without simply making myself invulnerable.
+ Beautiful world
+ Incredibly satisfying puzzle-solving
+ Fantastic soundtrack
- Bad and overly difficult combat
- No variable difficulty settings - it's either hard or you're invincible.
- Finding secrets can feel random
Tunic has a bit of an identity crisis - is it Fez? A 2D Zelda? A Souls-like? It attempts to answers all of those questions with "yes" and then trips over itself while trying to deliver one cohesive experience. If this were a 2D Zelda with Fez-like puzzles to solve, this would be a dream. But for whatever weird reason, the devs decided they wanted this to have ultra challenging combat encounters that are frankly just not fun.
Across the board, every podcast I listened to recommended two things with the game.
1. Don't look up any guides if you can help it
2. Put the game on "No Fail" mode.
It's a pretty wild that the best way to experience this game is to not engage with 50% of the mechanics in it.
I loved bumming around the beautiful world finding stuff and solving puzzles, even if sometimes the weird geometry of the world made finding secrets more about running into every hidden corner and less about carefully studying the world to discover things. There were a few moments in this game where I figured something out and I openly laughed out loud at the brilliance of it. It's got some incredibly cool stuff in it especially if you like solving puzzles but boy do I wish I could make the combat easier without simply making myself invulnerable.
+ Beautiful world
+ Incredibly satisfying puzzle-solving
+ Fantastic soundtrack
- Bad and overly difficult combat
- No variable difficulty settings - it's either hard or you're invincible.
- Finding secrets can feel random