This is a cute game. I will fully admit, for a good bit of the game I was debating on whether I was feeling it, and truth be told, I never quite had that click moment with this game. Actually playing it is both very slow and a lot of times, pretty frustrating. I love top-down Zelda and I love Soulslikes, and these should mesh super well together, but something about the isometric camera angle along with the often brutal Souls mechanics didn't make for satisfying moments where I felt I overcome a massive obstacle; oftentimes, it more felt like "finally, that is over."

That being said, Tunic still ended up being more than worth checking out. The highs of this game are pretty insanely cool. Even with my qualms of the gameplay, I think this game had some pretty smartly designed boss encounters. And while the actual story, I don't have many strong feelings of, I love the way its presented, lotta fill in the blanks with this one, that I greatly appreciate. But obviously the big highlight of this one is the in-game manual that you slowly build up and understand as you continue through the game; ultimately culminating in what is pretty obviously one of the coolest video game puzzles in recent memory.

Tunic definitely isn't a masterpiece, but honestly, this is the perfect Game Pass game, which is where I checked it out. Its cute aesthetic and pretty genius use of a now relic of video game past, is worth the price of admission, and helps get over the less than stellar game feel, at least for me. I could see myself talking myself into loving this at some point, but for now, its cute, I enjoyed my time with it, and I'm glad I got to solve that last puzzle if nothing else.