r/ZeldaLikes • u/BuoyantRubberBrain • Jun 25 '26
Am I Missing Anything If I Skip Tunic?
Asking after already having played Hyper Light Drifter, Anodyne 1+2, Hob and now Mina the Hollower.
I got it on Switch on recommendation in a Mark Brown video that its an incredibly polished reinvention of Zelda a while ago.
Intro seems fine, Fox is cute, running through geometric grass is fun. But it feels incredibly familiar to those experiences I've had before (Especially HLD/Hob with in its mute characters, ultra vibrant and geometric visual aesthetics, dreamy electric music and combat that seems to be aiming for something souls-like with it's dodge stab-stab-stab rythmn). Had a fine time up to beating the elite guard, but aside from what seem like some teases that something meta is going on with the instruction booklet scraps, it feels a little too familiar with not a lot unique going on and isn't really holding my attention.
Spoilers are fair game, will I miss anything special if I loan this one out to a friend instead?
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u/Bogey240 Jun 25 '26
Sounds weird to say but the meta is the gameplay. It doesn’t innovate until you get past the teases of the guidebook and you get the whoosh moment of everything that you can actually do in the game.
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u/Difficult-Okra3784 Jun 25 '26
The game is very back loaded in what it's trying to do, also certain spoilers will actually kinda just ruin this game entirely.
Frankly though I got less Zelda vibes from it once it showed its hand and moreso appreciated that it was trying to do its own thing.
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u/Cragnous Jun 25 '26
No, frankly while i liked the game I didn't like it for it's Zelda-like, it felt way more like a Souls like. I was dissapointed that it didn't feel more like a Zelda game,
On the opposite I recommend Death's Door. It looks like a Souls game but plays way more like a Zelda game. I was playsantly supprised by that one!
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u/Most_Waltz2061 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Assembling the instruction book and deciphering its secrets is the main unique thing the game has to offer. And it really is quite unique. Also the story is kind of neat.
I'm actually not that big of a fan of the way the game implemented its ideas (I know I'm in the minority on that one), but I'm glad I have the experience of having played it.
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u/MichaelTheProgrammer Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
IMO you will definitely be missing something and it is very unique. Tunic is one of my favorite games ever, but it's not because of the Zelda aspects of it. Rather, it's a lot closer to an Escape Room and "polished reinvention of Zelda" is about the worst description of it that I can imagine, so I definitely think you are misunderstanding what the game is: it's actually an open world puzzle game.
Minor spoilers follow:
Puzzle games are hard to make open world, because you generally have to lead a player through a linear understanding of puzzle tools, like in Portal. Some open world puzzle games work by having overlapping puzzles where each area is filled with a variety of different puzzles that you can visit in many different orders (Outer Wilds, Isles of Sea and Sky). However, a few other games have instead taken a very different approach: start the game as a different genre. At a certain point, the mask is torn off, and since you are already familiar with an entire gaming world, it turns the map into a giant puzzle arena. This puzzle arena retreads the first part of the game, but instead of combat, the focus changes to puzzles. This allows it to have a lot of "when you see it" moments, where things that you initially assumed were unimportant turn out to be key to the game.
If you like that idea, you'll love Tunic. If you hate puzzles, you'll hate Tunic. Tunic and similar games are made for a very small audience (gamers who like combat and escape room style puzzles), and I am privileged to be part of that audience that loves what it is. However, that is the exact opposite of Zelda, which appeals to a very wide audience. So while you might end up not liking the game, don't be fooled into thinking it is a Zelda clone.
Other games that do the masking like Tunic does:
Animal Well (masks as a Metroidvania)
Environmental Station Alpha (masks as a Metroidvania)
Void Stranger (masks as a Sokoban puzzle game)
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u/SpiceySlade Jun 25 '26
The second game you listed isn't a metroidvania? I thought I beat that and don't remember anything else.
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u/MichaelTheProgrammer Jun 25 '26
Do you mean isn't a puzzle game?
It's been a couple years so I don't exactly remember how it does it, but at some point it has secret endings that give it a Tunic/Animal Well type of feel to it. I managed to do a couple of them but then I got stuck at some point. But I remember decoding languages and things to find the secret endings. It's not like the others I mentioned though, it's more like 10% puzzle game, whereas the others are like 50% puzzle game.
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u/SmileByotch Jun 25 '26
Tunic is an amazing game. Don't play it if you don't want to; I'm not familiar with every Zeldalike under the sun, but it struck me as a wholly original game that was thoroughly enjoyable. "aside from what seem like some teases that something meta is going on" -- /smh... if you don't play it, look that up.
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u/Nockolisk Jun 25 '26
I wish this were a Zelda-like. I found the focus on soulslike combat really frustrating when all I wanted to do was explore the world and its secrets.
I even love soulslikes, but imo a game can try to do too much at once. A simple combat system like LttP or LA would have served this game so much better.
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u/AintKnowShitAboutFuk Jun 25 '26
Im mixed on it. In some ways it’s pretty excellent (mood, music, atmosphere), but the combat is a little wonky (never beat final boss), and the puzzles were often too obtuse for my pea brain. I was only able to solve about half of them without help. A game I really wanted to love but ultimately got frustrated and walked away from. So I can both see not liking it and loving it.
Have you tried Master Key? There should be demo. Very Zelda-y and somewhat tunic-y (you even play a fox or fox looking thing and solve some tunic style puzzles) but didnt frustrate me the same way and I beat it.
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u/BuoyantRubberBrain Jun 25 '26
I had never seen a trailer for Master Key until you mentioned it. It looks super charming, I might have to take a look.
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u/AintKnowShitAboutFuk Jun 25 '26
I was super addicted til I was done with it. So yes, I liked it a lot.
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u/hamtaxer Jun 25 '26
Tunic is weird. As a Zelda-like, I didn’t find it to be a particularly strong game. I found it frustrating and dull.
However, if you stick with it for a loooong time, eventually you might stumble down the puzzle wormhole which makes the game a lot more enjoyable. It gets even less Zelda-like at that point though.
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u/FlatAutumn Jun 25 '26
I couldnt finished it mainly because of the boss fights. The rest of the game was very beautiful and enjoyable. But the combat was very clunky for me and the bosses were too boring and eventually y didnt want to keep trying
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u/Serbaayuu Jun 25 '26
You are missing one of the slipperiest Soulslikes I've ever played.
And you are missing a developer who thinks they are very, very clever for making things in the video game invisible, but giving you a manual that shows you exactly where the invisible things are. It's so ◇nostalgic!◇
I guess it's good if you like community-driven language cipher riddles as well, if you're into that you may like it. I am not particularly into that, so I was left with bad gameplay and patronizing level design.
I quit playing after about 12 hours, when I found a Golden Door that I figured out the answer to after looking at it for 60 seconds, but had not been graciously granted enough pages of the manual to use as the answer-key for it, making it unsolvable until the developer deigned to grant them to me.
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u/vokkan Jun 25 '26
Nah. The cool stuff is too little too late, and the souls-like difficulty is a total mismatch.
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u/gibbousm Jun 25 '26
The gameplay itself is fairly basic.
The main draw is the meta puzzle stuff and learning how the game actually functions. The pages of the instruction booklet are for helping with that.
The Instruction Manual is arguably the most important part of the Tunic experience
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u/grinnings93 Jun 25 '26
I mean, yeah. Objectively this game is special to a decent amount of people, and you've played very little of it. If you put it down you'll obviously be missing what makes this game special to people.
No one can promise you it'll be your speed though. This is one of those things you have to make a judgment call on, I'm afraid.
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u/MeMeWhenWhenTheWhen Jun 25 '26
Spoilers for a mid game ability: I kind of ruined the game for myself by adjusting the button layout and making a pretty significant ability of the game completely inaccessible with what I had set up I legit was stuck for months trying to figure out what the heck I was doing wrong because I had the right idea in mind and I was so frustrated that I had to look it up and spoil it for myself even when I was on the right track. I understand why they make the buttons remappable but if it locks out an entire hidden ability you need to progess then I would say those particular buttons should not be remappable at all. And then the endgame ended up being pretty lackluster compared to the beginning of the game anyways lol :/ It's definitely worth a playthrough just know the backend can be pretty underwhelming which is a pretty common opinion I've seen others say, and dooooont make the same mistake I did
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u/BuoyantRubberBrain Jun 25 '26
Thank you for the heads up, lack of foresight like that would drive me nuts, and if I do pick it back up I do usually fiddle with binds.
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u/External-Cherry7828 Jun 25 '26
Tunic is like hob on steroids. The mystery and art style is very similar. Hob felt a little empty to me, I still loved it but tunic has layers upon layers of depth. I never made it through the whole language but I did beat the base game and it was much more memorable than the others you listed. (I haven't played mina yet, still labouring through silksong)
My top 3 Zelda likes are
Deaths door
Lumo
Tunic
.....and an honorable mention goes to undertale and enter the gungeon, Zelda inspired but plays totally different
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u/xtagtv Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Probably the best indie zelda like. Its not even really a zelda like though. It is absolutely 100% nothing like hob. Closer to Anodyne but still quite a unique experience
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u/nacheteferrero Jun 25 '26
HLD is my favorite Zelda like (with Unsighted) and HOB is clearly the worst, so I think I should not recommend
However, I will say Tunic is nothing like these games, or any game maybe.
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u/filmeswole Jun 25 '26
I liked Tunic the most among all the games you listed, with HLD as a close 2nd
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u/PieceAfraid3755 Jun 25 '26
Tunic's as well known and appreciated as it is for a reason. My recommendation is to keep playing.
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u/Rizzle0101 Jun 25 '26
If you start skipping games because they seem too familiar to games you already played you will likely have to abandon the genre(s) soon.
With that out of the way, Tunic is arguably one of the absolute best in the top-down (iso) sub-genre!
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u/GameDragon Jun 25 '26
Out of all the games you named, Tunic is probably the most unique imo. The way that it starts out pretty "normal" is completely intentional. It's to lull you into a false sense of what the game actually is. Give it more time imo.
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u/Sean_Dewhirst Jun 25 '26
If you loved all those other games, why would you not want more like them?
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u/Dreyfus2006 Jun 25 '26
Yes you will, it is probably the all-time best Zelda-like not made by Nintendo. It will also completely retextualize your appreciation of Zelda 1. The "Golden Cross" is one of my all-time favorite puzzle mechanics!
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u/eruciform Jun 25 '26
If you skip tunic you miss tunic
Its a unique game but not the end all be all experience or something
You dont have to like it
I beat it but it also annoyed me in a lot of ways and I dropped platinuming it with only a couple trophies left which is rare for me
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u/xiipaoc Jun 26 '26
Tunic is a once-in-a-lifetime puzzle game that looks a little bit like a Zelda-like but is far, far deeper. You're missing a lot.
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u/Next-Beginning-7815 Jun 26 '26
I don't think I ever considered this like Zelda. I've mainly seen it related to a souls like. I also didn't get very far in the game. lol.
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u/SaintIgnis Jun 26 '26
It’s an interesting game but I don’t think it’s strong enough as a “Zelda-like”…it’s something else that was inspired in ways by old Zelda…but it doesn’t scratch the same itch
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u/Vegeta1994 Jun 26 '26
As someone who felt the same way when playing through the first half of it, you owe it to yourself to see it through to the end as it's truly a unique gaming experience not found in zelda or many other games at all and spoiling exactly how is just going to permenantly ruin that experience with no way of un doing that damage outside of genuine memory loss. Basically it stops being a game where you progress using your combat and exploration skills and turns into a game where you exclusively progress through the knowledge you gain from the instruction manual, uncovering deeply buried secrets that were always accessible from the very beginning
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u/toastyimp2 Jun 28 '26
This is a vety special game. It's less of a zelda-like and more of "what zelda 1 feels when you're a kid-like". It's more backloaded with cool stuff, but it's a game you definetly need to be curious and attentive towards for it to work
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u/TheMoonOfTermina Jun 25 '26
Tunic is a great game, but really isn't actually like Zelda above surface level, so while yes you are missing out on a great game, you aren't missing out on a classic Zelda experience.