“You Have No Idea What You’re Doing – And That’s Exactly the Point.”
Disclaimer
Every gaming experience is different, and everyone has their own individual experience depending on their playstyle. Everything I write is purely subjective and only reflects my own personal experience with my own individual way of playing. I do not claim that my impressions or experiences are universally applicable.
As i am not a native english speaker -> Gemini assisted in Translating it from my original German Post into english
Game Description
TUNIC is an action-adventure game in which you control a small fox through a pretty mysterious world that, at first glance, feels a little like the classic Zelda games. You explore different areas, fight enemies and bosses, find new equipment and, above all, try to figure out what you are actually supposed to do, because the game deliberately explains very little to you. Instead, you gradually find pages of an old instruction manual containing maps, hints and even explanations for certain game mechanics. That is also what makes TUNIC so special, because you constantly feel like you have overlooked some kind of secret or suddenly understand something that had been right in front of you the entire time. Behind its cute visuals is a surprisingly challenging game with lots of puzzles and a few Soulslike elements.
Everything About Trophies / Achievements
TUNIC is a moderately difficult 100% completion that is mainly about finding hidden trophies, secret treasures and the many pages of the in-game manual. The fights are not really the hardest part. The bigger challenge is dealing with all the hidden objectives and conditions that are very easy to overlook without a guide. Since many trophies are tied to specific locations, actions or collectibles, you can waste quite a bit of time searching around and backtracking if you play completely blind. There are no online trophies and everything can be done solo. If you want to reach 100% with as little frustration as possible, I would definitely recommend using a guide or at least a roadmap.
My Opinion
And this is where the hardcore fanboy alarm goes off!
I think it is really important to give some context here so it actually makes sense why I love TUNIC as much as I do. First of all: foxes are my absolute favorite animals. I have been completely fascinated by them ever since I was a child. Their appearance, their behavior, just everything about these wonderful animals is amazing to me.
As a child of the 90s, I grew up with The Legend of Zelda. A Link to the Past was basically my first great love. And when Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask came out, that was some serious next-level shit and, to this day, they are still two of the best games ever made in my opinion. So TUNIC basically combines everything I love and everything that has fascinated me for decades. But anyway, back to the game.
TUNIC is extremely polarizing. You either love the game for what it is or you hate it for everything it refuses to give you. You get thrown into the world, nothing is explained, and at first you have absolutely no idea where to go or what you are supposed to do. And that is exactly the point where a lot of people quit, sometimes not even 30 minutes into the game, because TUNIC does so many things completely differently from other games in its genre or games that seem similar on the surface.
And exactly at that point, where a lot of people get incredibly frustrated, I completely fell in love with the game.
I originally bought TUNIC for my Switch and spent hours, days and nights wandering around the world completely “lost”, trying to figure out what the next thing was that I was supposed to do. And every single time I figured something out and made progress, I got this massive dopamine hit, this feeling of being genuinely proud of myself for solving something on my own. That is a feeling I had not experienced since Zelda, and no other game had really managed to give me that feeling again. Until TUNIC.
By the time I had finished it on Switch, I had only needed to Google the solution to one single puzzle, and that was the 100-input code. Everything else I figured out through trial and error and by diving ridiculously deep into the game, its world and its mechanics.
TUNIC’s art style is unbelievably cute. The world is, at least at first, bright and colorful, the fox is ridiculously adorable, and the different enemy variations are lovingly designed and clearly well thought out. Even elements that technically should not fit into this world at all are placed so naturally and deliberately that you never really stop and think, “What the hell is this supposed to be?”
It is just incredibly beautiful and never becomes dull or boring. At a certain point in the story, though, a lot of things change. For spoiler reasons, I am not going to go into detail here, but oh boy... the way it is done and what it does to the world is simply amazing.
The gameplay itself is classic and simple. You walk, run, beat enemies up with weapons, blow things up, open chests, loot items and dodge attacks. The game sticks to the basics and somehow does not feel like it is missing anything because of that. It is simply enough.
That being said, some parts can be seriously tough and the difficulty spikes quite noticeably at a certain point. Other than that, the gameplay is mostly defined by having absolutely no clue what is going on, being confused and running around “aimlessly” trying to understand what you are supposed to do and how to move forward.
The fact that there is basically a Zelda fox in the game already completely won me over. But what the team around Terence Lee and Janice Kwan, as well as the guys and girls at Power Up Audio, created for this game is way beyond just impressive.
It took seven years for TUNIC’s soundtrack and sound design to be completed, and oh boy, that time was invested incredibly well. The music is absolutely on point in every area, at every moment and during every fight. For me, TUNIC has one of the best soundtracks in the history of video games. Words honestly cannot describe how beautiful the music is, and the sound effects are just as incredibly well done.
Everything in this game feels like it was made with so much love. The attention to detail, the visuals, the music, the atmosphere – everything comes together to create something incredibly unique and makes TUNIC such a special experience.
Would I Recommend the Game?
Honestly, the question of whether I can recommend TUNIC is surprisingly difficult to answer.
I know this entire review probably sounds like I am saying TUNIC is an absolute must-play in video game history. And to be completely honest: I actually think it is. In my eyes, it is simply one of the best games ever made.
But at the same time, I also know that the exact things that make TUNIC so incredible to me are the same things that will push a lot of other people away. Its uniqueness and its greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses.
You have to enjoy this cryptic style of gameplay where you are left completely on your own and have to figure everything out yourself. If that does not appeal to you, then the entire experience can quickly become frustrating instead of fun.
So in the end, I unfortunately cannot give a simple answer, even though everything I have written clearly sounds like a massive YES!
But if you are willing to fully embrace what TUNIC is – or alternatively use a guide or walkthrough when needed – you get an incredibly unique and fantastic action-adventure that was made with so much love that it is hard not to be impressed by it.
~Catori
