Frustratingly obtuse from its start, the most difficult thing about Tunic is progressing after getting stuck.
Tunic MSRP $29.99 Score Details “Tunic offers players an adventure full of mystery, but delivers a purposefully obtuse world that's impossible to sort out.” Pros Cons Deception is the name of the game in Tunic.
Manual not included Tunic starts the way so many adventure games do: With its main character, an adorable Fox wearing a tunic, waking up on a beach. The game offers you very little guidance from there in terms of where to go or what to do. The basics will be intuitive to anyone who’s ever played a Zelda game , but Tunic itself takes a very hands-off approach to the player experience.
For people reviewing the game, I was treated to a Discord channel full of other critics, where people helped each other figure out Tunic‘s mysteries. Or at least, that was the intention. Instead, this server ended up filled with people saying that they were stuck and had no clue what to do next — something I experienced multiple times. I ended up reaching out for help just once during my playing time, though I should have done that more and saved myself some headaches.
Nothing is mysterious about the way players fight in Tunic, thankfully. The little fox can hit enemies with a three-hit sword combo and avoid damage with a shield or dodge roll. Magic items throw a bit of variety into this mix, with one that stuns enemies and pulls them straight over for a free combo and another that freezes them in place. There’s nothing massively exciting here — it’s all pretty bare-bones.
Eventually, fights in Tunic get tiresome, especially due to some frustrating enemy A.I. Spiders, and enemies that behave like them, constantly back away from players, only attacking when they finally bump into a wall. Chasing down enemies only to slowly whittle their health away through a mix of attacks and blocks gets tiring pretty fast.
Our take Tunic desperately tries to recreate the magic of classic Legend of Zelda games, all too often doing so to a fault. It tries to be hands-off and instead leaves the player with no idea of where to go. It wants to have simple combat, akin to something like the Zelda Oracle games, but that approach gets stale incredibly fast here.