Tunic

[Tobal]

picked it up on gamepass, very nice looking isometric Zelda game, Fez like music, and with this being a indie game you can damn well bet they stuck dark souls clichés in it like bonfires, HP/MP/ST bars, coins being the souls and you can get back what you lost. Uses LT to lock and any of the X/Y/B buttons to attack depending on the item you put in the slot, as first i really hated the combat as you can't cancel an attack in to dodge, you have to wait for the animation to end, but i stuck with it and it got better when i got the shield, it takes a solid hour to get the sword and shield together if you can read the clues from the manual...

now this is where the game stands out (aside from the graphics) and gets interesting, scattered around are pages of the games manual, it might as well be like looking at classic NES/SNES era Nintendo manual in japanese as it has only a few words in english, the rest is in a made up language, it's up to you to guess from the character drawings, little bits of english, and ingame printed pictures to work out what the game wants you to do, as there is zero ingame help for how to follow the story progression, example below spoils first hour

->Open Spoiler<-

you get pages 10 and 11 early on and they point you in the direction of finding the heroes grave and dark well to ring the bells which i assume open the sealed door (smells an lot like Dark souls 1), and the puzzles start super simple, find your sword, look for Zelda 2 like raw power ups for HP/DEF/ATT among other useful items (rather than actual Zelda 2 which i think was exp off monsters), and get the manual map which shows the overworld (and shows your place on it in real time, which i felt broke immersion).

I figured out how to use those items going on the dev's love for dark souls and burned them at the bonfire even before i got the game manual page showing it in action. Rest of it is looking out for hidden paths from cutting down branches, looking in corners the camera can't see (you get a outline as you move behind walls), and sometimes there appears to be more than one way to get into somewhere if you have a very keen eye, as the house old for the west bell directions, i found the key guarded by a very tough enemy which i burned down with bombs, but on going into the house the exit out of it had 2 directions and one was a hidden path i missed so easily... no need to fight the badguy for it.

Due to the game manual stuff, i do wonder if this has more hidden to it like Fez, time will tell.

[nonny]

Yeah this game is fantastic in both style and structure. It's the best bits of Zelda of old, mixed with a light touch of dark souls.

What's great is what it doesn't tell you, things you just find out through natural curiosity and reading the manual carefully. The fact the game hints and manual is in mostly another language it often feels at times you've imported a rare gem of a game and trying to translate it on the fly... If you've got game pass you need to give this one a go.

[Tobal]

Got far enough to fight the first boss, almost came close to deleting the game as combat is not the strong point, but i wanted to see more of the puzzles and adventuring so i stuck with it, i can see the fight being a wall many won't get over as you only have +3 possible stat points at the time so you can't over power yourself and push through like you can in Dark Souls or Zelda 2.

In the end my strategy was rush in while the boss is powering up to knock of 1/4 HP right away, then ice magic for free damage until it ran out usually gets to the last 1/4 HP bar, then try and bait the shooting move. Toughest fight i've done in along time, i think stamina bar being so quick to deplete and attacking stops stamina recovery makes feel really bad.

Prior to that i had alot of fun exploring the west gardens to reach the bell, again finding all sorts of hidden paths and i love the game manual has little scribbles in pen on it, i had flashbacks to renting MD/SNES carts and seeing the battered manuals with all sorts in it.

[Lebowski]

Got far enough to fight the first boss, almost came close to deleting the game as combat is not the strong point, but i wanted to see more of the puzzles and adventuring so i stuck with it, i can see the fight being a wall many won't get over as you only have +3 possible stat points at the time so you can't over power yourself and push through like you can in Dark Souls or Zelda 2.

In the end my strategy was rush in while the boss is powering up to knock of 1/4 HP right away, then ice magic for free damage until it ran out usually gets to the last 1/4 HP bar, then try and bait the shooting move. Toughest fight i've done in along time, i think stamina bar being so quick to deplete and attacking stops stamina recovery makes feel really bad.

Prior to that i had alot of fun exploring the west gardens to reach the bell, again finding all sorts of hidden paths and i love the game manual has little scribbles in pen on it, i had flashbacks to renting MD/SNES carts and seeing the battered manuals with all sorts in it.

If your enjoying this id highly recommend Death's Door which is also on gamepass, its tough but a bit more forgiving than this as the combat is a lot Tighter and massively more fluid, the world you explore is also amazingly unique and memorable.

[Tobal]

If your enjoying this id highly recommend Death's Door which is also on gamepass, its tough but a bit more forgiving than this as the combat is a lot Tighter and massively more fluid, the world you explore is also amazingly unique and memorable.

i've had it downloaded but it came out just before Elden Ring so haven't had a chance to start it.

[Tobal]

Since last time i got a manual page telling me about praying

->Open Spoiler<-

by holding down A for 3 seconds

, then using that to open all sort of things like a

->Open Spoiler<-

Teleport to a Hub transport and a Heroes realm which i can't figure out how to get the items

even before i got the manual page telling what praying does other than puzzle stuff and it's all there from the very start. After learning that i beat the East Ruins and its Boss... then i got lost for a few hours unsure where to go next, i had about 3 new areas to get to but could only go so far before something in each area made me turn back, it turned out i hadn't bothered exploring a region if found first in the south, somehow missed a section of it that got me into a new dungeon and it's reward,

->Open Spoiler<-

the hookshot, which now opens up loads of traversal options and pulls in enemies. Using that i completed the map puzzle for the south area and it teleported me to a floating library which looks pretty cool, at the top was a new boss fight which kicked my ass, i can see i need to hookshot him into to me to hit him, but im doing so little damage it's quite clear i should come back when i'm stronger.

Other than that i got manual page which explained the wells, i thought i'd need some bucket or rope to go down it but it turns out the large coins i had been collecting can be thrown down the well to get upgrades, not sure if each well has it's own items or its universal and doesn't matter where you chuck the large coins as the rewards will be the same? the first tier of coins got me a 2nd badge slot which is nice

[Tobal]

Game started to get very hard and annoying in relation to the combat, couldn't beat the Root of the world Boss for all his jumping around staying out of swords reach and should you hookshot him in he'll kick you away, then combine that with his 1/2 HP phase of AoE ground pound that covers the arena... couldn't figure out the time on the dodge, and this was after having to deal with Max HP reducing enemies and objects.

thankfully after listening Giant Bombcast i learned the accessibility menu in options has God Mode and infinite Stamina so turned those on, and good job i did, the final 1/4 is nothing but enemies with Max HP down attacks and they move as fast as you.

With those turned on i finished the puzzles and adventuring for the last few areas, which included after unlocking the Seal with the coloured runes which gave me pretty hard laugh when

->Open Spoiler<-

i said out loud to myself, "now what" after the seal unlocked and nothing happened, then couple of seconds after that finished a achievement for 'Now What' is given . After a bit of looking around first at the Hero Graves, i figured the only place was the Hub transport where the locked up Lady was, and sure even she'd disappeared, looking at the manual i guessed she could have gone to the sword room inside the Hub and sure enough she way, fights start and she batters me silly (i'd turned God mode off after Root Boss) and off i'm sent to Ghost world which is basically Zelda's Dark world in action, to rebuild my stats for the Ghost i am.. that's when i got alot of HP down enemies and god mode went back on. Finished getting the stats restored (probably didn't need to with god mode on but did get me 2 very, very important manual pages for end game content) and took on the Lady boss again beating the game for a bad end...

end game menu gives the chance to go back to 'walk the golden path' which i assume is another ending, and this is where it turns all Fez.

->Open Spoiler<-

The manual page i got in the ghost world using the warp ability talks about the Golden Cross, the doors and scribbled on D-pad in pen... so you now open the previously locked doors (which you could have done from the start) using a D-pad input code, one of the 3 door highlighted in the manual gives another important manual page talking about the 'golden spell' and more scribbles, this turned out to be a breadcrumb guide to the location of 48 invisible chests which require a keen eye on the environment to figure out what the input directions are.

[Atticus]

'walk the golden path'

Is that from Roger's Profanisaurus?

[Lebowski]

started this last night and i really enjoed the first few hours but this feels like a game where the difficulty really needed tuning in places, i breezed through the first few areas not even realising that you had replenish-able health flasks, It was only when i got to the west garden area that things went a bit off, it feels like certain enemy's require you to use the single use explosive items and their very sparse. The big speedy guards with the shields when hit with a fire cracker drop their shield and this feels like the way your supposed to beat them, likewise the auto turrets massively ramp dificulty up but a well placed fire cracker one shots them, some you can circle round but then others are deliberately put in positions where you cant, and a frontal assault with a sword is suicide.

Then their is the big mouth croc things two are fine but in threes they feel erratic and their AI feels off, quite a few times i got hit by the third when a perfectly timed dodge got me behind two of them, Souls games always teach you to single out enemy's and pick them off one by one but this game goes against that in places as these crocs all auto agro on you and can easily swarm you and trap you in corners making the combat feel more like luck than skill.

Coming from games like Deaths door which had this souls like challenge and some really snappy satisfying combat really shows that you shouldn't be fighting the controls in a game like this, the lack of animation cancels and the slowness to do things like bring up your shield make the combat in this more about strategy than reaction times and for me that's at odds with how fast some of the enemy's are.

I love the Exploration and the instruction book style unfolding of the world but with it being just one big maze of a world with a very basic story "save the princess" no villages no safe havens just a massive sprawling maze with different regions, makes things feel very one note. im pretty close to just putting god mode on and enjoy the exploration and puzzle side of it which is a shame as removing all challenge feels like your removing a lot of the game-play, it feels like a difficulty slider should of been added first. or something like Hades that makes things easier the more you die.

[Tobal]

turn god mode on, the later normal enemies are just so horribly annoying, let alone the 2 bosses which guard the endgame. The puzzles and adventuring remain challenging.

[Lebowski]

turn god mode on, the later normal enemies are just so horribly annoying, let alone the 2 bosses which guard the endgame. The puzzles and adventuring remain challenging.

i think i will as I'm enjoying the puzzling, just a real shame the combat lets it down, I'm not adverse to hard games ive platinumed demon souls and Elden ring in the last year. I get the feeling With it being a one person development they kind of let the difficulty get away form them. Death isn't as important in this either as loosing your souls in a souls game, it feels like they couldn't quite work out how to make death impactful.

If you did enjoy this id highly recommend death door though, it's hard but not unfairly so and the combat is so speedy and fluid compared to tunic, it has some fantastic bosses and a really interesting world with a great story too, quite a bit of stuff to do once you've finished the game too which is always nice.

[Tobal]

in death you lose money, and you need alot of money to upgrade higher levels of att/def/magic (along with finding the right material) to be able to take on the game normally. Combat wasn't great to start with but it just isn't fun when you get to enemies with normal attacks which lower your Max HP or bosses that at best only allow a few attacks in at time (once you run out of ice magic, can always grind for hours to buy potions) leading to long draw out fights trying to dodge boss attacks and poke him back for 10 to 20 minutes. Aside from that it is a good game , which i still haven't completed the endgame, some of them puzzles without looking up guides are mind benders.

[fuse]

Been playing some of this and I'm enjoying it a lot. Last major thing I did was ringing the second bell though, so by the sounds of it I've still got some pretty significant difficulty spikes to come...

I love how it looks and I *really* love the chilled out OST, both of which feel at total odds with how vicious it can actually play a lot of the time. Even still, it's making me think much more of how I remember LttP than the majority of actual Zelda games do, and that's something to be celebrated for sure. The instruction manual idea is executed so, so brilliantly.

[Tobal]

It gets hard to point of not being fun, i think someone must have poked the dev's into giving you in game upfront option for infinite stamina and God Mode.

Never did finish the Golden Path for the true ending, managed nearly half of the hidden puzzles (there are alot) without a guide and didn't feel like following a guide to complete it, maybe i should now have cyberpunk and god of war finished.

[Lebowski]

One thing not made obvious is that you can augment your ability's at statues I thought just having so many of each item you find upped your defense and attack stats but nope you need to use them at the statues to make yourself stronger its pretty easy to miss as you need to rest at a shrine, then go into your inventory and sellect the items you want to use and pay a sum of gold.