Tunic Reviews
Delightfully difficult combat and meaningful exploration make Tunic a retro-inspired modern marvel.
Tunic turns its many influences into something that feels both familiar and gloriously new.
Dicey's Zelda-inspired indie adventure Tunic gives players a magical world to explore, if they can handle the game's difficulty.
Tunic is an unapologetically challenging action-adventure game that is charming, multi-layered, and immensely rewarding to solve.
In the end, I can’t help but feel increasingly enamoured by the sights and encounters. And by the time you get to the dungeons and underground fortresses, you’ll already lulled into a meditative state, as you give in to your impulses to marinate in Tunic’s sheer abundance: its atmospheric soundtrack, its crisp combat, and its resonant adventures. You become a child once more, eyes glued to the screen, fingers cemented on the buttons of your controllers, piles of notes strewn across the table, as you mindlessly hack at everything in sight: ghostly knights, creaking skeletons, and oversized bosses. How many more hours do I want to keep playing? As long as the night would last, and till the early hours of dawn.
Tunic brilliantly captures the feeling of that special childhood title that made you fall in love with video games.
Tunic harkens back to the 16-bit era with a challenging adventure full of discovery and wonder.
It felt nostalgic, like playing a video game sitting next to a friend, taking turns flipping the manual pages back and forth. It felt like making notes in those margins, circling hints and clues to come back to later. Sometimes, it was utterly surprising. A person found something so bizarre, unlike anything I'd seen yet in this world - and it flipped the game upside down. There's the community aspect to the language, too: Little bits open up as others present theories and translation methods, each pulling a different piece of information into the puzzle. When someone makes even the tiniest breakthrough, it feels unreal.
Don't wait for Tunic to land on our year-end list. Buy.
It’s the perfect palate cleanser, taking anywhere between six and 20 hours, and absolutely essential if you’ve got a fondness for adventure games with a potion in their pocket, a cape around their neck, and a twinkle in their eye.
An isometric homage to Zelda that is loyal from top to bottom.
You'd be wrong to assume the cute fox-like protagonist and colourful world implies Tunic is a relaxing little adventure for all ages – it's anything but. Tunic requires a lot of intuitive thinking and patience to navigate its beautiful world with its brilliant in-game instruction manual. Coupled with an unforgiving combat system that punishes impatience and rewards measured study of opponents, Tunic is a game designed for those versed in old-school adventuring and experienced in difficult, sometimes frustrating swordplay. Given all this and its evident Hylian inspirations, and even with some unfortunate performance hitches and obvious downgrades from the versions on other platforms, Tunic feels right at home on a Nintendo console and we recommend it as a creative and concise adventure that both draws and expands upon some prestigious inspirations.
I enjoyed Tunic, and I was pleased during most of my time with the game. It’s challenging, but it’s also tranquil. It’s a little slice of puzzle-y goodness in the middle of multiple massive open-world releases, and for that I’m grateful it exists. I just wish sometimes Tunic would meet me halfway and not leave me frustrated either with the controls or with the exploration.
Tunic is gorgeous, managing to build a world full of mystery and opportunities for exploration, with a wonderful sense of exploration.
And yet, despite its obvious muses, Tunic manages to rise above mere flattery, by paying deeper homage to the medium itself.
Tunic had a lot to live up to after years of built up expectation, and it doesn't just meet them, it shatters them and stands out as one of the most joyous gaming experiences I've had in years. It takes a little while to feel at home in Tunic's gorgeously rendered world, but once it clicks and the secrets of the masterfully constructed in-game manual start to reveal themselves, the resulting game is up there with the likes of Zelda in terms of exploration and discoveries.
Tunic manages to take something (obviously on a smaller scale) from Zelda, Dark Souls and Death's Door, resulting in a challenging and fascinating action-adventure even if it lacks any truly original ideas.
Review in Italian | Read full review
It speaks the language of games gone by while injecting both modernity and its own personal twist.
Old school adventure sensibilities and an expertly-designed puzzle box world combine in this charming and engaging indie gem.