Tunic

I've had a hard time getting into indie games that are trying to be Zelda or Metroid, as even when they're well-made and pretty they tend to be missing a certain something (level design I suspect, they all come off like first draft levels). I can at least say that Tunic did not fall into the pit of me sighing and stopping after a few hours- I played it to the end. It evokes Zelda with the titular outfit of its protagonist, and I suppose it's not a completely inaccurate comparison. Just, like, replace Zelda's combat with something a bit slower (it's trying to be Souls given the in-game references to Dark Souls, but in practice you mostly just mash after seeing an opening- the enemy design is about as mundane as an Ubisoft game) and replace Zelda's eclectic variety of puzzles with one primary puzzle revolving around hiding things behind perspective (you know how old RPGs had you rubbing against walls to find secret doors? It's like that, but actually cool because there are visual cues). 

It also uses the experience of playing a video game in a language you can't read as an intentional mechanic. You see, there's an in-game manual that unlocks as you play. But it's made up of a mix of about 10% English and 90% fictional language. Most the the text in the game itself is also in this language that you can't read. As someone who has dabbled in Japanese-exclusive games it's, uh, pretty authentic (as they also feature confounding random instances of English). This aspect was the main thing that sold me on the game. And while it takes way longer to utilize it than I wanted, it does end up leveraging it to a satisfying degree.

(Minor spoilers for the rest of the review. Though personally I would have been happier with the game if someone told me about it ahead of time so. There's that.)

Like every other indie game on the planet, it does end up taking a bit of a genre shift to something akin to an adventure game. This part is in a lot of ways the best part of the game, but also kind of the worst. Without saying too much, the primary mechanic involved makes it hard to tell whether you executed the solution wrong or straight up had entirely the wrong solution. The execution is also lengthy enough that retrying it is quite annoying. I ended up basically referring to guides to see whether my answer was wrong or my input was wrong, and most of the time it was the input. It smoothed over the experience a lot, but also resulted in me spoiling things for myself at times. I... would probably still recommend doing so, as it's maddening otherwise. 

I somewhat question the shift itself too, since separating it from the rest of the game ends up leaving you with just one flavor of game at a time rather than how genuine Zelda mixes genres to create a balance. It also left me with a very strong longing for the game to do more with the manual gimmick for most of the game, only for it to suddenly become a lot more useful than just "where to go next" at the last moment. To  be fair, the split also allows the game to be way more convenient about traversal once it hits full-on adventure game time so I can't totally fault the structure.

So should you play Tunic? I dunno. I guess if you want an indie action adventure that's just pretty good. It has a some stand out moments, but also has quite a few average elements. Fact of the matter is that we've seen these ideas explored several times by now: Ni No Kuni 1 and Retro Game Challenge among others have explored the game manual renaissance, Fez explored deep secrets inside games, and genre shifting is practically its own genre at this point. Tunic takes some of these further than its peers, and one of the puzzles in it is probably one of the best times I've ever had taking notes in a game. But the good bits have flaws, and it's a tad average on the whole. So I'm left unsure of it, but I guess I'm glad I played it.