Game Only [No Box, Manual (not) Included]
It's easy to look at Tunic and think "The Legend of Zelda," but what surprised me the most about Tunic was how, once I was a few hours in, the game I was most readily reminded of was actually 2012's FEZ (a game which, in my opinion, is nothing short of a masterpiece).
Like FEZ, Tunic is not a game that is easy to talk about. Tunic is easier to talk about because the Zelda comparisons are quite clear, but talking about the things that make Tunic really special is difficult. That's not because I can't find the right words, or the perfect explanation lies just out of reach, it's because the things that make Tunic special, much like FEZ, are things that have been designed to be discovered by yourself. Talking about or even alluding to them could be seen as giving them away, and giving them away would deny a player the capacity to discover them for themselves. And that's part of the point with a game like this.
Like FEZ, which is a really good platformer beyond all the other stuff, Tunic is also pretty good action-adventure game. The boss fights are challenging (and a couple of them are awe-inspiring); there's no "dungeons" the way we think of them in Zelda games, but there are some really tense and interesting locations; there's a decent selection of items to unlock, though I think my biggest criticism of the game is that some of the items didn't have a clear purpose. I finished the game without ever even using a couple of them, which is a far cry from the Zelda series staple of introducing you to an item in a dungeon that is tailor made to be completed with that item.
There are other elements that reminded me of FEZ beyond just those initial unspeakable things though. FEZ has a very specific tone (or mood, if you will) that is helped in no small part thank to Disasterpeace's phenomenal score, and Tunic has a tone and mood that is very similar which is also helped by it's equally wonderful score. Tunic also pulls in some influence from the Souls series too: it has a more traditional health bar instead of the "hearts" from Zelda, but replaces hearts with swigs of your potion, which work just like the flasks in Dark Souls, replenishing a small chunk of your health if you can squeeze in the swig between attacks from enemies.
If you enjoy a good mystery to solve, or you're a fan of the older style of Zelda games and what something in that vein, Tunic is a must play. Heck, it may even just be a "must play," generally. It really does feel that special.
