Tunic: First impressions

So thankfully I found this monthly game before it disappeared from the monthly offerings. I feel as though the monthly games section is not the greatest in the PS-Plus catalogue ever since I upgraded to extra. Call me a moron if you want to but I feel as though they are intentionally making it hard to find. Well anyway, I found it and I am really glad that I did because this game is fantastic.

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Anyone who was a fan of Zelda style games is likely going to be cool with this game as well although I will say that it is far more difficult than old-school Zelda games. You cannot simply mad button mash your way through battles in this one, you need to have a real strategy with opponents or you will get wiped really fast. Although I am not necessarily a fan of games where dodging and timing of strikes is super important you better get used to that sort of thing in this game really fast or you are not going to get very far.

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I absolutely love the top-down style adventure games and this one took me back to a simpler time. You start the game out knowing absolutely nothing and from what I have read, this has turned a lot of people away from the game because they don't realize that you actually aren't supposed to understand anything about the game and are SUPPOSED to be confused even by your own inventory menu.

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Inside of your own menu as well as many things in the world that you can click on, they will be in a made up language. I have heard about a lot of people that get turned away by this, some thinking that they downloaded the wrong version of the game but this is actually a very critical part of the game. Rather than having tutorials and gradually opening up parts of the menu for you, you have access to a lot of the entire game's content right from the start, but you just can't read it.

You need to accept this because a major part of the game is finding pieces of the instruction manual or map throughout the world and gradually, these things in the menu as well as the world around you, will be revealed to you as you progress. At first, the game seems exceptionally difficult but just like in many other games, you just need to accept the fact that you are going to be dying.... a LOT.

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I recall getting to what I believe to be the first "boss" of the game and absolutely getting wiped by him. I mean it wasn't even close. I barely got a few hits in. I am a bit ashamed to admit that I went online to find out what the hell is going on here only to discover that I really shouldn't have been going towards him yet. I was armed with only a stick and one healing potion and it turns out that I needed to do more exploring and obtain the sword as well as some bombs before going to him. Once I had those things the fight was far more manageable and I won easily. So let that be a lesson to all of ya out there. If you get your ass handed to you by an enemy, there is a better than average chance that you need to go back to the previous area and search around a bit more before you keep trying to proceed. Once I went and picked up more gear progression was really quite simple. I also encountered this later when I encountered a gatling turret of sorts that would pick you off really fast no matter how much you try to evade. It turns out that you are supposed to have the shield before you proceed but the game doesn't just come out and tell you this.

At first I didn't like the cryptic nature of this process but I now really enjoy it and find it refreshing and inventive.

It's been a while since I was this impressed by an indie game and upon digging a bit further I was very impressed to find out that the entire game was made by ONE PERSON over the course of 7 years. I sincerely hope that Andrew Shouldice is getting a lot of recognition as well as a mountain of money because this is seriously impressive.

If you are a fan of Zelda style adventure games than this is definitely for you. I don't know how far I am as far as overall progression is concerned but thus far, I am really enjoying this game to the point where the rest of my life seems like an annoyance that is getting in the way of me playing Tunic!

According to the wiki this game is available on basically all consoles, PC, and even Mac.

Seriously! Check it out!