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rynlingTunic was finally released for Nintendo Switch yesterday.
I hate to say this, but I'm not a fan of the game so far. I really dislike that style of shiny, generic, textureless graphics, and the controls don't have any heft to them. As far as I can tell, there's no real sound design, and the music isn't so much "ambient" as it is "forgettable."
To make matters worse, the combat is extremely difficult. Like, you can tell the developers were inspired by Dark Souls, but the context of Dark Souls that makes that sort of difficulty interesting is missing in Tunic. Specifically, Dark Souls makes enemies difficult so that you're forced to study your environment in order to figure out how to mitigate the difficulty. Meanwhile, Tunic is just hack-and-slash with unsatisfying controls.
And then on top of that, it's impossible to see anything. The overhead camera is zoomed way too far out, and the screen is filled with small but ultimately meaningless details. Because the graphics are so undifferentiated - everything is equally polished and generic and shiny - it's hard to intuitively understand what you're looking at.
You can turn on a "take no damage" god mode, but it's super boring. And also, why do I need to turn on the god mode at the very beginning of the game? Couldn't they have settled on something between "super frustrating" and "no gameplay at all"? Couldn't there have been some sort of difficulty curve?
The conceit of the game is that you're supposed to collect pages of an NES style instruction manual, which has a few English words but is mostly written in some sort of fantasy runic text. A lot of the in-game dialog boxes are written in this runic text as well. And this is clever, sure, but also... Like, Japanese is a real language? It's one of the tenth most widely spoken languages in the world, and you can learn it if you want. A lot of early online gaming communities were in fact focused on translating game text and manuals, and the suggestion that import games were written in some special indecipherable fantasy language is like... I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "problematic," but come on.
I usually love games like this, so I'm probably more annoyed and disappointed than I should be, and I'm probably being unfair in my initial impressions. In any case, I'll keep playing and see where Tunic takes me.
I hate to say this, but I'm not a fan of the game so far. I really dislike that style of shiny, generic, textureless graphics, and the controls don't have any heft to them. As far as I can tell, there's no real sound design, and the music isn't so much "ambient" as it is "forgettable."
To make matters worse, the combat is extremely difficult. Like, you can tell the developers were inspired by Dark Souls, but the context of Dark Souls that makes that sort of difficulty interesting is missing in Tunic. Specifically, Dark Souls makes enemies difficult so that you're forced to study your environment in order to figure out how to mitigate the difficulty. Meanwhile, Tunic is just hack-and-slash with unsatisfying controls.
And then on top of that, it's impossible to see anything. The overhead camera is zoomed way too far out, and the screen is filled with small but ultimately meaningless details. Because the graphics are so undifferentiated - everything is equally polished and generic and shiny - it's hard to intuitively understand what you're looking at.
You can turn on a "take no damage" god mode, but it's super boring. And also, why do I need to turn on the god mode at the very beginning of the game? Couldn't they have settled on something between "super frustrating" and "no gameplay at all"? Couldn't there have been some sort of difficulty curve?
The conceit of the game is that you're supposed to collect pages of an NES style instruction manual, which has a few English words but is mostly written in some sort of fantasy runic text. A lot of the in-game dialog boxes are written in this runic text as well. And this is clever, sure, but also... Like, Japanese is a real language? It's one of the tenth most widely spoken languages in the world, and you can learn it if you want. A lot of early online gaming communities were in fact focused on translating game text and manuals, and the suggestion that import games were written in some special indecipherable fantasy language is like... I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "problematic," but come on.
I usually love games like this, so I'm probably more annoyed and disappointed than I should be, and I'm probably being unfair in my initial impressions. In any case, I'll keep playing and see where Tunic takes me.
