Everyone has heard of Tunic by now. This game is so cute with its simple gameplay that turns out to be rich and surprising. If most players sing his praises, I remain much more mixed on my experience.
It all started a few months ago when the first images were released along with the invitations to test along with a brief summary. I immediately melt for this game with colorful graphics with its adorable fox as a hero. I immediately wanted to try it, just to get out of my usual (MMO)RPGs and play something else.
Our cute fox wakes up on an island with no weapons. We will quickly find a stick in a chest that will have to be equipped. And there, first surprise. The game interface is in an unknown language. I am thinking first of all of a translation omission (the game had not yet been released at the time) but I realize that it is an element of the game: it has its own language which is partially translated.
If, for some elements, it is not annoying and it even has its charm, for others it is downright frustrating like the signposts or various objects that we find:
At that time, I would have preferred the concept to be pushed to the limit: one could find, for example, a translation book and then one's own freedom to translate each symbol with a good old pencil and paper. There, I just have the impression that we tried to add something complicated to be like "there is lore and you have to rack your brains", but that in fact the translation of a game is time and money. So plan B: we invent a language and we translate the minimum. The player must still know how to control his character, huh!
You can see above the pages that you pick up in the game. You don't arrive with the tutorial and instructions in your pocket, you have to find them. If some pages are easy to acquire, others will be very complicated and this is what makes the salt of this adventure: explore this world to discover all its secrets. One of the pages also briefly explains to you what your objectives are, but that's all: it's up to you to find out where it is and what awaits you there.
And it's not this concept that bothers me, searching every corner of a game is not a concern. But its gameplay is not for me: you have to dodge a lot, attack at the right time. We have little life and being wrong is expensive. When you die, you have to go find your corpse to recover the money. And I died more than once..
So I followed the instructions and went to the Eastern Forest. I recovered a sword which already makes the fight more pleasant. And I got to the first boss: the captain of the guard who gave me enough beatings that I didn't touch the game again for almost a month. And that, when you're supposed to test it, it's particularly annoying... I said jokingly when I started playing the game “I have the impression that Zelda and Dark Souls have merged to give Tunic. In the end, this joke is found in many tests.
And then last weekend I see that Tunic was still entitled to an update. I say to myself: come on, might as well run it again before finishing my mini test, with 10 lines it was off to a bad start! I return to the captain of the guard that I manage this time to defeat after a few tries. This win gives me heartache, I also feel like the game has tweaked the gameplay a bit, making the lack of precision a bit less punishing. However, the game's patch notes remain very vague to avoid any spoilers, so it's hard to know if my impression is justified or not.
So I'm heading west since the rest of the adventure seems to take place on this side according to the manual. Again, I need several deaths to understand the combat mechanisms and face a few surprises. (Hello the turret that breaks your teeth). Well, clearly Tunic is not for me!
But it's no wonder that a large number of players who have tried Tunic have fallen in love with it. If I have not succumbed to it, that does not prevent me from recognizing the quality of the title. I also have a hard time finally letting it down, because on the one hand it has that je ne sais quoi that makes a game stand out. On the other hand, I already have many games to play...
Finally, here are a few things in bulk:
- the save points restore your life and your healing potions but also make all the enemies reappear.
- I really didn't pay attention to the music. If the sound effects are well done, the music seems completely transparent to me.
- the gameplay will encourage you to use a controller, the keyboard is a little more daunting.
There you go... Tunic has clearly made a place for itself in the hearts of many players. He almost got mine too, but now I don't appreciate dying so much in a game. However, I totally understand that he knew how to conquer his audience. Impossible to ignore its qualities despite its difficulty!
