Tunic review: Not-so-fantastic Mr. Fox

digitaltrends.com:

Deception is the name of the game in Tunic.

If like me, you’ve kept tabs on this indie game over the past few years, then you’ve likely been awed by its gorgeous aesthetic and adorable main character. On its surface, Tunic looks like an ode to classic Zelda titles, though it hides much more under the surface. Tunic is rich in mysteries that it desperately wants players to solve, though when it comes to helping players along that path, it does almost nothing.

Instead of coming out as something that pays homage to old Legend of Zelda games, Tunic gets too wrapped up in its own mysteries, quickly becoming a backtrack-laden slog that constantly left me confused. Any time I encountered a new area, I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place, and whenever I left one, it felt as though I was missing something. Tunic didn’t leave me feeling like a confident adventurer, but a kid lost in a forest.

Tunic starts the way so many adventure games do: With its main character, an adorable Fox wearing a tunic, waking up on a beach. The game offers you very little guidance from there in terms of where to go or what to do. The basics will be intuitive to anyone who’s ever played a Zelda game (find a sword and start slashing enemies and grass), but Tunic itself takes a very hands-off approach to the player experience.

Instead, it’s up to players to learn, well, everything — and not in the same way that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players learn how to Bunny Hop. Every part of Tunic is meant to be discovered by players, primarily through the manual pages found throughout the overworld. These shining white squares are found everywhere in Tunic and explain the game piecemeal, from revealing its secret areas to teaching basic controls. Each