Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Tunic Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

Go to http://meundies.com/kindafunny to get 15% off your first order plus free shipping. Get 25% off and zero delivery fees on their first order of $15 or more, when you download the DoorDash app and enter code KINDAFUNNY. Andy, Janet, Bless, and Greg come together to talk Tunic! Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Intro Music By: Zachary Zizzo Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:09:24 - Housekeeping 00:12:37 - Tunic Review Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Janet Garcia: https://twitter.com/Gameonysus Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast Review of Tune. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the Hispanic heartthrob, Texas Treat, Latino Heat, clicking heads, ripping him to shreds. The globe trotten, headshotten, nitro rifle from Twitch.tv. Andy Cortez.

Rest and peace, Scott Hall. Damn, you want to open on that much of a downer. No, I mean, I want to celebrate his life. All right, you know, Greg, is that okay? Bad times don't last, but bad guys do. Bad guys do, baby. Great line, great line. Rest of Peace, Razor Ramon, everybody,

WW2K22, he's in it. You can play. I legit read that news right after doing a match against him. And so I felt like real bad because I won. And I read that and I was like, God damn it. Well, rest and peace, Razor Ramon. Shoulda live him win. I know.

I should have went back, booted up the game, and then, you know, lost. Very sad stuff. The man who hates Scott Hall is Forbes 30 under 30, a.k.a. The future class of video games, aka the OK Beast. Blessing Adioe Jr.

Happy review season. Happy review season. Can you believe it's still going? Oh, yeah. That's my thing is people thought that review season was done after Eldon Ring. And I looked them in the face and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, it keeps going. We got another month. I keep saying that we have more game releases in March than we have in February. Nobody's listening to me. But there are way more game releases happening right now than we had last month.

Is it math, though? What was that, Janet? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What was that roller skating game playing marathon training? Janet Garcia. Hi, hello.

Excited to be here. Is that actually true? that there are more game released in March than February. I mean, according to Blessing Super Fun Game Release Calendar, yeah, there's tons of releases. I think I listed most of them before the podcast when we were talking about what we were playing, right? Like, there's Stranger Paradise, Final Fantasy Origin, there's Shredders, people are going to be shredding the NARA pretty soon. There's Tunic, which we're going to talk about. What is the hype level behind Shredders real quick?

Because I feel like Snowbike Mike talks about it a much, and it's one of those things that I fall very much in the Tim Getty's camp, that when I hear Shredders, I think, oh, the Shredder is a shredder revenge. to the team and t-mintee game me and mike are very excited about it it seems like it's going to be a good um thirst quencher for those that have been thirsting for a new SSX game yeah i'm i'm ready to drink it because like i when you look at at gameplay for it it looks like it's doing all the right things it looks like like a like a fun game and it seems like they're scoping it out pretty well where they know they know who they are right they know what they're able to to do right and they know the things that they need to nail and mike is my guy that i trust for like snowboarding culture. Because he's out there actually shredding the gnar in real life.

And for all the things that he's saying about it, right? Like, it sounds like they're making all the right decisions, consulting with the right people, getting the right people involved. And like, I forget the name of the dude, but there was one dude that they brought on to like help with the camera work who's like known to be one of the camera guys for a lot of big snowboarding videos. The flying tomato. Definitely, definitely not Sean White. No, it's a different dude who's like, you know, like, you know, like, you. What do you mean? Thank you. I'm a nickname.

I never heard him be called the flying tomato. I'm not saying you guys need to do more of your Olympics research for snowboarders, but you guys need to do more of Olympic research for snowboarders. Thank you. I apologize. I apologize. I also apologize. For the record, you never need to apologize to me.

Your CEO, Jr., you're always forgiven. Blessing, I accept your apology. I wanted to say that I think Mike is just like, Mike is thinking Shred was just going to be his savior after he was disappointed by Riders Republic. And a lot of people who played Riders Republic weren't necessarily disappointed. I don't feel like. I think Rides Republic was great. I feel like they got their fun out of it, and that was it, and a lot of people moved on.

But Mike was very just kind of down on that game, the mechanics of how, you know, riding the pine. No, that's sitting on the bench. That's sitting on the bench, yeah. Shredding the gnar, yeah. Shredding the gnar, yeah, right in the matchsticks. Yeah, exactly. He was really, really down on it. And I don't really think that Shredders is going to be the savior that he wants it to be.

I'm going to call it right now. He's going to be bummed about that, too. And it's really not about the game. I think it's just more about Snowback. Mike. You think he just wants something to be that return to SSX or NBA Street and like the games he loved back in the day? I think so. I make sense. Nothing can quench that thirst, you know. I just need something that I'm going to play for the day or play for the week and have fun with it. And so like, that's what I'm looking forward to out of shredders. And I think that speaks like a lot of games

that are coming out now. You guys get, I mean, you guys are going to talk about tunic and like expectations for that. And, you know, is this a game that everybody's going to play? Or is this game that the tunic fans are going to play, right? Like, I feel like they were getting a lot of those this month. Because again, like Final Fantasy Origin, that's going to be probably me, Andy, and maybe Tim Gettys. I don't know if anybody else is going to play in Final Fantasy Ork. You don't think so.

I talked to him about it on KHD on Monday, and it seemed like he was getting a little bit more sold on it based on the reviews. If everybody here right now watching this later and listening to it later, if we're all going to be cool, and you chat can be cool on this and you don't immediately run to Tim Getties, he'll be like, Griggs and he won't play it. Now, if you go challenge him like that, he'll play. It'll make a big stink like Syracump. I did it.

Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? He would never touch Cyrophunk if people didn't say he was not going to be. Frankly, I'm not even sure if he says he did. I haven't actually checked the work though. You know what I mean? I'm taking a good base value on that and it does seem like. Did he love Pan Am?

Did he know Pan Am? I don't think he knew Pan Am. Why don't you think he's going to play Final Fantasy Origin? I just think that I don't think it's, I don't think it's enough of a Final Fantasy game for him to actually feel like he has to play it. Interesting. Am I wrong about that? But it is a platinum game,

those a bit. A bit. Platinum isn't like Gameplay style or like it's developed by Team Ninja. Oh, Team Ninja, sorry. My bad. You know what? He's not going to play. Yeah, you're right. He's not going to play. Andy, you jumped out of the plane on that one. I was like, I have no idea. I just grabbed your hand. I'm like, I guess this is in a Greg Miller game. So I haven't paid attention to this one way. It's funny you say that because I had that thought. It's the Neo-Deaf. My bad. It's the Neo-Dev. But like I was having that thought as I was playing the demo this weekend, right? Because I like the demo. I don't know how much of the demo is the actual game because this thing just keeps on going. But I am at least three levels into this thing.

And the more I play it, the more I'm like, oh, this is not as soulsy as I thought it was going to be. It plays like an actual action game, which I think, I think might appeal to Tim Getty's. The Final Fantasy portions of it are like, it's like dumb Final Fantasy, right? It's not Final Fantasy 7, like, where it is like, it's like, it's not like Five where you're invested. It is more like, now the story is dumb, but like it has the gimmicks of Final Fantasy. Yeah, it has like the aesthetic and like styles of Final Fantasy.

see. And then it has gameplay that like, you know, is fun enough that I think I could see it, Tim Getty's getting into it, is what I'm saying. Do you think we weren't given early codes because I shit on it so much on social media? Did you really? I mean, I've been making fun of the game a lot. Like, I've been playing all the demos and I'm like, this is going to be the best worst Final Fantasy ever, you know, I've been point, I've been doing a lot of that with all the different cutscenes. I think almost no one got any, um, any of the codes. Like, just from, I didn't see a lot of coverage of this game. Because we all made fun of it. I don't think so because even like like large like large outlets have like not like a lot of people were like

like I didn't get a code for this so I'm just like slowly getting to it I don't know why I don't really like to play the code conspiracy of like they know it's bad so it's late or they know it's good so it's late still like it's always a little late so I don't know never the sure let me off the pine for a second here's what I think happen is that I think that they know this is a niche game this isn't a game that's going to appeal to everybody oh not the niche conversation not we can't do this again Greg it's too no too soon I think this is actual niche game though yeah It's the thing where they're not going to just blast these codes out to everyone. They'll give the codes away when you ask for the code.

Because that's what happened here, right? Where it's like none of us thought to ask for a code so we didn't get any code. So I just emailed square before the show. I already got a code from them. Like it's like, I think they have them. They're ready to go. But like why give, I also I think it's I personally really dislike getting blind shot of code. Because then I feel obligated to be like, oh, hey, I don't even, I'm not going to play this game.

I don't want it on this platform or whatever. Like I'd rather it be, hey, we have codes. Do you want them? And that's usually how it goes for the bigger games that have like, hey, we have mass appeal and we think this is going to be big so we want to get it out to as many people as possible. I think this is the kind of game that getting as many reviews out as possible could probably only hurt it. Because I mean, you wouldn't really want the people who are already looking at this going like, hey, I do want to kill chaos. This sounds like great at you.

Yeah. And I think like when you're talking about what is the sky for this game, right? Like when you talk about sky is the limit and like what is the ceiling, I should say, for this game in terms of reviews. The ceiling is like found with fantasy seven remake, which is like many people's, you know, favorite game of all time, depending on a U.S. Whereas like for for this game that is like kind of niche within within a niche you're talking about a Neo like Final Fantasy game I feel like you're drilling down into a game that is gonna get its gameplay and story compared to other games and is not gonna live up to those because it is meant to be a side thing It's not meant to be like this bigger greater experience that changes your life It's supposed to be a game that like appeals to a very specific audience and that audience is probably gonna take to it and lack it enough or dislike it enough

Like the reviews have been the seemingly like fine for it you know not super glowing, not super negative. And that's why Tim Gettys ain't going to roll out of bed to play that. Never been to some negative reviews of it. I've seen really low scores from that day. Well, that was the thing when Nibel put out his thing, right? If you seem like it was like mid-eighths all the way down. Like it was like, what I'm thinking of was the meta-critic.

Because the meta-critic is like 70-something, I want to say. Sure. If you didn't know, ladies gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every week, we come together to nerd out about all things, video games. And usually it's a review. Of course, you can get this. show and support this show over on patreon.com.com slash kind of funny games. On patreon.com slash kind of funny games. You can write into the show. You can get the show ad

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I mean, for every games cast it's on there, you can go in there. You can search a little thing. Gamescast you'd find all the games cast we've ever put up and you could go one by one. You have access to all the post shows and all the incredible game shows that Blessing is put together. Blessing, do I get a tip of the show? You do you get a tip of the hat? Thank you. You're starting off the free tip of the hat.

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this is our seventh review episode in a row. So a round of applause for a new record here on the Kind of Funny Gamescasts, but I have bad news. The record ends next week because it's going to be two more reviews. That's right. You're getting two games cast next week. I cannot confirm or deny the games, nor can I confirm or deny the dates.

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You're strapping in, it's a PSI-L-U episode like so there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. Ladies and gentlemen, the unbelievable has happened. Tunic is releasing on the Xbox and PC. Of course, this is a game we have been covering since 2015. Since 2015 at Pax's, we have been talking about Tunec.

Tunic is finally releasing now, of course, developed by Andrew Sholdice, and of course published by Finji. It is out. We have all, oh not, not, Blessing hasn't played any of it, right, Blessing? I'm not touched it, no. You're like the watcher. You're the watcher here to, yeah, I'm here to ask questions. Because, like, Tunic is a game that I've been, you mentioned Paxes. I've seen this game at pretty much every single Paxe that I've been at.

I've not played it, but I've always, I always have friends at every Pax. That's like, you know, man, I just played Tune. that game seems like it slaps. And I'm like, oh, man, I keep hearing about this game. I should check it out. But, like, there's a tweet that Andy put on, uh, tweeted out like years ago, I think, maybe like a year ago. And it was in response to you, Greg, where you said some, some bullshit on the internet.

And Andy responded, I don't agree or disagree. I'm just sick of this guy for real. And like, that was, that was going through my mind right before this when I was, when I was thinking about Tunic. Because like, I don't know if I even want to play this game anymore. I've seen this, it's like the death loop effect where I've seen and heard about this game so much that like, I don't even have the desire anymore. more to play.

Wow. So I'm excited for this review to hear you guys tell me like, no, you should play this game or no, it's fine. You can probably move on. Andy Cortez.

Hey, Greg. You'll be in the official kind of funny review for this. Should people play Tunic? Yes, people should play Tunic. Janet Garcia, should people play Tunic? Yes.

You're doing a pen to pixels review, right? Yes. You'll get that on the new site. Looks great on your phone and all that jazz. Janet, what is Tunic? There's plenty of people who are tuning in right now don't know what Tunic is. Tunic is an isometric, so like sort of top-down style Zelda-like game.

So think of like Link's Awakening, old-school Zelda. You're exploring, you're adventuring, and you play as an adorable fox. That's kind of the, I think, general elevator pitch. There are more things to be said about what the gameplay entails, how everything functions, how the world is made. But I think that's pretty much the back-of-the-box summary of the game. And then, Janet, on the kind of funny scale, what would you give this for a score? Oh, whoa, why am I going first? Because I was already talking to you.

Then I'm going to pop up our band. I'd give it a four. I'd give it a four for great. Admittedly, I did have to think about it a lot because I was like between three and four and just going back and forth. But after thinking about it more, yeah, I think it is a great game. I don't think it's without its flaws for sure. But overall, I think the shining star of this game is the exploration.

I think the act of, you know, I don't want to get too into it without hearing Andy's quick thoughts. Yeah. Details, but that's the TLDR. Like, the exploration of this game is fantastic on top of it having a really good style. my number one thing that I don't like about it is the combat, which I'm so excited to talk to Andy about because Andy's like the combat czar.

So I really want to get into the details of whether or not it works, if it doesn't and all that. But I really enjoyed my time with it overall. Andreas Cortez, what is the official kind of funny score for Tunic? I gave, this was a tough one for me as well. Okay. But I am markedly more positive. This was really tough to go between four and five for me,

but ultimately I gave it a five out of five amazing. Wow, not a perfect game. Not a perfect game, but I think what it does well is, like, it just so far outshines the negatives for me. Level design is just goddamn masterful in this game. All of the kind of cute things that I thought were going to be gimmicky, like the instruction manual, ultimately become kind of the backbone of the game. There it is. Wow, a physical one. Look how cute that is.

I know, right? It's very cute. Yeah, so it's a big feature of the game and during all the demos, like during Steam Next Fest and during the Xbox sort of demos that they released, I was like, this is cute, but how's it going to serve gameplay at all? And it kind of becomes like the main sort of thing that you are constantly referring to, whether it's mechanics or whether it's trying to learn about the game or even towards the end of it, by the end of it, I put like 27 hours. into this game because I was just like, so it reminded me a lot of death store. I'm going for all the end game sort of content. Really, really great game. It's got a great soundtrack, fantastic style like Janet was mentioning.

And it's not without its fault. It's not a perfect game. But goddamn, what it does right, it does so incredibly well. And that's one of the things for me, you know, coming to host this one in Tim's absence. Of course, if you didn't know, Tim Gettys was walking home with a bunch of milk and got bit in the eyes by both two snakes. Two different things. Why do he need so much milk?

Were they in the gallon? Like, did he open it? No, no, no. These was something on the street. They just not on there. He walked by one of those like Ivy walls. You know what I mean? I thought it was a milk snake.

I thought was a milk snake's right there. Why do he need so much milk? He likes to drink milk. He's a weird kid. You know what I mean? I've ever seen this. It's not weird to drink milk by the way. Lessing.

Have you ever, if is Tim ever ordered a sloppy pizza with you? I am. What was that, Rick? I was talking. I was talking about a sloppy pizza. Is Tim ever ordered a sloppy pizza? I don't think so.

I don't recall ever eating the sloppy meat. There's nothing this weird kid loves to do more than get a cheese piece. I just don't know what milk is. He dips it in the milk. Yeah. Oh my God. He's got buckets of milk. It's so disgusting.

As soon as Craig said sloppy pizzas, he's making up some bullshit right now. Craig has the opposite. I'm riffing on sloppy steaks from, I think you should leave a great show on Netflix. Oh, got you got you. No, so Tim's gone. I did play this, and I did not beat it. I started it. And my idea was originally me and Andy were going to play this through and do the review on it.

But then WWE code came and then Ghostwire Tokyo came. So I peeled off knowing that, of course, Andy can handle it and Janet could come in and help us out. And so I probably did two hours of Tunic. And I think Barrett was talking earlier when we were off air or whatever. And he nailed it right of like this tunic is like on paper and looking at it, not a Greg Miller game. Because I do think it is such an evolution of what Jan. I was talking about, right, these classic Zelda, the eight-bit Zelda, the stuff like that. And I started it and I played it and I was really enjoying it.

And I was having a good time with it. And for some reason, even though I, oh, and I can't wait for Andy to get more into it in terms of the Death's Door comparison, Death's Door is another game I started and I was like, oh, I get what this is and it's not really for me. I'm going to bounce, but I can see why people are going to love it. Tunic was one that I do like a good Zelda game and I was enjoying this. And I do think it is the setting. I do think it is how, I don't want to say cute because I feel like it's down, that simplifies it too much. But how cute, colorful, and vibrant the world is, I really dug that.

I thought it sounded great. I really do enjoy the, you mentioned it the instruction manual pages going through and collecting them. Because it does feel like a meta take on the game where the instruction manual of an NES or Genesis game or NES or Master System game, right, was so key to the experience on the car ride home of paging through it and trying to learn a little bit more about what. what you're about to do. This game, you know, being written in a fictional foreign language and us not understanding it and even the prompts coming up and doing that, I thought it was so cool then to have this screen, to find the instruction manual pages, start piecing together what's happening, what it all means, where you're going and the way it teaches you as Barrett's Johnny on

the spot with B-roll here, you know, your dodges and how to get out of that and what your meters mean. Even going through and removing the fog of war on the map and starting to do things there. I was really digging tunic, and I don't think I'll get back to it anytime soon because of the amount of games that I'm reviewing right now and have coming down the pipe to still review, but I will at some point get back to it. I'm sorry, Blessing Eddie A.A. Jr. So Barrett just then was showing off some of the menus and how a lot of stuff is written in a different language.

Is that a language that you inevitably learn to read? Because I think it's interesting that they have a control map, control scheme there that's explained by words you wouldn't understand. Does that make sense? Is there a purpose to that? It is the in-game language that they created, that Andrew created for this game. You don't I believe that if you tried to decipher it you could I just it's not something that's required by any means though As you're playing it you will get a lot of prompts on the screen whenever you discover something and you'll see that language with like yes or no and you generally are just always gonna hit yes and accept the item that you eventually found

But as you continue to play it reminds me a lot of wait for it everybody hyperlight Drifter. Because HyperLy Drifter tells its story with illustrations. There is no actual text in that game. And just like that, there's also sort of a created language for that game as well. And in here, you're not getting any voice acting. You're not getting any dialogue boxes to read. It's usually like a dialogue box with a lot of that language and then like one word to kind of either hinty what's happening or hint to you where to go next.

So no, you don't ever find that out, but I assume in the next month or so, we might get some tweets being like, all right, they decrypted it. I love that what everything is. Because that reminds me, you much a hyperlight drifter.

For me, it reminds me of, like, team eco games that do the same thing, where it is like this language that you've never heard before, and it kind of grants this kind of mysteriousness to the world that I always appreciate. My other question, that's Japanese.

I'm okay. Oh, wait, no, this is this. It's the real language. My other question is, how much of this game is Zelda and how much of it is souls? Because that's the thing that I think between this and Death Store, too, like I've been gleaming a bit of, okay, cool, yeah, the exploration of all that stuff seems like a legend of Zelda game, like a classic link to the past or the original Legend of Zelda type, you know, go where you want and figure out how to solve the puzzles and dungeons and yada. Whereas the combat, I feel like, and this is just the thing I think with a lot of modern games now that have like any sort of methodical dodge roll out the way, you know, combat that you have to think about, right?

You have to be careful about how much of it kind of splits both directions. I think it's much more of a Zelda game than a Souls game. I think it's trying to invoke Souls, but I don't think it does it very well, which is, again, that's my number one before the game is the combat. But I say it's way more Zelda-E because on the whole, like, and the Destador's comparisons are like totally inevitable, just given like the time this came out. I think, too, the like Legend of Zelda style, it's definitely been done a good amount, but it's not one that gets done on very popular platforms very often.

And by that, I mean, we talk about like the big games of the year. you know, there's only as many games as we review here, we still only review a fraction of the games that come out. So I think seeing one of those games be a Zelda-like game is a little bit of a rarity despite having like two really big ones that came out last year, Chickory and Death's Door. So obviously people are going to compare it. I think it's way different in the sense that the combat really isn't a core focus in the game, in my opinion. Like it really starts to like show itself for those boss battles like we saw one earlier where you are enclosed. But unlike Death Door, like Death Door is a game that's very much combat at the 4th

Like you're constantly in these really intense enemy enclosed areas. Tunex's not like that. On moment to moment, it's like you walk to a place and yeah, there's like two, maybe max, like four enemies. And then that's kind of it. You kill them. It's fairly easy. It's one to three hits.

And then you keep going. You do have the Souls you like stuff with the Dodge Roll. And there is even a little mechanic of like you have the currency in the game when you die. There's like a little ghost version of yourself and you pick it back up. But unlike Souls, it's not like an all or nothing thing. You don't like lose all your money when you die. You lose like a little bit and can repick it up. pick it up. But yeah, and that's why I say it's way more of an exploration game. And then the

additional layer to that is the kind of good news for like if you're like me and weren't a big fan of the combat, in the accessibility settings, you can just turn on no fail state where you can just be a tank. You take zero damage. Or if you want to like do something a little bit less severe, you can turn off stamina depletion, which like that's my number one beef with the gate. When I was trying to figure out why do I not like this combat? Why do I play the combat does not work because I love Death's Door. I played Dudet's Door, beat that. I've played Souls-like things and enjoyed that combat. I personally don't like that the Dodge is tied to your stamina, which is constantly being depleted. So I can't like dodge all the time it will, which again, there are

Souls games where there's stamina me. I'm not acting like stamina is new to like this game specifically. But I think in like the way with how quickly some of the enemies move, like I just feel like I would have. And granted, you can turn that setting on, but the base kind of experience of the game is with that stamina depletion. And I didn't really enjoy the harder. challenges, like when it did have those big difficulty spikes, I'm like, I'm not that interested in getting good at it because I don't find the flow of the combat to be appealing. It's a little too slow, a little too tied to meters. Like, you really have three tool sets with combat in the game. You have your melee with the sword. You have abilities via mana, like your magic abilities. And then you

have the dodge. So I'm like to have like two of those three things tethered to a depleting stamina bar, even though the stamina does auto-regenerate, the mana doesn't. I just felt kind of hindered. like I couldn't fully enjoy or utilize the tools. And it kind of puts you towards a slower way to play for a character that already moves really slow. So I just sort of found myself a little frustrated with those harder encounters. But Andy, I'm curious to know, like,

what is your perspective on that? Like, did you like it? Were you parrying? You can parry in this game. Like, what was your flow in those bigger battles especially? Yeah, I beat the final boss with parries because I felt like that was the best strategy for me to do. So one thing,

I do like is that the stamina bar doesn't go down when you attack, which is pretty cool, because in Souls games, it does go down, whether you are rolling or attacking or running away. It's just for rolls here. It's just for rolls. It however will stop the regeneration if you're attacking. So you have to stop attacking in order for it to eventually go back up. I agree with Janet. I think the combat is my biggest problem with the game. But again, it was not in enough of a problem for me to knock it down to a four out of five grade because I just think everything else is so damn fantastic. The issue that I have with the combat is that on a granular level, I legitimately enjoy it.

I think that them sticking to their guns and trying to go with this old school kind of equip system really kind of slows it down quite a bit. And what I mean by that is it has the very old school Zelda equip system of here are three items you can equip to these three face buttons. Your Y, your X, and your B. And your A button is always your role. So you can't remap those unfortunately, which does suck. You want to be using those back paddles, aren't you? Well, the thing is Greg.

Oh, yeah, I did. Oh, yeah, definitely. I put roll on my back pad. You kidding me? But the problem with it, though, is that I think their dedication. to having this really awesome instruction manual kind of boxes them in and they have to kind of have those three buttons to...

They're all illustrated in all over this instruction manual, so we kind of have to have this control scheme happening. The problem with it, though, is that, like, there's no way during combat to necessarily switch between items you're using. The game constantly tries to say, like, hey, use all these items you've got. You've got this bomb that explodes with fire.

You have an ice bomb that freezes the enemies. You have a magic wand. You have all sorts of shit at your disposal to use. And I think a game like Death Store does that really smart. I think a game like even Cana Bridge of Spirits does it in a really smart way. And here, unfortunately, when you are trying to go back into your kit to re-equip things, time does not slow down. Not in the least bit. Like it is still, you're still in real time.

So I would love if when you hit LB, you know, you get that super slow-mo stuff. It's like, ooh, I'm out of dynamite. Let me now equip this other thing to why. There's none of that that happens. So that gets pretty frustrating, honestly. Especially when you're trying to fight a boss like this who is pretty aggressive towards the end of the end of their sort of different phases and things like that. Yeah. Like in the moment to moment combat, I think they can get away with that pretty easily because there's not too many enemies at

once so you can easily be like, I'm gonna use these bombs, and then maybe I'll switch over, or you can even find sometimes like little places to kind of hide and equip something, but the amount of times, like in a more heated battle, like I just don't think it does heated intense combat well, which again, most of the combat is not that, but the boss battles are, and I don't find those as enjoyable. I do like that, they lean a lot more into item uses for sure, like Andy mentioned, like they do say like, hey, literally use all your bombs, like maybe, and then there's like a page in the manual one point that's like maybe something, could happen that's good if you do.

And then you kind of learn more about the ways that it pushes you towards getting to use your tool set. So I liked people to do that because like for me, I was like, I'm not interested in mastering the slow burn of like hitting and then pausing and rebuild. I'm like, let me just spam. What if I just bought a bunch of bombs and spam those? And I do like that it facilitates that.

But yeah, I think that was definitely, if my number one beef is the way stamina and the roles kind of are interlocked or affecting each other, my second beef with the combat is that, lack of slowdown or lack of pause with the menu thing, especially because you're doing it so quickly because like enemies are still attacking you, that the amount of times that I've been like,

let me put on a sword, then I'm like, oh, shoot, I like, I actually unequipped my sword. Now I have nothing. I'm like scrambling to try to like super fast, like figure out, okay, well, maybe during this part is when I can do it. Like it just makes for, I found that flow to be like not that enjoyable.

So then those encounters, which again, there are only few in the game felt more frustrating than like, oh, this is an, opportunity to have like this really intense fun experience. And again, these are pretty few and far between. Before Blessing Hops and I was going to say made even more difficult by playing, by being 190 hours in Elbin ring at this point. Because my button, my button layout is just completely different in every single way. What's up, Les? Yeah. No, I find what you guys are

talking about to be really fascinating, right? Because like, again, we start off, you know, Andy, you're giving a five. Janet is on the four range, right? And so you guys absolutely adore with this game and it reminds me of me talking about like death store, which I always sound like I hate Death Door whenever I bring it up. It's a game that I absolutely love, but it's a game that I didn't jive with the combat in the way that it sounds like you guys aren't jive with the combat in this game. So my question to you guys is like how off the chain is the exploration, right? How off the chain are the puzzles? Like what are the things that are grabbing you in that case? Like is it a thing of the exploration is so magnificent that you are finding

points of interest or you're finding dungeons or what is the thing that is driving you to love this game? Yeah, it's really, sorry, go ahead. I was like to say just really quick. like i will say that like if they just added a slowdown in swipping and in swapping items i would adore this combat legitimately like i had a lot of fun with it i don't mind the stamina uh loss whenever i'm rolling like i guess i've just played enough sole stuff that like i'm kind of used to that being part of the rhythm but yeah blessing the the exploration the level design in this game every piece of every architecture has been placed there with such purpose and as you unlock things later on in the game, you go, that's why that's there.

This is fucking smart. And the amount of times that I had that sort of Dark Souls, blood-borne, Eldon Ring moment of, holy shit, I'm back over here. This whole winding path has led me back to this damn shortcut. It's legitimately like masterful type level design that I greatly appreciate because it's just, it's so smart. It's smart as hell. Not only just how the levels are designed, but how, uh,

how your progression through the game kind of allows you to unlock more things later on. It's just like it's the perfect way to do it, I think. Yeah, even from an early section that was like one of the things I think stood out to me and why I want to get back to it is that even, I mean, I'm talking like the first opening, you know, 30 minutes or whatever where it's like, oh, like clearly I'm supposed to get over there, how am I going to get over there? And then you get the sword so you can hack down shrubs. And it's like, oh, it's going to be one of those kind of games.

And so every time I ran into, oh, man, here's a broken ladder. I can't wait to see how I'll eventually get back to that. how I'm gonna unify this and how they'll be a short. Like that was all so rewarding, right? Even after, you know, ringing the first bell and opening up that part of the map, it was like, oh, this was an epic moment to get to here. And now I'm like ready to head off

on the next part of the quest. Yeah, like the exploration and world building is the secret sauce here. And again, that's why like the combat is a negative for me, but I don't really ding it that much because one, even though I don't think this means that you can like make things designed however if you just put enough settings to change it.

But like, there are settings to facilitate. Like I feel like, Well, there's two things I play. One, I do think generally I would love to see game developers on the whole have different settings to mess with the difficulty and the mechanics of their game to fit a player's comfort level. Like, I just think that's inherently a good thing to do. But the second thing that sort of communicate to me was that they know what the focus,

what the sauce of their game is. And it is that exploration. It is that world building. To speak to what Andy mentioned, like for me, this game started. When I first boot up this game, I was a bit overwhelmed by it. I felt like, okay, well, I see what's here. But it feels so similar to things I've done before. And it took me a while to really see where it started to shine.

And then once it did, it just kind of kept going. It was genuinely just a cascade of like never ending discoveries. And even having beaten it, I know there's a bunch of stuff that I still haven't done. I think one of the big like moments where it really clicked for me in terms of how well the world interlocks with itself is, you know, you get to a point where there's like a dark kind of dungeon area. And it's like, okay, common sense, I've done a cajillion times. you're going to give me a flashlight or some type of neon something. I'm going to wear an electric suit. I don't know what's going to happen.

And I won't mention what they give you. It's not that important or like that interesting either way. But I'm like, okay, clearly I'm going to come back here. And then once I get that item that let me see more in the darkness, I like, I'm exploring. I'm like, I feel like I'm deep in the thick of everything. And I climb up a ladder. And then I'm like, holy cow, this put me to the entrance of where I need to go next. And this entrance was here the whole time.

I could have probably gone here if I knew it was here. But it was hidden so well and so interesting. And I think that's one thing I really love about this game is that, well, maybe I had two or three moments where I wasn't quite sure what to do and only one moment where I would consider myself a little bit stuck. On the whole, like, it really helps avoid those pain points that you get from old schooled Zelda, what you get from like things like Metroredvania's where you get an ability and you have to like feel like you have to dart across the whole map to use it. Like they set you up so well. Like they breadcrumb everything so well both in the design and like so many other avenues. I mean, I really want to talk more about, too, like the instruction manual, because I think that is like the number one thing that I adore about this game.

But Greg, what's up? Well, I want you to talk about the instruction manual too, but I also want to double back to what you're talking about getting stuck because I want to ask Andy some questions about that. But I don't want our listeners ever to get stuck listening to an ad when they don't have to. And that's why if they went to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, of course, they could sponsor us and get the show ad free. Of course, though, you're not listening on patreon.com slash kind of funny games right now.

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I was really interested to see where you were going to come down on this because the light conversation we had before, I think some MCU stuff or whatever we were doing was that you're like, oof, this game's really hard. And then, ooh, kind of stuck here. You'd said that a few times. talk about getting stuck. Jan is talking a little bit about how it seemed like it was natural, breadcrummed got you the right way.

For you, is that an actual complaint or was that just in the moment? Because we've all been there where you get stuck on something and slam your head and do it for 30 minutes. You come back the next day, like, oh, it was right here. What was I thinking? A lot of it was those more obvious moments of like, oh, that was a switch there.

Why didn't I even even, yeah, a lot of it is just the most simple type of discoveries. But yeah, there are, if there's a platform, around the wall, check that, because there's going to be something there, whether that thing is going to be a treasure chest, and it might just give you some in-game currency or whatever, but it might be a passage that leads you to a completely new spot you've never been before, or it might be a passage that completely circumvents the whole damn thing that you've been walking through and suddenly you have this awesome shortcut. When I mentioned that the game was hard, like, the game's fucking hard in these boss fights.

And I think that I want developers. This is like the 20th time that I mentioned in on this podcast. I want more of a Hades-style God mode thing. God mode is fantastic where in Hades, if you're having trouble, you turn on God mode, and every time you die, the bosses, or you just take 5% less damage. And I would much prefer to implement something like that as opposed to like completely going into, you know, invisible or invincible God mode. I just think that's like way too far of a stretch that I don't really want to take

because I'd rather just try to beat it and say that like, yeah, I had a good time actually trying to beat this boss. But yeah, you had turned it off and then just wailed on it. You want a game of fight still. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to know that I'd love to get to the final boss and be like, ooh, it only took me three deaths until, you know, that's negative 15% damage of me getting taken or negative 8% damage, whatever percentage you want to sell on it.

But I got to a point near the final boss where I was like, I want to beat this for the true ending. Should I just turn on God mode? Because I know this is going to be too frustrating for me to try to do again. Because, yeah, I think this game is going to kick a lot of people's ass. This game is, in my opinion, much harder than that store was. Hold on one second, bless before you jump in, because I do want to turn the question back over to Janet.

Not even so much for this podcast just because Jan and I are cosmic twins in the same person. Did you when you were using the god mode stuff janet or the well i'm sorry can you what was it again it's not god mode it was something i think it's called like no damage taken it's like a to no fail mode okay thank you when you were using that for boss fights were you using that on every boss fight or just some of them or how did that work out and i ask not again not because i think it influences your review but because that's how i'm inevitably going to end up playing these bosses so i use it on the the final one and i think i turned it on on there was an interesting combat sequence that was sort of like wave type enemies and toward the end of that i did turn it on just

just to guarantee that I'd finish it because I'm like, I just don't want to run through this again. Because again, I, the reason that, and I agree that I felt like this game was harder than Death's Door when it spiked, but on the whole, like the general like, until you get to like a boss fight, I didn't, I don't feel that personally. Because like I felt like Death's Door is always hard.

While like this was just randomly really hard for the boss fights and that's why I feel like both in it, in my opinion, not having the combat to justify the difficulty, I just felt like it fell a little out of place. I'm like, whoa, whoa, now all of a sudden this is like a soul's time when I'm just like hanging out looking for like treasure chest and stuff. So I felt like there was a little bit of dissonance there for me personally. And for what I thought the game did best,

I would have liked to see the difficulties sort of better facilitate that. Also, I agree with Andy where like I wish there was more nuance and intrigue in the difficulty sliders of games, things like. I feel like we've seen a lot of great examples. And I wouldn't call this a great example, but at least it was there. But also, the fact that I feel so compelled to use it, I think speaks to elements of the spikes and tool set that don't jive with me personally. Yeah, I wish they were more like mini bosses before the big bosses.

I wish that having that kind of big encounter was a little bit more, a little less of a rare occurrence. Because, yeah, there's like, there's a couple of big bosses and that's pretty much it. Because when Andy, when we talked to you, oh, the game's tough, man. It's kicking my ass right. And I was like, oh, really? I thought that was so interesting because, yeah, my two hours, I hadn't run into a boss. So for me, I was very much like, this is a fun, exploratory thing. Like, yeah, occasionally, you know.

Do, do. I have a guy who's ranged. I have a bigger guy with a sword and shield coming at me that I have to dodge roll around to get the, but I'm like, I like this. I enjoy this. I knew when it's going. So to hear that, it's interesting.

Yeah, a little bit of what was just sort of, just kind of experimenting with the different equips you have, noticing how much damage certain bombs do. You can also kind of, you find items to upgrade your overall power, and you also find little things that I'm just going to call talismans, because Eldon Ring is on the brain.

And the more you do, you can unlock more slots for these talismans. And so I found a talisman that gave me a defensive boost. And then I found a talisman that gave me an offensive boost at the expense of a defensive loss. So the defensive boost kind of cancels that out. And I'm doing more damage now. And then I found another talisman that allowed me to parry. And then a couple of talismans are still kind of a mystery, which is like, I think. I think coolest shit.

I love the intrigue and the mystery there. Janet talked about the instruction manual. It is like the heart of this game. And the amount of love and attention put into there, one of the coolest things about it is as you keep on, as you play more and start to understand the language that it's trying to get you to understand, you start to notice kind of secrets embedded within this instruction manual.

You start to notice that on the instruction manual are pen drawings, where this instruction manual belonged to somebody and there are notes in pen, you know, kind of like maybe circling here and then it's a person writing down a code that might help you out at a certain door you get to and the end section, there's like a notes section. You have like, you have notes,

just like you would in the old school instruction manual. So it's like it's so true to being nostalgic for that era. And I think it's the only drawback of that is the sort of like, here's what your role is. It's always going to be a no matter what you wanted to be. Here's what these four. Because I would have loved to put a couple of these things on trigger. You know what I mean?

Like I think the only drawback is that you are stuck to this sort of archaic way of equipping items and things of that nature. Now, blessing a second ago, yeah, you had something to say and I cut you off to keep the conversation going on. Yeah, the question I was going to ask, it kind of goes back to the Boston a bit. And you guys kind of answered it a little bit, but I am still curious. like I guess Andy for you, right? Like if when I get to the bosses in this game, am I going to get excited?

Is it going to be a thing where, you know, right now we're playing Elder Ring? We're coming off to Seifu and like we've played Sekro and played other Souls games where I get to a boss fight. And for me as a player, I'm kind of a mask-kist in the way that like I like getting my ass beat. I like, you know, seeing a boss that has cool animations, that has cool moves that has like, you know, cool effects. And then they're whipping my ass to three hours straight like Rykar did on that stream that that, that, that I, did a few weeks ago, right? Like, am I going to have that feeling whatsoever in this game? Am I going to get to a boss and be excited about the fight?

I think absolutely you are. It's a pretty rare occurrence when it does happen, but I think the soundtrack does so much to sort of supplement these moments. And I think these moments are epic as hell because it's something that you haven't really seen a whole lot of because you haven't been fighting mini-bosses. You've been fighting largely a lot of the same little creatures, kind of, you know, every sort of era.

in this world has its own sort of dedicated creatures that you might see pop up. But I think so. I think it's going to be difficult enough to say, oh, okay, now you're doing that move. Whenever I get you down to this, now I'm seeing this sort of different pattern coming at me. That's part of the joy in boss fights for me. It's like figuring out the puzzle of when you do that, I should throw two bombs here. Oh, that's a weak spot. I didn't even notice that.

Let me go after that next time. I personally find a lot of joy in that, much like you do, Bless. So I think you're going to be really stoked on these boss fights. Hell yeah. Now, Janet, earlier we were talking about Death Store, of course, a Metacritic of 85 on PC right now if you're wondering, I have that information for you. You said, quote, the comparisons would be inevitable.

How does this compare? Is this better than Death Store to you? Short answer, no. Like, I think Death Store is a better game. Like, I would score that game higher. But I also think, like, while comparisons are inevitable, they are both doing different things just within the, the same genre. Like they're both isometric. They're both like cute but kind of dark and they both

have, I think on the surface they have similar combat. But again, like I think the fact that whether or not you agree with me or not, the fact that I like one combat and don't like the other says they're at least different, right? That or like have no consistency whatsoever, right? Which one's more likely in the two. So I do think they cater to like different audiences to a degree. not that there won't be overlap, but again, I think tunics exploration, and even though I like Destor's Exploration, it's so much better than Destor. If you could just put the combat of Death Door with the exploration of Tunic, you would have like the best isometric take on like a Zelda thing, kind of ever, minus trickery, which is also a take and a very fresh one. But yeah, like I think

the thing that makes this so special, again, is that instruction manual. And I think when people hear us talk about it might just seem like, well, okay, so what? It's a bunch of pages and they tell you what to do like and so like the way it I feel like the way it functions is like an important thing to draw out so you start off and have like very few of the pages but you're finding the pages in the world I think a lot of them you will kind of very easily get because some of them are very much like on critical path but some of them you definitely do have to work a little bit more to get and what I love about this and I think it's so smart is as you get a page you then have like your next sort of direction set it's not always a one-to-one like not every page is like oh based on this page

I now need to go to like north or something. Like some of them are more like random or run of the mill. Like one told me how to like run basically. And it was like five hours in and I'm like, okay, cool. I guess I didn't actually, you know, have the important. This wasn't helpful. Or some were things like obviously early on. Like there are things that if you play these games, you kind of know that like,

okay, I'm going to get a shield. I'm going to get a sword. It's going to be like on the spectrum. Like you kind of know that some of the stuff that you get. But other stuff is like, okay, well, maybe I can use this later or like, I have one piece of this sort of puzzle. Like this now told me more about this item, but I still don't know how to use it or how to put two and two together. So what I think is so brilliant about this instruction manual is it creates a new layer of things to look for while you're exploring.

And the incentive you get is more tools on how to engage with the game, both in terms of exploration and combat. So like the reward is more exploration and in kind of an easier way to go about it. It's like the perfect balance of like handholding and mystery. Because like we've said, like, I know I ended the game with, which I'm, and I'm curious how many pages you ended with. I was missing nine pages. I don't know if that's a lot of pages missing or not a lot of pages. And I felt like I was generally thorough, except for like the very end, I did kind of sort of beeline that to the final boss at a certain point. But generally, I did look around a lot of corners. And there was like a lot of stuff to discover, you know, there's a new game plus.

We can do a bunch of other stuff. Like, there's a lot left to see. And what I really like about this game is I think if you're a, you know, lore person, if you're a secrets person, you're going to be obsessed with like figuring all this stuff out and you're going to love that. But if that's not you, if you're a little bit more casual and that you know, you look around the corners, but you don't need to know everything, like you don't care like to figure out every single secret, you still get the full experience of the game. You still have fun. You still have those moments of discovery. So I think it just such a brilliant balancing act with facilitating and creating a fun context to engage your curiosity without feeling like, oh, I need to be this different kind of player to really get

the true like tuning experience. And and that's what I'm. I personally really love about it and what what stands out to me about this game. It almost reminds me of a, um, of some sort of like, what's what I'm looking for? Like a helper guide, you know, like when you would sometimes back in the day, you would bring up a map on your iPad to help you play this game that you were playing. Um, companion. Hey, what are you talking about that? I'm using IG and guides left and right. No, no, no, but like, But IGN didn't, you know, the game wasn't made by that.

You know what I mean? Like the fact that this comes with it and it's sort of like a main mechanic of the video game, it reminds you of like Jason Schreier tweeting out about Eldon Ring and him being like, yeah, I recommend keeping a journal. And people like, it's like, no, you're not required to do that. But in here, it kind of just becomes an item that you're going to refer to quite a bit. And yeah, finding out those mysteries like Janet, mentioning like, oh, this is how you run. I had a moment where I kept on finding

all of these little things in the world and you pick them up and there's three question marks and it's like, what the fuck do these things do? And you eventually unlock a piece that says, oh, this is to go up in damage output. Great. And how do I do that? It's telling me right

here. Okay, I have to hit this button whenever I'm at one of these things. And you start to sort of like kind of unravel this mystery. And it made the experience so much more enjoyable for me. Not only that, but just figuring out all of these secrets. Yeah, Janet was mentioning like, I became pretty obsessed with this game by the end of it

where in the same way that I felt with Debt's Door with wanting to 100% it, I finished the game with three pages missing, Janet, and I still don't really know where they are. I try to go back and try to look a bit more for it. But yeah, I think this game, that's the definite secret sauce of it. And in comparison to Debt's Door, I think, like, when I first play these demos, I was like, this fucking game wishes it was Death Store. Like, Death Store is nailing it when it comes to the charm, when it comes to all these different NPCs you talk to, everything.

The dialogue is so cute. And I kind of found myself enjoying the vibe of this a bit more and having, like, no dialogue with characters and trying to figure out what the hell is happening in this world. And the story kind of goes places I was not. expecting, which is really, really welcomed because on its surface, I didn't want this just to be Little Fox in a forest or in other environments. Like, it gets kind of wild in really cool, interesting ways that I really dug. I think Death Store definitely does combat better because of the ability to have this

kit in the same way, like I mentioned earlier, playing Cana Bridge of Spirits, having this kit that it's like, arrow, throw a bomb, fucking dash here, like, all of that sort of becomes really kinetic and frenetic and I enjoy the way that that feels. I wish this game had Death Store combat and I wish Death Store had this game's sort of exploration and level design because... Also, this game has a map. Shout out to having a map. Nothing wrong. We just having a map and I was like, oh, but what's the point if I don't know where I am? But wrong, Greg. There's a little fox face on it. Knowing you where you are. It's adorable. It's great. It would show you right there. It's so great. But it also shows you in real time, which I wasn't.

really necessarily understanding that it was going to do that. I thought it was like a pretty set in stone thing. I didn't expect these things to be, these pages to be dynamic in any way. Yeah, the game does so much right that I think it's like, you know, I wish that they fix the difficulty a bit more and made it less of like, all right, it's either all or nothing. You go in, you get your ass whoop for hours or no fail mode.

Like I wish there was a bit nuanced there, but God damn. Is there not like a RPG like level up system to where you feel stronger? Or is it is it is what it is you have to fight through it's like a Zelda style thing So like you to get like you know more attack like to buff your attack stat you have to find a certain item and then do a certain thing with it Though that becomes clear as you play like it won't be yeah There is a small window of time well like you're getting these items and you haven't like done what you need to do with them yet But like that that window is fairly small like again you find the page that tells you what to do and it's okay cool cool And that's that's something too where you can't it's not you can grind your work

way through getting stronger because you got to find you find you don't grind right are you ever going to get to a boss and go oh i'm not ready for this yet i need to come back because obviously i'm not leveled there actually is one boss um at least and maybe this might be true for the other ones but i know there is again a page that says like that shows the boss and it kind of says like boss question mark question mark and then either handwritten or in the thing it's it has like a page that shows you what they recommend your stats be at um but again i think a lot of the what's what is nice about the combat is that you can sort of use those other tools your bombs and you can like buy these like over time so I guess the closest to a grind through it is like buying a you know grinding for the money

and then buying a bunch of bombs which I that was sort of more my route but even with that like it doesn't have the most forgiving like save death state in that regard like if you buy like 30 bombs and you use them and you die it's like you have some of those left but like not all so then it's kind of like well I got to make this the run or else you know I'm bankrupt here so I kind of again I wish they kind of did some of those elements different. But again, I feel like the combat, even though it's really in your face when it's hard, because like it is very hard, it does take a backseat to the overall experience, in my opinion. Like hours to hours, I spend way more time walking around the world and fighting like really low-level

enemies than I do, like, squaring up against, you know, demons or whatever. The one feature I really dug, however, bless in boss fights is that whenever you drop your, whenever you die, your soul stays there, right? Your little ghost form. Very similar to any soul's game. Or in more recent memory, Hollow Night, where it's an actual physical form, like ghosts kind of floating there. And a really cool feature is that whenever you go to retrieve it

and you get the 20 coins back or however much money was left there, a wave of energy kind of hurts an enemy. And it may seem like nothing, but it opens up so much opportunity to get attacks in. Certain enemies get really stunned by it. Certain enemies get really fucked up by it. Or if you happen to get cornered by a bunch of smaller, weaker enemies in an area because you just weren't really thinking too much

and you thought you could just run through a spot, suddenly there's seven things attacking you. That thing is going to help out so much to get that because it's going to send out that shockwave. It might fully kill some enemies, and some enemies might be super stunned by it. I think that's a really cool, needed... neat added feature I really dug.

I will say not combat related. I was not a huge fan of the fast travel. I thought when I finally unlocked the ability to do this, I was like, this is fucking genius. The way they're doing this, like the moment that happens where I was like, holy shit, this is really cool and smart. But I just don't love the way it's implemented. I think that it's, I think it's a bit confusing and a bit like they could have

just let us go from bonfire to bonfire. You could, like, I'm not asking the Eldon Ring, let me go to any bonfire at any time. Like, let me just go to a bonfire, then go to another one in a different town, maybe see it on the map in the instruction manual. But it's a bit more, it's a bit more confusing and not as convenient as I'd like it to be with how much I want to explore in this game. Because the train station, not an Uber, which is like, I feel like at this point, fast travel can just be an Uber. Like, I don't think, you know, and it's not that you can go anywhere, but like, I guess what's that old Uber thing they had where it was like they drop you off like a block away and stuff. It's like, oh, that's saving $3, whatever. Like, I do wish it was a little more. It took me a while too, Andy, to figure out what was up with the, like, at a certain point I realized, oh, there's something labeled in the manual that can help me understand. I don't have to memorize where, what goes where, but it took, it did take me a second. I do think, though, like, I liked when that stuff unlocked. And I liked being really surprised. by some of the abilities we got. I don't want to spoil them because I think

that part of the joy was like seeing how things worked. There's definitely like environmental design that kind of tells you, right, some of the things, like example, the cave thing. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that you get some type of light. Like everyone knows that it's been done a million times. But other elements, I'm like, oh, this is traversal and combat.

Or like, oh, this is combat in a way that I wasn't expecting. And I think, again, even though I do have some grabs to combat, those tools did make combat more fun. So what I liked about this game is, even though I started, in feeling like what's so special about this? It feels like I've done this a million times over and better. I was like the more I played, the better I feel like the game got in the sense of there's

just so many more layers that are unearthing. It's a very like vertically designed game too where there's not a lot of like width. Like you won't feel like you have to run across the entire thing. But there's like so much verticality and secrets within that. It's just like a lot to dive into. It's like a single slice of like a 12 layer cake. Can you just like take that fork and you get all the all the different flavors? And there's something really like satisfying and fun about that like the time I kind of beam through this game honestly the time melted away like I yeah because I just wanted that next page I want to know I'm like what's on the page I have no idea what's gonna be on this page but I want to know what's your estimate for how many hours you put in this is Andy said something like 26 27 or 80 yeah no I was way lower I think I was like maybe 14 or 15 but I just rolled credits and then stopped like there again there's like a huge new game plus with like crazy you know there's some there's some crazy things that happen like there was a

a point in this game. I don't want to oversell it, but there was a point in this game where something appeared within the menus. I feel like, Andy, you know, you'll know what I'm talking about, but I was like, what is this doing here? Am I playing inscription right now? Like, what's going on? Like, there was some crazy stuff happening. And I still don't know if, I still don't know if that's purposeful. It is. It is purposeful. Because so for context, too, like, I didn't spend a lot of time here, but the team, like, when they gave us code, they were like, here's a Discord server that we made specifically for this game for you to talk to other reviewers because the team feels that like talking to people and like working together and sharing secrets is like a

core part of the game. And well, I think it can be. Like I don't feel like you need to. But it was cool after our world credits. I'm like, let me see what people are talking about. And man, the freaking like mind map, these other reviewers were weaving of like, oh, you go here and there's this thing. And has anyone figured out like this thing in the forest? Oh no. Actually, you go through the door. I'm like, whoa, this is like a lot of other stuff. And I think it's so cool that like, you know, me and Andy like engaged with this game in different levels in terms of how much we dug in. But I feel like we both got like kind of the same main theme and beats and feel out.

It seems like that's cool. Yeah, you don't, you definitely don't have to be this person that wants to dive into the end game parts in any like meaningful way at all to understand what makes all of this special that we're talking about because you get it in, you get drip feted throughout the whole experience, I think. I wanted to say really quickly with how much I wanted to keep exploring, that's why I kind of wish that fast travel was a bit more convenient. Because I knew that I got this new traversal ability and I really want to go back over there quickly. It's just going to take a bit longer and, ooh, I went the wrong fucking path. How do I get back to that one spot that I remember I was in yesterday?

Like that happened quite a bit here. And I just wish a bit more of that was definitely more convenient. I don't know about the Discord server. I need a link to this because I want to see what the hell people are saying. Yeah, I can send it up. Since you are another review, it's open for like a little bit longer. Like eventually they are going to close it. Got it.

But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's wild over there. And then it'll be asked to the public. You'll see all sorts of stuff like the Sandy. I'm really stoked about that. I know that nanobiologist was also reviewing it. And he was like, hey, let me know if, uh, if you need help at this part. And I definitely need to ask him for help at a certain area because I don't know how to access certain things.

But the game just kind of does that. It does really, um, incredible. things with level design where there's a certain moment where you I don't know I don't even want to get spoiler with it but you do a thing and you're like oh fuck this was here the whole time and this is such a late game thing and I just didn't know and it was accessible I just didn't think to do that thing and there's like also cool you can do stuff at any time like you don't need the manual to tell you how to do something to be able to do it but like you wouldn't know to do it unless you read it obviously you

You know, there's going to be people that are like follow guides or like, you know, do we there's going to be like weird stuff happening once this game comes out and like people and Reddit get a hold of it. Like it's going to be run it like crazy? Is it like a game that you'd be in 20 minutes if you know how to do everything? I don't think. I don't know because I think you like spoilers. It's it's a Zelda game. You got to get the three things. You got to get the three power stone things. Whatever the fuck. You know what I'm like? It's very much like when they when they when he's. he was being interviewed. I had read some piece where Andrew Sholdis, Sholdice, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, was being interviewed. He said, Sholdes.

And he mentioned, yeah, you have to get, this is very much a game where you get three triangle-like shape things, like very much alluding to like, yeah, it's like Zeldon. He knows what he did. He knows what this game is. Yeah. So I don't know if you'd be able to beat it without that, and I'm not really sure the quickest way to go about that

unless you're finding some crazy like exploits within breaking the boundaries of the game or whatever. I think I'm just more excited about people actually understanding what the people figuring out what this cryptic language is. Because I enjoyed as much of the story as there was not knowing this cryptic language. And I think it's really cool. And it does some really, it does some really dope things story-wise that you don't need dialogue or to be reading some sort of supplemental piece to understand what's happening. It's really cool. All right.

Sounds like you love it. Danny, you're sticking by your five by five, right? Because, of course, you went through, you listed the things that make it not perfect, but you still say it's amazing. It's still an amazing game to me. I think it's like, for the faults that it has, for the problems that I have with it, I was still way more wowed and amazed by the things it does right. And Janet, you're sticking with your four out of five?

Yeah, it's great. I don't think it goes beyond that because, in part because of the combat and some other elements of it. But I do think that it's an awesome game that people should spend time with. And I'm very curious to see what the other critical reception is. Because I do think because the secrets go so deep and it is so interesting and it has so many layers, there are going to be people that are like absolutely blown away by this game because if you like that sort of thing, you are in for so much content. And again, even if you're not obsessed with that, there's still a really fun time because you get a version of that

to the degree that would you want to engage with it. And yeah, I really liked it. It really felt special. And I hope that people also stick with it from the jump. Because again, I was not in love with it. I did not feel that connection to it until maybe like it's tough to measure because I wasn't like running it, running down all the hours or whatever. A few hours.

Once I got like my first ability, I would say, I was like, okay, now I'm seeing this click. I'm like, you know, zooping around. I'm fighting in a little bit more of an interesting way. I'm getting in the more stuff. And then I just kind of fell into it. And then I was like, oh, we're done. The time sort of flew by. So, yeah.

Once I had the first level design moment, I was like, all right, here we go. Like, I'm in for something special here. and this is going to be exactly my type of shit. And the animations are really cute also. I mean, there's like, again, we could talk about this for a while, but like it's beyond just being like, oh, this game is cute. Like, I think there's a really gorgeous, delicate simplicity in the construction of this game.

Like, I actually wasn't a big fan of the OST, but I thought the sound design was really playful. And they just do such a good job contrasting these sort of like soft, almost filter-like look with these stark geometric patterns in the environmental design. And where there aren't details, I also like some of the choices they made. Like we're seeing in the, you know, Barrett pulled up walking by a bunch of water. Like, there's not a lot of detail in that water. There's barely any animations. There's like some lines.

But they, they pull that off by doing like a really rich, saturated blue. I think this game works its angles and it's zoom ins and zoom out really well. Like, it's just very nicely stylized. The fox is tiptoeing through the water. Do you see this? The fox is cute. Also, the fox is cutter than I thought he was because or they were. Because, because.

This is adorable. Yes. Like when I, you know, like everybody else, I've seen like, this marketed a million times over. And when I boot up the game, the actual first thought I had, and I texted Greg this, I was like, this fox is even cuter than I thought it was 10 out of 10. And then I was like, damn, you walk really slow, zero out of 10. And then I was like, oh, no, I can run, you know, 8 out of 10.

And that's where I landed. Blessing, are you going to play Tunic? Yeah, you guys sold me. I'm totally in. This sounds like it could be my type of shit, especially for the exploration of it, right? I think that's what I look for out of these types of games. And like, I'm curious to see how I take to the combat. Like, I think you guys have done a good job of really like measuring it in terms of like,

yeah, man, like the combat doesn't hit as hard for you guys. It doesn't live up to the death door combat, which I didn't even click with that hard either. So like, you know, bar is kind of low for me here. But it sounds like that takes enough of a back seat where I'm just going to get into the world and just focus on exploring and focus on just like puzzle solving and doing what I need to do there. And that is the type of shit that does appeal to me. And so I'm looking forward to it now. I'm really excited.

Yeah, they absolutely reward you for. always going into that one little corner that you didn't even think to check the first time. There's always going to be something there. It's really cool. Ladies and gentlemen, are you going to play too? Nick? Let us know in the comments below.

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