I was talking about it in this topic as I played it last week.
I guess the main difference between the way it’s perceived now vs 2016 is that we know its true nature. Like, it appears to be a Zelda 1 clone that goes for a sort of monomyth approach, like Sworcery or Below, and in this respect it’s not particularly notable save for one or two ideas (there’s one rather obvious third act twist but it’s put in a new, more interesting perspective by the regular ending) and its stellar looks.
However, the manual gimmick completely transforms it: because you get the manual, an in-game relic, page by page, not in order and written in a foreign language, you’re making a whole bunch of assumptions about your moveset and interactions, based on incomplete info and “games/Zelda do it that way usually”, that are turned around when you get more of the manual.
Not an actual example, but imagine having to figure out a maze made of waist-high hedges, only to be taught at the end that you’ve had a jump button all along and you just assumed Link can’t jump. This is what Tunic does, all the time. Sure, there are some tools you’ll unlock along the way, but a lot of them you have from the get go, except you didn’t know because the manual is a lost relic.
And then it makes you think about those newly discovered powers, because they have one obvious use and some less obvious ones. Once you learn to trigger object X, suddenly you start considering that the same, or analogous methods could work on objects Y and Z, and once you get used to the fact the game’s withholding information, you might just learn to spot the blanks and discover some shortcuts early. And the game’s full of shortcuts and alternate paths. It’s even kinda cheeky about it, as in the late game it gives you an alternate but now redundant way to get a sword, which for speedruns might be a game changer.
For that alone I think it could have been seminal indeed, but as I said, it appears to be a Zelda. But it’s also a Fez. Like, not just in its videogame-worshipping trappings like BustedAstromech explained. It sort of is the Fez 2 we never got.
Light structural spoiler
And a better structured and paced Fez at that. The thing with Fez is, it tips its hand really early about being a cryptic puzzle collection rather than just a platformer with a perspective gimmick. The anticubes are secrets in name only, the early ones are really hard to miss and it’s actually much easier to get the first ending by including the anticube hunt at a casual level.
In Tunic, even if I tell you about it you’ll only come to understand that aspect of the game really late, and possibly miss it (twice over, because it’s also kinda hidden as teaching you something that seems more superficial), and they’re totally unneeded for the normal ending. But if you follow them, then as you run all over the world with your newfound insight, chasing for secrets left and right, you’ll start seeing the looming shadows of the puzzle to end all puzzles, connecting everything you’ve learned together. Fez was missing a boss puzzle, Tunic isn’t.
I’ve said it before, but the moment where I saw and broke out pen and paper to make a Pepe Silvia chart to the true ending, visiting improbable places to find the missing bits I still needed, is one of my very best gaming experiences this year and I don’t think it’ll get pushed out of the podium all that easily.
One very interesting aspect of it is, again, the manual, because basically it brings puzzle book mechanics into the mix. There’s not that much precedent for that, not the way it does it. The first anniversary update of Sea of Thieves comes to mind, which introduced a campaign where the “maps” you get are increasingly cryptic and seemingly unrelated books (ranging from ship logs to astronomy books to a little girl’s crayon drawings) that, interpreted the right way, will indeed point to riches and wonders. Another one is The Fools’ Errand, which I feel has got to be an influence on the way Tunic’s manual and late game puzzles were designed.