This game has the largest dead-end level ever! The Quarry!
This is an area you're allowed to stumble into that contains, in of itself, nothing useful, but it's very large and probably serves some greater purpose. tldr; to complete the level you need a grappling hook, but you are allowed to do the entire level up until the very end.

Everything about this level trolled me. You have to run through a temple, alongside a cliff, up a mountain staircase, and then through spiraling staircases and a small little boilerplate snake pathing. When you arrive there are Dark Crystal rocks that sap your maximum health and guards in BDSM gear. It's one of those, but they also have sniper rifles that remain targeted off screen and some throw bombs and run away. There are also no checkpoints in the entire level.

So when you die because you were smacked you at low hp, you get to run through all that boilerplate again and again, and the reward at the end? A mask that makes you immune to the health drain, but nothing else. All that for me to google what I needed and found my grapple hook was in another Frog's Domain!

Obviously this area will come back up. I haven't beat the game, but absolutely everything about this level was so purposefully designed to suck I had incredible fun.

10 / 10 God tier troll level design.

A cute little Zelda-style game, where you play as a fox, trying to figure out what you are doing in a strange world. Solve puzzles, fight enemies, upgrade your skills, all while collecting manual pages for the actual game you are playing. The manual is an interesting mechanic, and very important to the game itself. Explaining more than that will be too spoilery, so I just wholeheartedly recommend playing this game for yourself, and be as amazed as I was.

This just wasn't quite for me. There is an initial level of difficulty to overcome which I didn't mind. For a large part of my playthrough of Tunic, it felt like I was being rewarded for learning the combat system, exploring the world, and finding the clues hidden throughout different areas. However, after what I consider a significant late-game difficulty spike, it felt more like I was being punished.

I agree with a lot of the praise being given to Tunic. I would even recommend it to some of the more hardcore gamers out there. That said, I consider myself to be at least above average at video games, and this one left me frustrated enough by the end to keep me from wanting to go back to it or recommend it to my friends.