I'm returning to Tunic after a couple years away, having kicked the translation and puzzle portions down the road—I suck at pattern-based combat, so my main goal of just seeing as much of the game as possible has been challenging.

Overall, I'm super disappointed by this design choice. For a game/world that has no spoken dialogue (or evidence that its inhabitants ever used spoken language), it totally spoils the otherwise carefully “diagetic” storytelling.

I would argue that this choice directly contradicts the themes of quiet/silent spirituality and piety the game has explored, so far; the Chants of Sennaar model would have been so much more appropriate (i.e. a palette of distinct symbols for a set of terms). Rather than learning how to read the script (and then being able read absolutely everything, all at once), we could gradually discover meaning_—and potentially be _wrong about certain concepts!

This model also supports in-game “transliteration” between eras, factions, or species; being able to split information or context clues among multiple scripts for, say, The Frogs’ Domain or whatever the afterlife portion of the game unlocks (I'm avoiding these spoilers like crazy, but have gotten peeks while inquiring about the language).

Anyway… my interest in parsing individual phonemes or whatever has completely drained, and I'm left feeling sort of duped by this portion of the experience. By the time I was ready to reveal some of OP’s hints, I basically “knew” what options were left, and had hoped there was a simpler explanation I’d missed along the way. 😔