A new game from the creators of Rabi-Ribi, embark on an epic action-adventure as you slash, dash, and combo your way through a sprawling land scarred by conflict. Explore and discover hidden secrets. Customize your build to triumph in spectacular boss fights and unravel the mysteries of the world in TEVI, a bullet hell metroidvania!
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Backloggd went through maintenance recently and you still need to scroll past about 15 Resident Evil games to find this game if you search Tevi. Good website.
Yet another wonderful and magical metroidvania from Crespirit and GemaYue. I still prefer Rabi-Ribi purely from vibes perspective but this game is 100% a step-up in terms of quality. Play it. It's good. These are some of the best metroidvania experiences I've had and I play a lot of metroidvanias.
One of my most anticipated indie games from 2023 and I finally got to finish it a couple days ago. TEVI is a really solid and satisfying metroidvania + bullet hell mix that will be sure to please any newcomers to this type of game.
But I have to admit, it's not quite ~as~ good as Rabi-Ribi. It's an ambitious game for sure, I do have to respect the amount of effort they put into making a large story full of lore and complete voice acting (with recognizeable japanese talents, even!), but the cliched nature of the many directions the story takes and mixed tones do hold it back from making it a special experience. Thankfully the characters are all fun and likeable, really carries the story for the most part.
This new direction just doesn't feel quite as earnest and niche as Rabi-Ribi was. Just feels very held back, almost as if they're to please a different crowd altogether. Feels pretty clear considering the overall gameplay feels a lot more accessible/easier on normal difficulty and even the localization style feels like it's trying to be more mainstream.
But honestly, these might just be personal nitpicks. Rabi-Ribi is a very special game for me and I was hoping this one would capture that same magic. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game! It's fantastic and i'm sure anyone going into blindly will find it more enjoyable than I have.
The level design is still pretty top notch, boss fights are as awesome as ever, OST is top tier and the character designs are a good mixture of cool and cute. I explored 100% and found 80% of every item in the game, did all sidequests and experienced most of the boss rush modes after the endgame and it all feels worthwhile. I might even return it for more playthroughs on higher difficulties.
I highly recommend it!
But I have to admit, it's not quite ~as~ good as Rabi-Ribi. It's an ambitious game for sure, I do have to respect the amount of effort they put into making a large story full of lore and complete voice acting (with recognizeable japanese talents, even!), but the cliched nature of the many directions the story takes and mixed tones do hold it back from making it a special experience. Thankfully the characters are all fun and likeable, really carries the story for the most part.
This new direction just doesn't feel quite as earnest and niche as Rabi-Ribi was. Just feels very held back, almost as if they're to please a different crowd altogether. Feels pretty clear considering the overall gameplay feels a lot more accessible/easier on normal difficulty and even the localization style feels like it's trying to be more mainstream.
But honestly, these might just be personal nitpicks. Rabi-Ribi is a very special game for me and I was hoping this one would capture that same magic. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game! It's fantastic and i'm sure anyone going into blindly will find it more enjoyable than I have.
The level design is still pretty top notch, boss fights are as awesome as ever, OST is top tier and the character designs are a good mixture of cool and cute. I explored 100% and found 80% of every item in the game, did all sidequests and experienced most of the boss rush modes after the endgame and it all feels worthwhile. I might even return it for more playthroughs on higher difficulties.
I highly recommend it!
The story holds this game back, both in general and with the metroidvania aspects that Rabi Ribi did better. They tried and almost came close to having something good narratively, but came up short as every arc or plot point just felt... incomplete. Which is a shame because Tevi has some pretty interesting and charming characters with some damn good designs.
But the combat and boss battles... they make it all worth it. The adrenaline rush from some of the best fights in action games really gets you feeling some type of way, and amount of skill customization to change up your approach to battles really pushes it over the edge. And the music rocks.
But the combat and boss battles... they make it all worth it. The adrenaline rush from some of the best fights in action games really gets you feeling some type of way, and amount of skill customization to change up your approach to battles really pushes it over the edge. And the music rocks.
GAMEPLAY HOOONK SHOOOO AS HELL EARLY ON BUT MID WAY IT BECOMES GOOD writers are fans of RWBY so story is mid
From the creators of Rabi-Ribi comes a game that you can safely play without fear of someone looking over your shoulder and wondering what's wrong with you (probably)!
TEVI plays pretty similarly to Rabi-Ribi, with a bigger emphasis on melee combat. Tevi's got some pretty versatile moves you can weave in and out of, complemented a side of simplified ranged combat. Supplementing all of this are "sigils", an expansion on Rabi-Ribi's badges. When I say "expansion", I mean that there's an absurd amount of these to collect. The sheer quantity of sigils kinda dilutes the sensation of finding another one hidden in the overworld, but each one tweaks the combat mechanics in a tiny way, which adds up in a big way, and can change your entire playstyle. Good combat would mean nothing without great bosses, and TEVI doesn't disappoint there either. I do think the game is on the easier side though. I didn't die once on normal difficulty, so here's my PSA that you can change the difficulty at any point by having Tevi sleep in her bed back at the Oasis.
I wish I had more good to say about TEVI, but this game has a serious structural problem: its nonlinearity is fake. I spent a lot of time backtracking and exploring in TEVI, only to realize there's like, a single powerup I can grab before I hit the brick wall of "go to the objective please". There's almost never anything meaningful to discover off the beaten path because all the bosses are fought on the linear plot path, and you're barred access to the upgrades that would give you access to new areas until you beat those bosses. The game does offer a "free roam" mode when starting a new game, but that hits you with the exact opposite side of the spectrum: exploration and boss fighting with no real direction. Ideally, you'd want to meet in the middle somewhere, something that Rabi-Ribi already excelled at.
The story itself is fine. I hate to shoot it down for not catching my barely-a-zoomer attention span, but the game loves to infodump on and on about its world, society, past, present, races, and whatever. It became exhausting to read very quickly, and I don't even think it earns a lot of its emotional moments either. So many points where a character dips out of the story for several chapters after being introduced (I'm looking at you, Sable's brother). The best parts were where the characters bounced off each other with charming banter, something that is pretty infrequent after the first few chapters of the game.
The focus on linear plot progression rears its head in other places too, like the map. For some ungodly reason, its default mode focuses on current objectives, and not something like individual areas. You have to press a button to freely scroll the map (otherwise you'll just be scrolling through your current objectives), and you can't even add markers for points of interest from this menu. No, you have to be standing in the room you want to mark, open up your quick-inventory, and add the marker there (same for removing markers!). It's just weirdly inconvenient for no discernable reason. Item totals are measured between loading zones and not by each area too. What I mean is that areas not separated by a fadeout have their item totals lumped together, which is extremely inconvenient for anyone who wants to clear out the map. Pretty sure Rabi-Ribi did this right, what's TEVI's excuse?
The opening statement was meant as a joke, but in all honesty, while TEVI has its own strengths, I do vastly prefer Rabi-Ribi overall. There's a minigame called "Rabi Smash" in one of TEVI's towns, and playing it provided a brief reprieve of charming, non-serious bunnygirl mayhem. And that's just where I feel TEVI falters. They really tried for something more serious, but it feels like a mismatch for this type of game. If anything, TEVI inadvertently elevated my opinion of Rabi-Ribi. Maybe that says more about my personal preferences than it does about the games in question. (And before you ask, no, it's not that I'm into bunnygirls. Good guess though!)
TEVI plays pretty similarly to Rabi-Ribi, with a bigger emphasis on melee combat. Tevi's got some pretty versatile moves you can weave in and out of, complemented a side of simplified ranged combat. Supplementing all of this are "sigils", an expansion on Rabi-Ribi's badges. When I say "expansion", I mean that there's an absurd amount of these to collect. The sheer quantity of sigils kinda dilutes the sensation of finding another one hidden in the overworld, but each one tweaks the combat mechanics in a tiny way, which adds up in a big way, and can change your entire playstyle. Good combat would mean nothing without great bosses, and TEVI doesn't disappoint there either. I do think the game is on the easier side though. I didn't die once on normal difficulty, so here's my PSA that you can change the difficulty at any point by having Tevi sleep in her bed back at the Oasis.
I wish I had more good to say about TEVI, but this game has a serious structural problem: its nonlinearity is fake. I spent a lot of time backtracking and exploring in TEVI, only to realize there's like, a single powerup I can grab before I hit the brick wall of "go to the objective please". There's almost never anything meaningful to discover off the beaten path because all the bosses are fought on the linear plot path, and you're barred access to the upgrades that would give you access to new areas until you beat those bosses. The game does offer a "free roam" mode when starting a new game, but that hits you with the exact opposite side of the spectrum: exploration and boss fighting with no real direction. Ideally, you'd want to meet in the middle somewhere, something that Rabi-Ribi already excelled at.
The story itself is fine. I hate to shoot it down for not catching my barely-a-zoomer attention span, but the game loves to infodump on and on about its world, society, past, present, races, and whatever. It became exhausting to read very quickly, and I don't even think it earns a lot of its emotional moments either. So many points where a character dips out of the story for several chapters after being introduced (I'm looking at you, Sable's brother). The best parts were where the characters bounced off each other with charming banter, something that is pretty infrequent after the first few chapters of the game.
The focus on linear plot progression rears its head in other places too, like the map. For some ungodly reason, its default mode focuses on current objectives, and not something like individual areas. You have to press a button to freely scroll the map (otherwise you'll just be scrolling through your current objectives), and you can't even add markers for points of interest from this menu. No, you have to be standing in the room you want to mark, open up your quick-inventory, and add the marker there (same for removing markers!). It's just weirdly inconvenient for no discernable reason. Item totals are measured between loading zones and not by each area too. What I mean is that areas not separated by a fadeout have their item totals lumped together, which is extremely inconvenient for anyone who wants to clear out the map. Pretty sure Rabi-Ribi did this right, what's TEVI's excuse?
The opening statement was meant as a joke, but in all honesty, while TEVI has its own strengths, I do vastly prefer Rabi-Ribi overall. There's a minigame called "Rabi Smash" in one of TEVI's towns, and playing it provided a brief reprieve of charming, non-serious bunnygirl mayhem. And that's just where I feel TEVI falters. They really tried for something more serious, but it feels like a mismatch for this type of game. If anything, TEVI inadvertently elevated my opinion of Rabi-Ribi. Maybe that says more about my personal preferences than it does about the games in question. (And before you ask, no, it's not that I'm into bunnygirls. Good guess though!)