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!)