I'm not really fond of writing reviews about something shelved unless I need to make a note to come back to it for technical reasons at some point, because I would honestly like to finish a game before writing up a full commentary of thoughts on it (or any witty zingers, were I able to muster any).
I think it's worth talking about TEVI (it's in all-caps on Steam, so that's how I'm going to refer to it) because I got deep into the fifth chapter (out of eight, I think?) and put 15 hours in already.
The difficult part about talking about TEVI is that there are really only two ways for me to talk about it:
1. Pretend like I've never played Rabi-Ribi (and pretend like I didn't see the cameo appearances of Erina and Ribbon or the Rabi Smash game in the back end of my playthrough)
2. Compare this game to Rabi-Ribi and expect some of the best exploration-based design in the history of Metroidvanias.
Well, I guess there's option 3: Why not both?!
Let me get the good out of the way: If you enjoyed the touhou aspect of bosses from Rabi-Ribi, you're not going to be disappointed here because the boss fights are easily the best part of the game. I didn't get to measure the differences in difficulty to see how vastly the bullets are applied over any given boss fight, but I'll always offer a shout-out when a game decides to modify difficulty based on actually affecting interaction and not just adding extra health, armor, or whatever. I played on Normal, I died a couple times, it felt like an okay difficulty, take that as you will.
The soundtrack is also pretty solid in some spots (I absolutely love the opening and Morose Town). Most stuff was fine and I think the soundtrack might be on par with Rabi-Ribi.
The game is huge, which I was rather expecting. I wasn't expecting that I'd only have 56% map coverage by the back end of Chapter 5, though. But also, this is where I need to bring up some gripes.
First, regarding level design: TEVI does something interesting with its room designs that I had to note, even if I absolutely don't like it -- there's almost always one-way paths forcing you in a direction away from the exploration that you're probably used to doing while playing a Metroidvania and these one-way paths often require you to go through some very roundabout traversing to get back onto what seems like the regular route you're taking. What makes this interesting is that this one-way funneling IS the regular route and is often the quickest way to the boss / next area while also showing you a significant amount of the area you're in. It's fascinating because you're getting probably over 50% of the map for the area completed just by being forced down these windy paths, but the act of being forced/corralled/funneled just leaves you feeling like you're not really that much in control of your movement through these areas. It's like a busted escalator that you can't go back up and you can't jump over the sides, either -- get to the bottom and see what's coming!
Some of the one-way pathing is peculiar because there are blocks you can occasionally bomb, but some blocks that look exactly the same can also just crumble and cause you to lock into an animation that looks like you stumbled as you fall through them slowly to the next room. Sometimes, you can just touch a crumbling block and move past it without falling in. Sometimes, you just get locked into it and you're going to the next level down and working your way around to the next big moment. Sometimes, you can get into that seeming funnel and work your way out of it, only to find yourself going back up to the exact same spot, with you probably opening up a shortcut back to the area you started from, with the notion that you never would have been able to continue in that direction if you had wanted to go your own way. The game has determined that YOU WILL GO SEE OUR BIG STORY DEAL THAT WE WANT TO SHOW YOU. YOU MUST. BY ANY MEANS.
I love exploration and solid bosses, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Metroidvanias (and Souls-likes). Exploration is paramount to me, with the more options available equating to a better experience overall. Rabi-Ribi gave me this in a way that few Metroidvanias (I'm also looking at you, Environmental Station Alpha!) ever have. So, it's with great disappointment that I share how very little there is in the way of enjoyable exploration in TEVI.
I mentioned the whole thing about the story by any means necessary, and I wasn't joking -- your gating abilities are locked behind storyline moments or areas leading to the next storyline beat. And not only are they locked behind those moments and beats, the game will go out of its way to let you know in multiple ways. In some instances, the game will actively tell you that you don't need to go somewhere right now if you try and take a path that's open to you (at first, I thought this was just because of the merchant conversation in the Prologue, but it happens with multiple areas throughout the game). In other instances, if you try to go into an area that's in the same direction as the story marker on your map, you'll get a warning that if you go into that area, you won't be coming out for a while and that you better prepare yourself. Not really sure what preparation entails, because crafting is silly in this game and healing items are one of the few things that don't really take much effort to craft. More on that later. But in one other way worth noting, should you decide that you want to go exploring with any newfound power-ups you have to check out places you haven't been yet, you will generally find yourself stuck and unable to progress further until you have YET ANOTHER story-based ability that you're likely missing. And if you're like me and went back to the first area of the game after every new ability you got, then you're also probably like me and gave up after you got multiple bombing and movement abilities and had come back FOUR TIMES without being able to get back up to the area where you started. And nearly every new area is like this even when backtracking to them after getting an upgrade, you'll just make a tiny bit more headway than before and be stuck all over again. No bosses (I don't count the Elite Battle challenges given by a particular NPC as a side quest among these), no neat looping back between areas by linking multiple places together in unrealized ways, no cool power-ups (maybe a random stat potion or a sigil if you're lucky). If this were one of my first Metroidvanias, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me but when I heard about this game being made after playing through Rabi-Ribi's POST-POST-POST GAME, I expected the kind of loose and wild craziness of a game that absolutely understood just how much you could break it while still being able to move around it freely if you just understood the mechanics well enough. TEVI is the exact opposite of that.
I mentioned crafting briefly and the sigils in this game are very much in the same vein as the badges from Rabi-Ribi. Some sigils are found in plain sight, some are hidden in rooms on maps, some are purchased with a limited money resource (money is found through destruction of certain blocks and is never dropped by monsters), and some are crafted via elementals and essences. Some of your other orbitar (little shooty-assist-things for a spoiler-free description) upgrades and some of the abilities themselves can be upgraded through crafting. How do you get resources? Kill enemies, hope they drop what you need, and if they don't, spend nine of one resource to get two sets of three of another elemental or essence resource and hope you get what you need. This whole system feels like an afterthought because you're given the ability to wade through enemies in hopes of getting what you need and just gambling for less resources if things don't go your way. It's padding that could have been usefully spent searching for those same sigils and ability upgrades as drops in some of those paths that you just were never allowed to go further down until you have every ability in the game. There was a real chance to put some real rewards down alternate paths of exploration and instead, you're just killing enemies and praying to the loot gods that you inevitably get what you need after a time. I don't like crafting in games where it feels like it's shoehorned in and this seems excessively so, especially since they let you burn resources to try and RNG your way to more resources.
I forgot in the midst of my rant on exploring (I'm not going back up to reinsert this!) that the worst offender for how the world design is set up is the Freeroam Mode. This is an option you can enable when starting a game that lets you skip the story entirely and gives you a move that Erina from Rabi-Ribi initially had that allowed you to sequence break into areas you couldn't reach previously. This mode originally wasn't available until you beat the game, but I'm guessing after some push-back about the lack of functional exploration with gating abilities from reviewers, it was patched to become unlocked at the start. I've seen arguments that the level system (experience is given through exploration and beating bosses, I believe) and the limited supply of coins and occasional sigil or stat-boosting potion make up for the fact that you're constantly only able to make slight headway further into these areas you're retracing your steps back to, but these arguments also seem to come from people who are playing on the highest difficulties and found themselves needing every edge to compete with the bosses. It's an argument I understand, but I don't think it justifies the stilted exploration experience, especially if Freeroam Mode is a thing in the first place.
I haven't really talked about the story and that's because since I didn't finish it, it's hard to really comment on how it all fleshed out without being speculative. I'll say that the all social and political commentary feels VERY heavy-handed, but that didn't really bother me -- your mileage may vary.
I feel like there was more I wanted to talk about, but I've been writing this for way too long instead of actually playing more games. Even though this game is lukewarm for me due to design decisions, I'm kinda all for supporting these devs and hoping the next game feels more fun (for me). Also, UP+DASH in the air is the most unintuitive choice ever for making a down-smash attack with the spanner weapon. WHY?!
If you read this far, you're obligated to go buy Rabi-Ribi and then either give this dev the equivalent money for TEVI and not play it or buy it and then tell me how wrong or right I am later. I just needed to rant and ranting to my spouse and friends about this wasn't enough. Rant over, get it on sale next summer when Steam inevitably has a sale with it at 50% off. It's still better than your average Metroidvania just for the bosses alone, despite all my disappointment with it. I hope to maybe decide to come back and finish it eventually.
I think it's worth talking about TEVI (it's in all-caps on Steam, so that's how I'm going to refer to it) because I got deep into the fifth chapter (out of eight, I think?) and put 15 hours in already.
The difficult part about talking about TEVI is that there are really only two ways for me to talk about it:
1. Pretend like I've never played Rabi-Ribi (and pretend like I didn't see the cameo appearances of Erina and Ribbon or the Rabi Smash game in the back end of my playthrough)
2. Compare this game to Rabi-Ribi and expect some of the best exploration-based design in the history of Metroidvanias.
Well, I guess there's option 3: Why not both?!
Let me get the good out of the way: If you enjoyed the touhou aspect of bosses from Rabi-Ribi, you're not going to be disappointed here because the boss fights are easily the best part of the game. I didn't get to measure the differences in difficulty to see how vastly the bullets are applied over any given boss fight, but I'll always offer a shout-out when a game decides to modify difficulty based on actually affecting interaction and not just adding extra health, armor, or whatever. I played on Normal, I died a couple times, it felt like an okay difficulty, take that as you will.
The soundtrack is also pretty solid in some spots (I absolutely love the opening and Morose Town). Most stuff was fine and I think the soundtrack might be on par with Rabi-Ribi.
The game is huge, which I was rather expecting. I wasn't expecting that I'd only have 56% map coverage by the back end of Chapter 5, though. But also, this is where I need to bring up some gripes.
First, regarding level design: TEVI does something interesting with its room designs that I had to note, even if I absolutely don't like it -- there's almost always one-way paths forcing you in a direction away from the exploration that you're probably used to doing while playing a Metroidvania and these one-way paths often require you to go through some very roundabout traversing to get back onto what seems like the regular route you're taking. What makes this interesting is that this one-way funneling IS the regular route and is often the quickest way to the boss / next area while also showing you a significant amount of the area you're in. It's fascinating because you're getting probably over 50% of the map for the area completed just by being forced down these windy paths, but the act of being forced/corralled/funneled just leaves you feeling like you're not really that much in control of your movement through these areas. It's like a busted escalator that you can't go back up and you can't jump over the sides, either -- get to the bottom and see what's coming!
Some of the one-way pathing is peculiar because there are blocks you can occasionally bomb, but some blocks that look exactly the same can also just crumble and cause you to lock into an animation that looks like you stumbled as you fall through them slowly to the next room. Sometimes, you can just touch a crumbling block and move past it without falling in. Sometimes, you just get locked into it and you're going to the next level down and working your way around to the next big moment. Sometimes, you can get into that seeming funnel and work your way out of it, only to find yourself going back up to the exact same spot, with you probably opening up a shortcut back to the area you started from, with the notion that you never would have been able to continue in that direction if you had wanted to go your own way. The game has determined that YOU WILL GO SEE OUR BIG STORY DEAL THAT WE WANT TO SHOW YOU. YOU MUST. BY ANY MEANS.
I love exploration and solid bosses, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Metroidvanias (and Souls-likes). Exploration is paramount to me, with the more options available equating to a better experience overall. Rabi-Ribi gave me this in a way that few Metroidvanias (I'm also looking at you, Environmental Station Alpha!) ever have. So, it's with great disappointment that I share how very little there is in the way of enjoyable exploration in TEVI.
I mentioned the whole thing about the story by any means necessary, and I wasn't joking -- your gating abilities are locked behind storyline moments or areas leading to the next storyline beat. And not only are they locked behind those moments and beats, the game will go out of its way to let you know in multiple ways. In some instances, the game will actively tell you that you don't need to go somewhere right now if you try and take a path that's open to you (at first, I thought this was just because of the merchant conversation in the Prologue, but it happens with multiple areas throughout the game). In other instances, if you try to go into an area that's in the same direction as the story marker on your map, you'll get a warning that if you go into that area, you won't be coming out for a while and that you better prepare yourself. Not really sure what preparation entails, because crafting is silly in this game and healing items are one of the few things that don't really take much effort to craft. More on that later. But in one other way worth noting, should you decide that you want to go exploring with any newfound power-ups you have to check out places you haven't been yet, you will generally find yourself stuck and unable to progress further until you have YET ANOTHER story-based ability that you're likely missing. And if you're like me and went back to the first area of the game after every new ability you got, then you're also probably like me and gave up after you got multiple bombing and movement abilities and had come back FOUR TIMES without being able to get back up to the area where you started. And nearly every new area is like this even when backtracking to them after getting an upgrade, you'll just make a tiny bit more headway than before and be stuck all over again. No bosses (I don't count the Elite Battle challenges given by a particular NPC as a side quest among these), no neat looping back between areas by linking multiple places together in unrealized ways, no cool power-ups (maybe a random stat potion or a sigil if you're lucky). If this were one of my first Metroidvanias, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me but when I heard about this game being made after playing through Rabi-Ribi's POST-POST-POST GAME, I expected the kind of loose and wild craziness of a game that absolutely understood just how much you could break it while still being able to move around it freely if you just understood the mechanics well enough. TEVI is the exact opposite of that.
I mentioned crafting briefly and the sigils in this game are very much in the same vein as the badges from Rabi-Ribi. Some sigils are found in plain sight, some are hidden in rooms on maps, some are purchased with a limited money resource (money is found through destruction of certain blocks and is never dropped by monsters), and some are crafted via elementals and essences. Some of your other orbitar (little shooty-assist-things for a spoiler-free description) upgrades and some of the abilities themselves can be upgraded through crafting. How do you get resources? Kill enemies, hope they drop what you need, and if they don't, spend nine of one resource to get two sets of three of another elemental or essence resource and hope you get what you need. This whole system feels like an afterthought because you're given the ability to wade through enemies in hopes of getting what you need and just gambling for less resources if things don't go your way. It's padding that could have been usefully spent searching for those same sigils and ability upgrades as drops in some of those paths that you just were never allowed to go further down until you have every ability in the game. There was a real chance to put some real rewards down alternate paths of exploration and instead, you're just killing enemies and praying to the loot gods that you inevitably get what you need after a time. I don't like crafting in games where it feels like it's shoehorned in and this seems excessively so, especially since they let you burn resources to try and RNG your way to more resources.
I forgot in the midst of my rant on exploring (I'm not going back up to reinsert this!) that the worst offender for how the world design is set up is the Freeroam Mode. This is an option you can enable when starting a game that lets you skip the story entirely and gives you a move that Erina from Rabi-Ribi initially had that allowed you to sequence break into areas you couldn't reach previously. This mode originally wasn't available until you beat the game, but I'm guessing after some push-back about the lack of functional exploration with gating abilities from reviewers, it was patched to become unlocked at the start. I've seen arguments that the level system (experience is given through exploration and beating bosses, I believe) and the limited supply of coins and occasional sigil or stat-boosting potion make up for the fact that you're constantly only able to make slight headway further into these areas you're retracing your steps back to, but these arguments also seem to come from people who are playing on the highest difficulties and found themselves needing every edge to compete with the bosses. It's an argument I understand, but I don't think it justifies the stilted exploration experience, especially if Freeroam Mode is a thing in the first place.
I haven't really talked about the story and that's because since I didn't finish it, it's hard to really comment on how it all fleshed out without being speculative. I'll say that the all social and political commentary feels VERY heavy-handed, but that didn't really bother me -- your mileage may vary.
I feel like there was more I wanted to talk about, but I've been writing this for way too long instead of actually playing more games. Even though this game is lukewarm for me due to design decisions, I'm kinda all for supporting these devs and hoping the next game feels more fun (for me). Also, UP+DASH in the air is the most unintuitive choice ever for making a down-smash attack with the spanner weapon. WHY?!
If you read this far, you're obligated to go buy Rabi-Ribi and then either give this dev the equivalent money for TEVI and not play it or buy it and then tell me how wrong or right I am later. I just needed to rant and ranting to my spouse and friends about this wasn't enough. Rant over, get it on sale next summer when Steam inevitably has a sale with it at 50% off. It's still better than your average Metroidvania just for the bosses alone, despite all my disappointment with it. I hope to maybe decide to come back and finish it eventually.