Damn that was a game, time to explain why Tevi is my new favorite game of all time.

Just a warning I may ramble a little here.

Going over the most obvious thing first the bosses are phenomenal, I would say this was no surprise given how much I loved Rabi Ribi's bosses, but these broke ANY expectations I had going in. From start to end the bosses are constantly one-upping themselves, getting better and better culminating in some of the craziest final few bosses I have ever seen. Every boss is extremely distinct, all their movesets are completely original and at times will even take some VERY OBVIOUS inspiration from things such as Touhou and Devil May Cry. I love this, seeing Tevi pay homage to the games that very clearly inspired it is awesome, I adore seeing Tevi's own rendition of some iconic characters and attacks. These bosses are an absolute joy to fight, and this is one of those games where I will gladly bang my head against these bosses for hours on end not even realizing how much time has passed.

Alongside bosses being great Tevi also has ridiculously good balancing and gives a ton of customization through way of build variety and the multiple ways to customize how difficult the game actually is, even outside of the sheer number of difficulty options. The "ridiculously good balancing" part may seem controversial as it's very clear that some things are outright broken or have insane synergies but let me explain. A wise man once said, "You have control over the buttons you press" and that rings true here. Tevi's genius balancing stems from the sheer number of options you have that will vastly change how you play and how difficult the game is. Your base kit is balanced perfectly, everything you have feels about equal in strength with nothing feeling overtuned in the slightest. However, you can change this with optional equipment called "sigils" to make certain things stronger than others, and there are well over 200 of these equipables. You can obviously use a broken build with the sheer number of options you have, and spam consumable items while doing so, taking down endgame bosses with ease. But at the same time, you have the option to forgo those powerful options, making the game more difficult and drastically changing how you play at any point as you please. You can steamroll bosses, you can fight on an even playing field, or you could forgo all those customization options and fight with the odds completely stacked against you, I adore this type of game balancing. Very often I would fight a boss with a broken build, only to reset the fight near the end and switch to a build that would make the fight more difficult for fun. I always see people complaining about games with an obscene number of options having "balancing issues" because there's some obviously broken or weak options, even with Tevi, I've seen people complain about how bosses get easier as the game progresses, due to how powerful you can get. But I feel as if this is a misconception as to what good balancing actually is, outside of competitive games, good balancing isn't having all your options be at equal strength, good balancing is giving the player a wide variety of options to choose from with those options fluctuating in strength. Tevi masters this by having everything in your base kit be around equal strength, while having everything optional being at completely fluctuating strengths that you can change at any point. Using something less powerful will not detract from the actual gameplay and force you to avoid certain skills or mechanics, it will only affect how easy the game is, and that's why I believe Tevi's balancing is genius.

Exploration is also an absolute joy. I was a bit taken off guard at first due to how different this game's approach to exploration was compared to Rabi Ribi's. While Rabi Ribi is completely freeform with what you decide to do at any given point, Tevi takes a more linear route with bosses past chapter 1 being ordered and movement options essentially being unlocked with story progression. I may still prefer how Rabi Ribi handles its freeform progression, allowing you to get even endgame gear immediately, but that isn't to say I think Tevi is too far off with its linear progression. Tevi's linearity allows for the areas to be more catered to your current gear at any point, placing more emphasis on things that you may have just unlocked, leading to Tevi having far better areas in my opinion. Tevi's individual areas are a joy to explore and there were very few points where I wasn't having a complete blast exploring them, fuck mazes tho. Re-exploring areas to find hidden items and whatnot is also extremely fun with the only complaint I actually have being the odd number of places that look they should have items or resources.

Getting some last thoughts out of the way, aesthetically Tevi is fantastic. The soundtrack is incredible and goes way harder than it has ANY right to go and visually I adore how this game looks. Boss fights look incredible ESPECIALLY in comparison to Rabi Ribi. They have some of the coolest bullet patterns and attacks I have ever seen in a game period. I also love the artstyle of this game from the fantastic pixel art to the equally as good portraits to some of the best CGs I have ever seen, the quality here is unreal and they clearly were trying to go above and beyond in this regard. I also had fun with the story, while it's nothing too crazy and the main plot is pretty basic the characters are extremely fun, and dialogue is fantastic the whole way through. I especially love the main trio & the father/daughter dynamic between Tevi & her dad, it's really cute. I have also seen people already complaining about how "horny" or "anime" this game is and to that I say to refer to my Rabi Ribi review and read through the comments bc they're pretty funny (https://www.backloggd.com/u/AiriBan/review/953999/), for a tldr y'all complaining are pussies and only have yourselves to blame, fuck you.

I prolly missed something while writing this review but oh wellsies

TLDR this game is crazy fucking good and broke any expectations I had before it released. I love Tevi.

Bros will buy the game with scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it and complain that there are scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it. I just wanna ask what the fellas in the backloggd reviews were expecting when buying said game. This is the equivalent of some fella lookin at a war shooter and getting upset that it's indeed a war shooter but buying it anyways and complaining about that fact as if they didn't know exactly what they were getting into. I don't care how good the reviews are for said game, people should be able to recognize when something is clearly not made for them. (and also recognize that steam reviews normally don't mean shit in the first place)

Ignoring the weirdos that are upset about this and bought the game anyways, the gameplay here is good, very good, my favorite gameplay in fact. As someone who adores both platformers of the metroidvania variety and bullet hells this becomes something special with how it blends these two genres together perfectly. It really says a lot about a game's quality when I ACTUALLY want to go through the entire "beat difficulty to unlock higher difficulty" fiasco, something I didn't even do in something as good as DMC5. Also the boss fights are kinda phenomenal, they're very distinct from one another, have an absurd amount of attacks which constantly keeps them fresh, feel very fair despite the difficulty, and there's more than 30 of them lmao. The ost is also great with "Finale" being one of my favorite final boss tracks ever. overall a good time.

tldr game is very good but it attracts animephobic weirdos despite the very obvious exterior, obviously don't play this if you are for some reason scared of scantily clad anime girls like so many people in the backloggd reviews clearly are.

Edit after playing the Tevi demo: ANYBODY who likes this game needs to hop on Tevi, it's a spiritual successor to Rabi Ribi and is a perfect evolution of it. I very easily see it dethroning Rabi Ribi as my favorite game ever if it even matches the quality of the demo. The wait for Tevi's full release will be a difficult one... November 29th bros...

When seeing people criticize this game I always see them talk about the dream world segments and the gameplay in general, which is justified because those are both insufferable and make this game an absolute chore to play. The gameplay lacks any depth whatsoever and becomes an absolute slog to play almost immediately. Dream world in general has a similar issue in being a complete slog with the dialogue being extremely dull and the segments being way longer than they have any right to be, this game is about 20 hours long but dream world makes it feel like 50.

What I don't see people talk about is the dumbass story with some of the most fake character interactions & dialogue I have ever seen in my life. Like brother there CANNOT be people who say this game's story is realistic when years of unhandled trauma are handled immediately and the main cast goes back to being friends with no problems whatsoever, obviously there's still the drama with Omori & Basil but that extends past that immediate friend group. I'm talking about the main 4 characters here, which is the main focus for the majority of the game and is resolved immediately. Even fucking Shark Tale had a more realistic conclusion between Fish Man and Mob Boss Shark and all they said was "We cool". The Dialogue after said issue is resolved is bland as hell and falls flat on its face with most of it just being them reaffirming the fact that they are friends, gj Omori, this is how real people act I think.

The real meat of the plot is so edgy and stupid it honestly circles back to being funny, Black Space and the real twist behind Mari's death are SO fucking dumb man, how do people take these seriously I need to know. Surely real children would see that beloved sister died and say "Ah man I don't want my friend to get in trouble gotta frame it as a suicide", very real and relatable traumatic experience thank you Omori this is definitely not edgy garbage trying to be something deep.