TEVI Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Metroidvanias tend to be slow, deliberate experiences where the focus is on exploration and accumulating new tools. Bullet hells feel like the polar opposite in many ways – they’re fast-paced, linear adrenaline-rush experiences where you face an immediate, overwhelming threat that you can only overcome with quick reflexes. It doesn’t feel like the two genres would mesh too well on paper, yet CreSpirit and GemaYue made it work flawlessly in their 2016 bullet-dodging rabbit-vania Rabi-Ribi. Now, the development team behind that genre mashup have returned with a follow-up called TEVI – and while it’s a different flavour of anime girl adventure entirely, it’s also an incredible Metroidvania that genre veterans and newcomers alike will adore.

If Rabi-Ribi was a mindless, cheesy anime adventure, then TEVI is a bit more of a grounded, mature, game with a smattering of shonen flair to it. Sure, it’s still full of bubbly anime goodness, since your protagonist is a bunny-eared thief girl in a wild costume who teams up with a busty cyber-angel and a neurotic demon boy. While the opening hours have you doing nothing more than wandering around collecting magic MacGuffins called Astral Gears, it soon becomes clear what these gears are capable of, and why it’s so important to secure them. A powerful force called Decay is sweeping over the world, destroying natural lands and entire civilizations. Solving that dilemma is the main crux of TEVI’s 30-ish-hour journey. Still, along the way, there’s an impressively emotional amount of world-building and character development does a lot to make the game more than just a platformer with an anime-tinged coat of paint.

The meat of your time in TEVI will involve incredibly familiar Metroidvania