Thought dump on Tevi

I tried to keep this as spoiler free as possible when it comes to story beats and mechanics, but seeing as a decent number of my issues occur in lategame, I will have to talk the broader strokes of lategame issues, so just keep that in mind.
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As my most anticipated game of year, Tevi had a tall order in trying to follow up GemaYue and CreSpirit's sleeper hit Rabi-Ribi. RR is one of my favorite indie games of all time for a whole myriad of reasons, but it does have a couple notable and pronounced flaws that I was hoping to see get addressed with its successor title.

While Tevi is not exactly a "sequel" to RR, it exists in a separate universe with a completely different story, and while several references to RR (both subtle and not) exist throughout, it's ultimately a completely independent game from the title that it follows. And as a sequel I have to say, by and large it makes a decent amount of improvements.

RR is fairly action heavy and does have some neat abilities and options, but Tevi is an absolute masterclass in 2D sidescrolling action in terms of controlling your character and making 2D combat fun. While your moveset is somewhat limited at first as you get a handle on the game, fighting enemies and moving around as Tevi herself (the titular protagonist) is easily the best aspect of this game and makes the experience worth the price of admission by itself. Her moveset is just incredibly fun to use, especially once you get more movement options. Most of her abilities are fairly standard for Metroidvanias, but they feel quite tight and flow together really smoothly for both platforming and combat. The game's sigil system, which allows you to allot augments to your stats and abilities, further enhances the kinds of stuff you can make her do both in and out of combat while granting the player a significant degree of personal customization for playstyle. Even the simple fact you can pogo off enemies multiple times with certain sigils is kind of amazing, and I'd often find myself doing it simply because it was so fun. The amount of long combos and different things you can pull off in battle makes combat pretty darn fun as well. Pulling off well timed backflips in combat to make clutch dodges is immensely rewarding. The game is a bullet-hell Metroidvania hybrid and the pair works very well, as I feel the game balances melee and ranged combat for Tevi very well, allowing you to feel like you can use both while fighting or dodging the attacks of enemies hurling all sorts of bullet patterns at you, being rewarded for smart play and learning attacks while also punishing you for being too reckless.

I will say on the whole, Tevi is an easier experience than Rabi-Ribi was. Despite me playing Tevi on its highest difficulty available at the start (as you unlock its highest by beating the game), I found it easier than RR was on its regular Hard difficulty. Some of this is likely due to familiarity with the systems and sensibilities of GemaYue (the developer), some of this is due to Tevi's more in depth mechanics giving me more options. For the most part, I think that Tevi being easier comes down to new mechanics making for more split second dodges (which is nice), more options for combat and sigil loadouts, a few additional "bailout" mechanics, and a number of quality of life changes.

In terms of QoL, in RR, you had to choose between spending money on permanent benefits (sigils, potions) or temporary ones (healing items), and generally temporary ones were more valuable in making immediate progress, which slows your permanent growth. In Tevi, a few healing items can be bought, but typically you would craft them with enemy drops. The crafting system in this game is very simple and unintrusive, which I welcome as someone who doesn't care for crafting mechanics in most games; it simply comes down to using some resources you find all the time to make new things, rather than having to seek out complex recipes or use a wiki for. Moreover, it creates a proper resource dichotomy, allowing you to commit the money you make to permanent valuables and the drops you find to as-needed lifelines and perks.

I did feel there were a couple of areas this game's combat could have been a tad better; by the end of the game bosses got a bit too health-spongey, and attempts to defeat them started to feel like battles of attrition which could drag. I would have probably preferred they do about 20% more damage and have 20% less health, making dodging more important while also requiring fewer total hits to take down. Similarly, while healing items have the same condition in Tevi as in Rabi-Ribi, i.e. you have to stand still a couple seconds and can be interrupted (an honestly good mechanic to keep you from just chugging) and you have limits to inventory space, I did feel myself getting bailed out a bit too often in lategame from investing in a surplus of items, death-defy sigils, and stuff like the orbitar shields. I wouldn't say the game got too easy, as I still died on most bosses at least a couple times, but I felt less and less a need to outright master boss attacks when I could abuse certain mechanics to chug through some of them. I kinda wish I had the Infernal difficulty unlocked from the getgo, personally. I get that maybe they were afraid someone would click the highest difficulty without being ready for it, but given that you can toggle the difficulty to your liking at any time, and that many of its systems stem from a game much of its playerbase has already played (RR), I wish the Infernal difficulty wasn't withheld from the start of the game. I understand this might comppund the HP sponge issue more but I digress as these were ultimately only minor issues for me.

When it comes to exploration, Tevi is by and large very much enjoyable. She's fun to move around which makes exploring never feel like a chore in and of itself. The actual areas are genuinely very pretty and the spritework is fantastic, with my only gripes of overworld visual presentation being occasional trouble telling what is in the foreground, background, or a platform I can jump on. The game has a feature allowing you to mark significant spots on the map to your choosing (not unlike for example Etrian Odyssey's little map icons), something I not only love but now wish a lot more games in this style let you do because very few do. Tevi is a big game, but there's enough warp points and fast movement options that make it not feel too cumbersome to navigate from place to place in a timely fashion. I do still have a share of gripes, however. While it isn't uncommon for a Metroidvania to have passages or obstacles you cannot clear your first time there without a power-up acquired later, it does get a bit annoying early on in Tevi how often these come up, more than I felt in RR. The game becomes a lot more navigable a few chapters in once you get some abilities. The other issue is that Tevi is a far more linear game compared to its predecessor. While early on in the game you have a few different objectives to tackle how you like, the game gradually narrows in terms of where it would like you to go which makes it a far more straightforward game than RR, and this ties into my biggest issue with Tevi's design on the whole. RR was pretty unique among games of its type where you could accomplish multiple unique objectives, and you'd feel like every new area you find would play a part in reaching the number of villagers you'd need to access the game's endgame, or at least offer a significant upgrade. It was open-ended and while at times it'd mean you'd be without helpful powerups for long early portions of your playthrough from simply not having explored the right places yet, RR was a uniquely nonlinear in a style of platformer that often sells itself on being driven by exploration, but often are fairly straightforward games past the surface that simply hide a lot of goodies in plain sight you can't get to until later. Tevi ends up being a bit more in the mould of those other games rather than its predecessor after a few chapters, losing that distinct aspect. The problem with this in Tevi's case is that attempts to explore will often yield new areas that have no immediate importance prior to you obtaining new abilities, which ends up discouraging exploration a fair amount. On top of this, I feel like a couple areas I did go to never served much purpose even by the end beyond having a couple stat-up potions and sigils to uncover (by a point in the game's playtime which I already had a somewhat cumbersome amount of sigils to sort through and became less enthralled any time I found new ones, plus enough stats that e.g. flat bonuses of 20 in HP and MP felt generally less substantial). I do greatly like the sigil system and rarely did I find any that I felt were not something I could ever imagine using, something I absolutely cannot say about the equipment systems of most games. But very few sigils were of such importance that finding them made entire areas feel complete. And the feeling of Tevi not really being "complete" is probably the most pervasive sentiment I felt about the game throughout the latter half of my playthrough, that it attempts to have depth where it doesn't quite have what it needs, and leaves a feeling of not being entirely finished. It's polished for sure, outside of a few bugs which have been getting patched ever since the game's launch, the issues are more in Tevi's overall structure than its programming.

As far as story goes, this game is trying to punch far above its weight class. Unlike RR, which maintains a simple and somewhat light story that is never in focus and thus is rarely a factor in considering the game's strengths and weaknesses for me, Tevi features a lot more seriousness in its general tone,  placing considerably more emphasis on its narrative and utilizing a lot more cutscenes. Most of the game is fully voiced, and I'm not just talking indie voices or friends of the development team either. They paid more than like 30 established voice actors known for various anime, games, movie dubs, and the like, including the likes of Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, Takehito Koyasu; if you don't recognize these names, we're talking people who voice some of the most iconic anime characters ever, people you will see get top billing on IMDB or MyAnimeList pages for some pretty popular series. For the most part, they deliver in their performances, as I dont recall any lines that really stuck out as bad, which suggests to me they put some resources into voice directing. The localization of this game also has noticeable effort put into it, as apart from very scarce typos and a couple odd description texts for sigils (which were more likely a case of being difficult to explain succinctly), it felt like a point was made to do it well. It's noticeable compared to, say, Last Command, CreSpirit's previous published game, which at times had a much more noticeably flawed translation especially right after launch. There's some lines in Tevi's script which had noticeable changes in terms of wording but as far as I could tell with my limited ability to understand the Japanese voiceover seemed to fit fine tonally, and the use of sesquipedalian lexicon was noticeable in some lines (you're not gonna find many translators use words like "turpitude" or "clandestinely") that felt almost like the editors of the script were flexing just a bit. All this is to say that CreSpirit put a considerable amount of resources into these aspects of the game, and likely plenty of money to boot.

The reason I say "is trying to punch above its weight class", however, is that the actual writing of the story is simply not very good. The production is there' but the execution of the actual narrative is heavily flawed. As far as characters go, I think the main nucleus of the cast is generally likeable. Tevi herself is an enjoyable smartass with some amusing gremlin energy that I enjoyed following, and the dynamic with her two orbitar companions and herself is the highlight of the game's story component. There's a few enjoyable side characters here and there, and I did find myself enjoying a few of story beats throughout my playthrough. However, that's about where my praise ends. The main story is considerably more dramatic and darker/serious in tone than RR, and it generally misses the mark in its scenes and structure that are of the more serious angle. Without getting into specific spoilers, a lot of drama happens that doesn't feel very organic or purposeful, and instead feels as if it's there for the sake of injecting tension that isn't really well earned. I often describe this sort of writing in the simple terms of "stuff happens", where there's events in the story which feel like they happen because something has to rather than anything taking place organically shaping a compelling narrative, or has much of anything it's trying to say or develop in its characters. This is often accompanied in these sorts of stories by what I simply call "unnecessary plot twists", where twists are put into the narrative simply to have them without them having much overall gravitas beyond their subversive factor or delivering a proper (and actually narratively earned) punch to the audience. Tevi is very much a "stuff happens" plot with a share of unnecessary plot twists that fall flat in their attempt to really make me feel much of anything. There are are a lot of events that simply happen and then don't really get brought up again later despite being left unresolved. Not every plot thread in every story needs to be resolved, but there's a difference between a few loose ends and a pathological problem of ambition where things that feel like they should be dealt with aren't before introducing more things that also don't really resolve. I've seen a couple comments on some Steam reviews saying this game is trying a bit too hard to be like an anime without really quite hitting the marks of what makes good anime work, and while I think that description is a bit reductive, I can see where it's coming from. There's a lot of ambition here, but it's lacking on the follow-through, and I wish the scope was dialed back a bit.

This is all to say that a lot of resources went into a part of the game that they really clearly wanted to pull off, and most likely where a lot of its budget went into, because it can't have been cheap. CreSpirit really wants this game to succeed and become something bigger than simply an indie platformer. In spite of this effort and investment, the narrative ends up ultimately being one of the game's weakest aspects. If you watch the credits, the actual team behind the majority of development and design of this game was just a handful of people. That's not to say the game feels small, far from it, the actual amount of traversible space is incredible for an indie 2D sidescroller. But if I had to describe this game's issues with one word, it would be that a lot feels incomplete. The narrative has a lot of threads and characters that feel unresolved and unsatisfying. Some of this is just writing issues in general, but the amount of stuff that just feels missing that should be there leads me to at least speculate on other reasons. Much of lategame feels very rushed, and while I wouldn't say the area design feels unfinished (outside of those few areas in which there isn't a lot of reason to explore if you aren't going there for story reasons), I can't help but feel like the developers maybe just didn't quite have the time or resources to do everything they wanted with Tevi. A couple parts of this game were completely inaccessible even after beating the game, which makes me feel like they're going to be released later as DLC? Honestly there's several things I have to wonder if they're going to show up as DLC down the line, which further makes me think they might have just run out of budget or time in order to deliver a proper denouement. This isn't to say Tevi is lacking in offering a game of sufficient playtime, it's not a short or small game in spite of the, but even longer games can run into these troubles of uneven structure or development. Either way though, it just feels held back by its narrative problems (which I feel inform some of its design changes and problems on the whole) which ultimately leaves me wishing for certain aspects to have been handled differently.

I do also need to talk about the soundtrack some. RR is one of my favorite OSTs of all time for how absolutely distinct it is, reflecting the game's jovial and upbeat tone with boss themes that do not sound like they should be boss themes but somehow still *work*, and during the few moments the game actually ratchets up the tension, the tracks hit fucking hard. In this area, the composers once again had a tall task following up on CreSpirit's flagship title. And for the most part...the soundtrack to Tevi is pretty great! The sound team of about 7 composers delivered a very solid OST across the board. A lot of themes hit exactly as they should, being on point in communicating the vibes of each area, and are a joy to listen to besides. The mines theme gave me Shantae vibes in the best way possible, the Plagued Forest theme really reflected the gross aesthetic of the area (and this was the replacement version they made for the game's streamer mode, as I streamed my playthrough of Tevi), and the theme for phase one of the final boss serves as a worthy successor to the theme for phase one of RR's final boss (one of my favorite themes from any video game soundtrack ever). But alas, for as much praise as I have for its soundtrack, Tevi's OST necessarily reflects the more serious nature of what it's going for in the story, and ultimately stands out less because of its need for more serious themes, which are far harder to stand out while making in my experience. It's still a well composed game, but I've heard a good amount more scores like it, so it doesn't quite reach the memorability of more unique scores like its predecessor, nor the peaks of some other games which do this type of score already. I understand I'm holding it against Tevi for what it could have had rather than what it has, but alas the OST is another area that felt like Tevi had the potential to offer something truly special while not quite getting there, and not quite distinguishing itself from other games in a way that fully overcomes that.

When this game's script does have its more whimsical moments, it honestly does fine. I enjoy Tevi and her band of friends and family during their sillier moments, even if it can be a bit of otaku humor at times. The main nucleus has plenty personality in their dialogue and facial expressions in ways the world around them and the supporting cast often feels lacking in, as it became increasingly hard to care about or be invested in the characters being regularly introduced I came across. I also gotta say, it's honestly almost kinda weird they try to make the game serious in the way they do because the character design in this game is honestly kind of over the top in a way that makes things hard to take seriously. Tevi herself is quite expressive in her various portraits and CGs, but that isn't gonna change the fact she's wearing a leotard, the detached sleeves of a coat, a cap with goggles, and movable rabbit ears. That's not even getting to some of the sillier designs of certain beastkin and magitech characters. I'm not saying the game couldn't have pulled off a more serious tone, it's just that I think that the game does better in the lighter scenes than the darker ones and that the characters designs and personalities tended to reflect that. I at least appreciate that Tevi's design is at least a bit more modest than Erina's from RR where she's literally just a somewhat unaware and demure girl in a playboy bunny costume (not that I mind more out-there costumes, but for a game of this tone I'm less likely to have to say "I know what it looks like but it's actually great" when talking to people about it).

For me, the number one thing that will make me like a game is its gameplay. In most regards, Tevi is a proper successor that improves on what made its predecessor work while adding enough to make for one of the finest games ever made when it comes to 2D action-platforming. While it loses some points in being less distinct in other areas, there still isn't much out there that has tried this combination of bullet hell and action-platformer besides Rabi-Ribi (the closest that comes to mind is maybe Outland). Combat is just damn fun. But Tevi also suffers from its share of pitfalls and areas where something just feels like it's missing something. It's strangely quite polished (outside of a few minor bugs, several of which have thankfully been patched since release) yet feels kinda unfinished and not fully baked. Which is a shame, because it's otherwise a damn fun game. I'd probably say I like Rabi-Ribi more, just because that game gave me more freedom to play it as I wanted, but I do think Tevi is still a very damn fun game that improves upon many of its predecessors ideas. It's just missing something to really elevate it from "one of my favorite games of the year" to "one of my favorite games ever" that it feels like it could have been, as it is a bit less standout in several areas than I would have hoped and puts too much stock into its weaker points that don't pan out regardless. The areas this game excels in often end up shining a major spotlight on where it falters and "what could have been". Nonetheless, I had a great time actually playing the game for the most part and certainly recommend it (And Rabi-Ribi too, that game rules, even if its aesthetics and some of its gameplay ideas aren't for everyone).

Also man this game might make for a killer speedgame, eager to see how that works out.