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Tevi Review: Raving Rabbit
Platform(s): PC (version reviewed), Nintendo Switch
Genre: Metroidvania with Maple Story graphics & Devil May Cry action combo system
2023 already has its fair share of 2D Metroidvania/search action games: you get dumped on a giant map with interconnecting areas of various environments and settings, get powerups that help you traverse further, and fight bosses in 2D-scale combat while uncovering secrets most rewarding. What else can you add to the genre?
How about Devil May Cry-style combat but 2D, bullet hell shmup mechanics, and bunny ears? Enter Tevi, the latest indie title from three developers who formed a company called CreSpirit. And for a follow-up to its previous 2D action effort Rabi-Ribi, it’s a lot more fleshed out in some aspects.
You control a bunny girl named Tevi, who fights with knives, a giant wrench, and two orbital satellites possessed by an angel and devil (both catering to additional anime fetishes). Your job is to collect Astral Gears for your surrogate father scientist, while uncovering a conspiracy that involves literal Heaven and Hell in the game’s universe called Az.
That means you’ll be exploring a ton of places and dungeons, ranging from beaches to snow fields, to even torture chambers run by angels, to the underground and Underworld leading to a devil-run city called Tartarus. Subtlety is neither Tevi’s strongest suit, nor is its story which is clearly written by fans of anime.
Instead, the game’s strength lies in its combat system and aforementioned bullet hell moments. Tevi herself controls smoothly and plays like a 2D Dante complete with Helmbreaker-style downward slashes (but with a giant wrench). Her two orbital satellites come in red (devil) and blue (angel) flavour, each with their own shot types you can switch at will. I prefer the blue orb’s homing blasts and multi-reflecting laser shots, but the red orb’s spiral bullets aren’t half-bad either. No matter your preference, you’ll find a great melee-and-ranged combo you’ll stick with and power up. Your orbs can also emit a bullet hell-absorbing field that gives temporary buffs to Tevi; this power-up is handy in a pinch especially if you’re having trouble dodging some of the game’s more notorious bullet hell segments squirting out of the plethora of epic bosses you’ll be fighting.
Beyond that, you also can equip Sigils which bolster your abilities passively. While some can read as obtuse, most of them will either buff your attacks, add extra attacks to your traversal movesets, or add more buffs to the food you can craft and heal with. The higher your character level, the more Sigil points you earn, meaning you can equip many of the powerful ones that cost 8 and 9 points. As such, killing enemies in the world of Az is imperative for experience and loot, the latter which you can use for crafting or upgrading traversal items and your two orbs.
The exploration parts, however, need work. Being a story-driven Metroidvania, there aren’t that many secrets to uncover, or at least anything that entices you further to check out every nook and cranny. I’m not knocking on the aesthetics and levels; they’re actually solid and lovely to look at, particularly the home base of the game’s angel race and the seaside area with the water levels. It’s just that most of the time, you get your important items through the story bits and visual novel-style conversations complete with lovely key artwork to punctuate the standard anime trope-heavy bits. This does limit the incentive to which you would go out of your way to explore further, instead having you just follow a linear path with some open-ended space to check out.
Plus, some of Tevi’s abilities like her late-in-the-game wall jump just feel iffy to use when compared to other Metroidvanias that implement the skill better.
While it’s not the most innovative or invigorating search action game around, Tevi does deserve praise for its combo-centric combat and bullet hell orbital shoot-em-up mechanics. As well as the epic boss fights: you ain’t seen nothing if you haven’t experienced fights with angels and devils showering you with insane amounts of projectiles and lasers, with your skills and wits (and incredibly tiny hitbox on Tevi herself) keeping you alive and on the brink of death.
Tevi scores the goals where it counts: the “action” part of the “search action” genre it wears along with its bunny ears and Maple Story-like coating. If you need more Metroidvanias to fill up your digital library, you can’t go wrong with this half-serious and half-cutesy chibi fare riddled with bullet hell moments and dagger-and-wrench bash-to-bits 2D air combo showcasing.
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