A long while ago bunny girls were fairly common in gaming, sometimes as the protagonist like in Keio Flying Squadron, but most often just being window-dressing characters in shops and casinos. It’s a weird relic of the late ’80s/early ’90s, but everything gets revived eventually, given enough time. Rabi-Ribi was the last major bunny-girl outingback in 2016, but earlier this year came the announcement that a thematic sequel was coming along in the form of Tevi. Anice, large demofocused on the gameplay, putting bunny-eared Tevi through her paces in an expedition that was good for several hours of bullet-hell metroidvania combat and exploration, but still only a taste of the huge adventure to come.
Despite her bunny ears, Tevi is one of the humans living in the techno-fantasy world of Az. Three sentient races populate the decaying land, with the other two being beastkin and the biomechanical magitech. Tevi is a young, headstrong and smart engineer who’s equally handy with her wrench as both a tool and a weapon, and she’s set off into the world to find astral cogs to aid her father’s research into fighting the decay that’s slowly overtaking their home. Captured by bandits and locked in a cell, Tevi is exactly where she wants to be in order to loot their base of its rumored astral gear, but on the way out she makes some unexpected friends in the form of angel-like magitech Celia and the devil-type magitech Sable. The two join her on her astral gear-hunt as pokeball-ish orbitars that provide ranged attacks, and from there Tevi’s combat abilities never stop growing to meet the threat of an endless array of creatures, monsters, and mini- and mega-bosses, allowing her to help the many people she meets on the quest to reverse Az’s decay.
Tevi, like Rabi-Ribi beforehand (and Astlibra Revision, for that matter) is the type of metroidvania adventure where the hero’s fighting skills start off basic, but keep having new abilities and upgrades added along the way, until a fight midway through the game can be utterly confusing to someone watching despite making perfect sense to the player. The basic wrench-smash soon gets turned into a multi-hit combo, while Celia and Sable provide a power-shot and a bullet that does a second’s worth of continuing damage to whatever it hits, respectively. Tevi’s abilities are mostly instant-response, hit a button and they happen, while her support-orb friends need to be at 100% charge for their more powerful shots to work.
As the adventure progresses, Tevi earns an uppercut, a couple of different types of spin attack, aerial combos, dash attacks both ground and air-based, and a good deal more. She also learns how to upgrade the orbitars Celia and Sable inhabit, providing each of them with two more shot-types beyond the ones they start with as well as multiple type of bullet-canceling shield abilities that come with a handy counterattack. The upgrades are introduced at a slow but constant state, so it’s not overwhelming to get to grips with all the combat options available even with the wrinkles sigils can throw into the mix. Even so, there area a lot of abilities and the tutorial isn’t as strong as it could be. The display in the upper-left is supposed to tell you all you need to know but is in desperate need of a chart saying which colored stripe or glowing ball corresponds to what skill.
Sigils are found everywhere, from secret areas in the levels to available in shops, and even as rewards for completing elite encounters. Equipping most of them costs points, and each one provides some type of tweak or change to an ability ranging from relatively minor to fully transformative. Is it worth losing a little attack power on the ground combo for an extra hit? Maybe, or maybe those points are better spent on a skill that automatically drops a bomb on completion of a basic combo. There are endless dozens to find or craft, and you can even make multiple types of loadouts to experiment with the options. Adding abilities or charge speed to the orbitar shots, a one-time-per-battle revival from zero HP, lowering one stat to boost another, or just getting a straight percentage increase in attack power are just a few of the options, and you can either equip what makes you happy or bust out the spreadsheet for min-maxing any situation you find yourself in.
Which, to be clear, are all going to be dangerous. Even the standard enemies are capable of getting in a few good hits, and death is always a risk. The difficulty level is changeable back at Tevi and her father’s home, whether you want to take it easy with Cakewalk or crank it all the way up to the sounds-less-terrifying-than-it-is Expert level, and every one of the many biomes has a teleporter so you’re rarely stuck in an overwhelming encounter (also, the few times the plot railroads you forward you get a warning and the option to not engage yet, which is awfully polite and appreciated). Even so, Tevi earns its bullet-hell description with enemies that aren’t shy at all about throwing out an endless array of firepower patterns to back up the creatures that are more physically confrontational. As the game goes on it’s not unusual to have several enemies on screen at once requiring different prioritization, pulling out the air combo to take on the flying snipers before carefully landing to handle physical attackers, keeping their and your attack ranges in mind and maybe switching up the orbitar shot type to something more situationally effective. It’s not a soulsbourne, in that you need to worry about every hit and potential loss of HP, but what seems like a generous health bar can easily get whittled down as attacks backed up by a surprising amount of buffs and debuffs sneak through your defenses.
Tevi isn’t all combat, though, and as a good metroidvania it’s got a huge number of environmental puzzles to figure out. Sigils could be hidden anywhere, from false walls to destructible blocks, and each map biome shows not only what percentage you’ve explored, but also items and resources found. Enemies don’t drop coins so instead you’ll need to find cash by breaking marked blocks in out-of-the-way areas, while rare blocks with a purple icon hold the gems needed to craft equipment upgrades. Bottles in a number of colors are also scattered around the map, each of which provides a bump to a specific stat. There’s a lot to chase after, and the slow but steady stream of new movement abilities means Tevi will want to revisit old areas on a regular basis to unlock their secrets.
Closing Comments:
Tevi is an exceptionally strong metroidvania-RPG, with a detailed combat system and a large number of enemies with varying attack patterns to use it against in intricate levels filled with hidden goodies. The deceptively-simple beginnings act as a gentle entry-point for the wonderfully-competent bunny girl Tevi, who in the story sections shows she’s as smart as she is agile in combat. Granted the character design is happy to dip into pandering, especially with the angels like Celia, but for the most part the plot is (usually) played straight. The gameplay flows nicely from combat to exploration and back again, and the regular bosses and mini-bosses provide a strong challenge with only the occasional overpowered one in the latter half of the game turning into a task similar to chopping wood in a hailstorm, endlessly hacking away at a massive health bar while dodging its bullet patterns as best possible. The regular flow of new abilities keeps the lengthy playtime from growing stale, and there’s always a new area to explore as the world map keeps growing with freshly-discovered biomes. Top it off with the detailed pixel art and a strong soundtrack, and Tevi is a must-play for anyone who’s ever loved a little bullet hell in their fast-action combat metroidvania.
