Neva (PS5): A simple, touching, artful game with a few tragic flaws

I'm back to the Playstation now as I needed a break from Octopath Traveler 0 because it is so story heavy that I need to focus a lot of the story to get what is going on. I was looking for something a bit more casual so I went back through my list of "free" PS5 games that I haven't even tried yet.

Since I really like games that have no story told by words, but instead are just a visual story that it is kind of up to the player what the actual story there is, I thought I would give Neva a try.

src

This game is a puzzle-platformer with some amount of combat mixed in. There is an absolutely excellent soundtrack and the thing I like the most about it is that there are zero words spoken and no story is printed on the screen while playing. The only words that you ever see are the ones that are telling you new moves that you have unlocked such as a new sword downward strike... things like that.

src

The platforming is all 2D side-scrolling and that appeals to the older gamer inside of me. I grew up not having 3D so 2D is still something I prefer.

You take the role of a woman who has a wolf sort of pet that is the apparent offspring of a similar wolf sort of thing that is killed in the opening sequence where once again, there are no spoken words.

src

After the death of the adult, you are apparently charged with raising the baby, who is named "Neva". I only know this because of the fact that one of the buttons calls Neva close to you and that is how some of the platforming puzzles work. As a pup Neva isn't very agile, so you have to help him/her up various areas.

src

you are in some sort of dying world here that has been corrupted by some sort of darkness that seeks to consume all of it and this is what you end up fighting along the way. The story unfolds in such a way that you have to kind of interpret it how you want to and this really appeals to me. There have been a number of games that have been like this but the more popular ones and well-known ones are likely Journey, Inside, and Little Nightmares.

This is just like those in that there IS a story there, but what that exactly is has been left open to interpretation. I like this sort of thing because many other games are so filled with lore and story that it can be a bit overwhelming. While I am ok with it from time to time, other times I like to just have the images on my screen tell the story without talking to me.

All of this has been done expertly, but unfortunately the entire game is not awesome.. there are some aspects of it that I don't particularly care for.

src

The combat takes a second seat to the puzzles but there are instances where you have to fight and this is where the limitations of this game show through. You have a basic attack and a dodge... and that's it. This gets very repetitive especially when you consider that most of the enemies take 5 or more hits to dispatch.

It gets very repetitive even when it is really easy. When it is a difficult enemy, it gets downright annoying.

One of the major problems is that your range with your sword is really short and all contact with enemies damages you. So you need to get really close to hit them, but if you get a few pixels too close, you take damage. I've never really been a fan of touch damage, but I can deal with it if you have great mobility such as exists in Hollow Knight or Ender Lilies. In Neva you do not have mobility and to make matters worse the sword swing and the sword 3-hit combo, locks you into an animation that you can only escape by pressing the dodge button and half of the time, that doesn't work either.

Therefore you end up taking a lot of full-of-crap-damage, and this will never not be annoying to me.

The bosses aren't "difficult" per se, but they aren't easy and often the things that make them hard are things that you couldn't possibly know are going to happen such as an AOE attack that you have never seen before. Since your moveset is very limited, there really isn't much variety that they can throw at you as far as these fights are concerned and for the most part the key to victory in all of these fights (as well as some of the standard enemies) is just to dodge like crazy and then get a few strikes in here and there.

It's boring is what I am trying to say.

Thankfully, combat only encompasses about a tenth of the overall gameplay and most of your time will be spend on quite beautiful platforming.

This game is free for anyone that subscribes to a PS-Plus Extra or higher tier and I think it is worth a look. For people who enjoyed the heck out of Journey it might be worth even paying a bit for.