What are the pros of Neva?

Phenomenal art direction and stunning hand-drawn animations. A masterfully composed soundtrack that enhances the emotional atmosphere. A touching and impactful story that resonates deeply with players. Beautifully designed environments and landscapes. Successfully blends platforming and exploration into a cohesive artistic experience.

What are the cons of Neva?

Combat mechanics are very basic and can feel repetitive or unrewarding. The game is relatively short, with a completion time of around 4 hours. The camera is often very zoomed out, making it difficult to see characters or navigate certain sections. Lack of meaningful character progression or power-ups to keep the gameplay loop fresh. Platforming and combat can be surprisingly frustrating compared to the game's chill aesthetic.

Is Neva worth buying?

Neva is a visually and aurally stunning follow-up to Gris that delivers a deeply emotional narrative through breathtaking landscapes and animation. While it successfully elevates video games to an art form, some players find the newly introduced combat mechanics frustratingly basic and the overall experience quite short.

Neva Reviews — What 9,386 Players Think

GamerVerdict

Neva Reviews — What 9,386 Players Think | GamerVerdict

Wishilisted Neva immediately after seeing it’s from creators of Gris, and yeah, it has same feeling as their previous game atmosphere and artistic direction wise, but i like Gris more, lets talk why. Graphically - this game has highly artistic style which would make it ageless, it seems a bit simplistic but nonetheless very beautiful. Animators did wonderful work with how fluid everything is and considering how game looks i’d not be surprised if everything was handdrawn. Audio adds greatly to atmosphere, both sound and osts alike. Music is either serene or tragic\dramatic which follows game events, as you can see it’s a minor spoiler with absence of happy tunes. Gameplay is mostly platformer with bits of fighting, but mostly platforming. It has some simple puzzles and entertaining mechanics like mirrored jumping and battles. And ofc you have games namesake - Neva to accompany you - a wolfie that grows along with your journey from cub that you have to help climb to full grown Princess Mononoke beast that you can ride and who can greatly help you in combat. Pets are present and highly encouraged even having an achievement for it. Length could be considered a bit short, which is both boon - cause it does not overstay its welcome and tells complete story and con - less time to spend with game. Since it does not have any replayability except for to get all collectables, there is not much reason to go through it again after completing once. Now on to plot - don’t like it. Gris had better one, not in terms that it has bad storyline, i just don’t like what it represented and do not agree with it. Cannot say more without spoilers, so next part is covered. [spoiler]Yeah i get that whole thing is circle of life in terms of seasons - from birth to death, but this game seriously needs some John Wicking, cause sure seasons and nature surely does its thing, but how is it fair that your wonderful wolfies are caught up in it too, they should be living very very long life and dies of old age, not to some fing rot or entropy whatever those things represent. [/spoiler]

Recommended4h played13 found helpful

TL;DR: 9.5/10 game, Gris fans will adore it. But you should go in with an open mind and readjust your understanding of what defines a game. And the price to content ratio is a bit rough, even if the quality makes up for it. Let's just start off by addressing the negative reviews you will see here. I understand why they exist, but I think they were expecting this game to be something the game never claimed it would be. If your idea of a game is something that requires a challenge, something where you have to "win" something and fight hard to earn that win, this won't even classify as a game for you. And that is no shade to those types of games, I love those too, but this is not one of those. Someone mentioned this is effectively a walking simulator, and I can't disagree with that. You walk around, have a couple easy fights, that's all. But here is the thing. If you are anything like me, you don't define games that way. You see it as an interactive art form that has varying degrees of challenge. For example, to me Celeste (my favourite game of all time) is just a piece of art that I happen to be able to interact with with more challenge than what this game gave me. Same goes for Hades (another top 5 for me), same goes for any game. And THAT is something this game absolutely nails, being art. I went into this game with the expectations of Gris, and was honestly thinking I will be disappointed because that is a high bar. But the artwork was just as brilliant (different in some ways, the same in others), the music is still gorgeous, and I cried just as hard in the end, maybe harder. Yes, you could argue the storyline is clichéd, but a well executed cliché is still incredible and worth the time. Basically, if you view video games as competition (Warzone, Hades, Celeste, any of the thousands of roguelikes), you will be fine skipping this one. But if you view video games as art, 100% go for it. If you loved Gris, 200% go for it. I got this game as a gift, and my only complaint will be that it is a bit too pricey for the amount of game in there, but the quality of those 4 hours easily makes up for the quantity.

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