Neva – PC Test – Krinein Video Games

After the extraordinary GRIS, the Spanish studio Nomada is offering a new work this fall 2024, Neva, which also seems to have a strong poetic and artistic dimension.

In view of the immense qualities of Studio Nomada and certain presentations of Neva by the press as: “Built on the foundations of Gris, Neva offers a delicate blend of platforming and thinking, alongside light, intuitive combat against monstrous creatures.“, we once again expected a marvel.

Except not at all. Far from revealing a dreamlike power in the gaming experience, Neva is above all a naughty game of constant confrontation with diverse and varied monsters, ever more powerful, ever more devious, who dodge, disappear, fly, jump, attack from afar, from behind, from below, in groups, all culminated by bosses as gigantic as they are mind-blowing at the end of each chapter. Suffice to say that the surprise is bad, very bad. The fights are not at all “light and intuitive“. We die constantly, because we only have three poor life points, and it is very hard to recover them, so much so that we have the impression of not being in the magnificent puzzle game, exploration /platforms that Neva could have and should have been, but in a die & retry. The icing on this poisonous cake is that the heroine only has three poor attacks, and even then, the 2nd and 3rd don’t happen right away.

We hit, we bang constantly and we have incredible bosses that are way too hard.

Probably aware that this particularly brutal dimension of the game could spoil the experience, the developers allowed the options to adjust the difficulty level at any time. It was a good idea, except that in easy mode, you then have unlimited lives, which means you go from everything to nothing. Fatal error. It’s not because we don’t like fights that are too difficult that we want a fight that is tasteless, uninteresting, meaningless. It was then better not to have a fight at all or to construct the confrontation differently, in a way Cthulhu for example, where we never really fight with the monsters.

Reaching these flowers – at the bottom of the image – made the neurons fire up like crazy throughout the game.

In any case, putting aside this major pitfall, we admit that Neva came very close to being a jewel. The graphic style, so refined, but no less captivating, is recognizable and appreciated at first glance. The same goes for the biological atmosphere, a true ode to the living and to nature, which must face dark spirits who try to destroy and engulf it. Except that we are surprised by the big graphic repumption of the black vengeful spirit in the white mask of the Chiiro’s Journey. Perhaps the wink was intentional, but in that case Nomada should have given Miyazaki a little thank you in some way. In addition, we still do not understand why our animal companion was a horned wolf. If you want to invent a mythological creature, you have to be a little more creative.

Little, not very glorious re-pump of Chiiro’s Journey.

In the end, exploration and reflection are probably the most successful part of Neva. If at first it’s a little empty, as the chapters progress, the tools and mechanisms become richer, more complex and reveal true originality. We go from simple jumps, to double jump, jump combined with lateral propulsion, or with explosive attack which propels upwards, to teleportation portal, then jump which combines with the portal, or attack of the wolf on an element to trigger an opening etc… And that’s without mentioning the blocks that disappear and reappear, or the removable structures. But the best were the mirror passages, like Divergent Shift. What a good return to a game that reaches into three dimensions of ourselves!

Who am I? Where am I going? The occasional return of a bit of Divergent Shift.

And all this was very skillfully combined with thinking. How to access this or that place, where to go, in which direction to move the structure? Consider hitting while jumping or turning around. Consider triggering an opening in the middle of a jump. Think about attracting an enemy so that he moves a block. Even in combat, you have to think and observe your terrible adversaries to find tactics. It’s just that putting it into practice was too difficult. In short, the neurons are heating up as desired and that’s what made me finish the game and above all made me want to continue. A sign that the game wasn’t that bad, despite its unexpected brutality.

In summary, Neva worth it, but it doesn’t come close to GRIS in terms of poetry, originality and creativity. In addition, it does not exceed 7 hours of lifespan. If we could forgive him GRIS which was a first production, it passes much less for Neva and this is especially true since half of the game consists of hitting monsters.

I fought hard to reach that fire.