Revita is a new 2D roguelite twin-stick shooter that comes to us from solo developer Benstar and publisher Dear Villagers. It’s a game that asks you to trade your health in exchange for power and you can learn more in our review of the PlayStation 5 version below.
Revita has you playing as a nameless child who awakens in the metro with the classic case of amnesia so they have no idea how they got there. In order to find answers, you have to set off into a melancholic world in order to ascend to the top of a clocktower where your answers may await. Along the way you’ll have to fight many monsters, interact with various NPCs, and use all kinds of weapons and artifacts. The controls are easy to pick up and learn as the left stick controls movement while the right stick lets you aim. The shoulder buttons let you jump, perform dashes, and fire your weapons. Having jump on a shoulder button was weird to me but I got used to it after some time. If you don’t like it, you can remap the controls to something you do like. You’ll start off by picking up a weapon of choice from the main hub station and then you’ll board a train which will take you to your first challenge area. Each of these areas are made up of several floors that you have to fight your way up through. These are all procedurally generated so you’ll never see the same thing twice. Fight your way through each one to reach a boss at the end and then you’ll repeat this onwards and so forth.
There is a decent variety of enemies to fight in the game but I did start to find I was fighting the same ones over and over quite a bit leading to a little bit of a sense of repetition. Learning how to dash properly and pulling off wall jumps is integral to staying alive while trying to clear rooms though. You can get stronger along the way but this is where the game’s core idea of trading health for power comes in. Any time you want to gain access to treasure you have to spend your hearts to do so. This creates a risk/reward system in that you aren’t going to know what you’re going to get so you have to decide whether to trade your health to gamble on a reward when you don’t know if it will even be useful or not to you. Now you can gain your health back by defeating enemies but until then you’ll be closer to death. Something you can do to help mitigate the risk is finding an artifact that tells you what you’ll get before you spend the health to open the treasure. Artifacts give you all kinds of perks like being able to see what treasure you’ll get, increasing your movement speed, dealing more damage, or causing your bullets to apply status effects. There is a many more than that and you can even upgrade them at shops but that comes at the cost of your maximum health.
As you move through the game, you’ll gradually unlock new NPCs back in the hub area. They will all offer up something different for you like new areas to explore, new artifacts, new weapons, or more uses for your soul coins which you earn when you die. Also, when you do complete a run through the game you can unlock ways to further customize the experience on subsequent runs which helps differ things up. As far as the look and sound of the game goes it does both well. The 16-bit art style looks good with a lot of detailed sprites throughout and the soundtrack is suitably retro sounding. Trophy hunters will find a big list of trophies to collect here with 57 in total including a Platinum. I haven’t managed to earn them all yet as you really have to do almost every little thing in the game to earn the Platinum.
Revita doesn’t do a lot new that I haven’t seen in other 2D roguelites but it managed to be a challenging and fun time anyway. I really liked the whole trade health for power mechanic and thought it added a nice bit of risk to the gameplay. You can feel like you are seeing a lot of the same rooms as you are fighting through them but the wide variety of artifacts and ways to change up the game help keep it fresh. I recommend it if 2D twin-stick shooter roguelites are your thing.
*Revita is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. PlayStation 5 version reviewed. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.
Revita
$16.99
Pros
- Responsive and fun twin-stick shooting gameplay
- Fun risk/reward system utilizing your health
- Tons of artifacts and other hidden secrets to discover
- Great retro visuals and soundtrack
Cons
- You can start to feel like you are venturing through a lot of the same rooms over time
