The Adventure of Ravi ‘n’ Navi

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

The Adventure of Ravi ‘n’ Navi is a 3D Platformer released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, and I’ll start this by saying that if you read a review of this game that doesn’t use the words “Banjo” or “Kazooie”, you can pretty much guarantee that the reviewer either hasn’t actually played this game, or they haven’t played Banjo-Kazooie. I say this because it is pretty much impossible to review this game without drawing a comparison to that Nintendo 64 classic that was clearly the direct inspiration for this game.

Or, to put it more simply: The Adventure of Ravi ‘n’ Navi is what you get when you copy-paste Banjo-Kazooie and then make everything at least a little bit worse.

Let’s start with the presentation. I meant it when I said this game is really trying to copy Banjo-Kazooie, and you can see it in everything from the way the main menu has you shifting between options by looking at different parts of the protagonists’ house, to the way characters speak with gibberish noises, even with little collectibles introducing themselves like this. The game even makes use of very simple-looking 3D visuals you could almost expect to see on the Nintendo 64, and these are backed by simple MIDI-style music that changes as you go to different parts of an area.

Unfortunately, that music isn’t catchy like Banjo-Kazooie’s soundtrack and ends up being extremely repetitive and annoying. The 3D levels suffer from a good amount of pop-in and often have ugly, repetitive textures, and the character design is either ugly, boring, or both. It kinda’ says something that this game perfectly captures the look and feel of one of the best-looking games of a prior generation, yet still ends up looking and sounding repulsive.

The rest of the game unfortunately follows suit. This is very much an old-school 3D Platformer, which of course means that you have all sorts of collect-a-thon elements, a camera that you constantly need to babysit, and level design that’s often repetitive and mazelike, making it far too easy to get lost.

Unfortunately, Ravi ‘n’ Navi makes things worse by putting players in areas that are overly big and empty, and making finding everything in an area mostly compulsory – you aren’t enticed by the thrill of finding secrets, you are often outright required to dig them all up to progress. What’s worse, the actual platforming itself is joyless, with your character being just a tad too difficult to control reliably when making precise jumps, and with those jumps being a bit too short to be satisfying.

Even something as simple as water is something this game gets wrong – players don’s swim in it, they sink to the bottom and slooooooooowly trudge through it. Perhaps a later ability may change this, but players likely won’t have the patience to wait that long. Oh, and guess what you have to move through a lot of in the early areas of the game? That’s right, water.

As much as I think The Adventure of Ravi ‘n’ Navi is a horribly flawed game, I still can’t help but be impressed by it – this game’s designers clearly went to a lot of effort to evoke Banjo-Kazooie in everything from the game design to presentation, and it’s hard not to feel some nostalgic charm shining through due to that. Unfortunately, not nearly as much effort was put into making sure that this game itself was, you know, fun. And frankly, if you’re craving Banjo-Kazooie on the Nintendo Switch, you’re far better off playing Yooka-Laylee, or better yet, get on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo 64 app and just play Banjo-Kazooie. Either way, you’ll have a better time playing those games than you will playing this second-rate copycat.

tl;dr – The Adventure of Ravi ‘n’ Navi is a 3D Platformer that’s clearly trying to copy the look and feel of Banjo-Kazooie, and while it’s impressive just how far this game goes to copy that one, it ultimately only succeeds at being “like Banjo-Kazooie, but pretty much everything is worse”.

Grade: C-

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