Neva is a fantastic platformer game that is several years old and therefore has been offered for free on the PS-Plus network. I likely wouldn't have known about this game's existence if it was not for that. After a couple of hours of play I can say that this is a wonderfully beautiful game with lots to enjoy. It is a visual marvel for people that appreciate something a bit different.
With that in mind though, there are some things that I have discovered at about 50% through the game that are going to seriously improve your experience with this title if you at least pay attention to them.
This game doesn't hold your hand at all and there are going to be instances in it where you seem to not really know what the hell to do in a certain battle or puzzle because it hasn't told you how it is that you can even do a certain move that will get you through it. There was one instance in the game where I kept getting trapped by this creature that pops out of the ground and then something comes and mauls you and you can do nothing about it. This is because you recently unlocked a new skill yet the system didn't even tell you have to activate it, which I found to be kind of a nuisance.
I get that they don't want to give away the game's accomplishments but in this particular instance you have never even used the button that was necessary in the past and I only figured it out by hitting every button after respawning in the same place for the 13th time or so.
On the screenshot above I am on the far right trapped by some sort of leg-thing that shot out of the ground and the boar is getting corrupted by some mind-control virus that has infested the earth. You can see on the top of the screen that it tells you to press R2... fair enough BUT that only appears on the screen for about half a second and because of all that is going on around you there is a good chance that you didn't even see it. R2 has never been used up to this point so I think most people likely died here many times before noticing it. But this leads me to my first point that will improve QOL
Use "Neva" as often as possible
Neva, your wolf/dog friend is capable of attacking from afar and will disable a lot of opponents that otherwise would take you a long time to walk to. Many of the enemies are specifically designed to stay out of range and while you can't spam this attack, it is absolutely essential to enjoying the experience henceforth at this point in the game. Maybe that will seem obvious to people less stupid than me but it took me a while.
Use your weak triple attack to restore life
Excuse my French, but your triple attack fucking sucks. It's weak, it exposes you to automatic contact damage if you get too close, and it puts you into an attack animation that you can only escape from by pressing the dodge button mid-swing. However! This is the ONLY way to restore life during a battle between checkpoints. For every 3-4 strikes you land in a row, one of your life snowflakes is restored.
There is a particular boss battle, which I consider to be the most difficult in the game including several that come after it, where you are fighting two deer type things at the same time. When their corruption is exposed you can send Neva to do damage on them as she/he is much more powerful than you are, BUT by doing so you eliminate your ability to get some life back, so if you are close enough you should go and triple strike them yourself instead and restore a life point.
Focus on dodging in battles
I know, I know. Dodging mechanics kind of suck in games but in this game there is a very small cooldown on your dodge and it gives you a very big window of invincibility when doing so. Often, if you do not dodge through an enemy, the encounter is specifically designed to whip your ass. I'm sure there are some Dark-Souls types out there that can probably defeat these enemies without this but let's be honest here: Those kind of people aren't going to be playing Neva. For us normies we probably need to seek the path of least resistance and dodging through an enemy and striking them from behind is the best way to go. Your "pew pew" attack is weak AF so trying to mad-button-mash on an enemy in front of you is a great way to take some hits since for many of them, your attack doesn't even interrupt their attack but theirs will interrupt yours.
Seems a bit unfair, but that's the way it is.
Embrace dodging. It isn't super-difficult and precision oriented like in much more difficult games like Hollow Knight or even worse Silksong.
Do NOT turn down the difficulty
I'm not going to try to tell you how to live your life but in this game you have two difficulty modes: Normal and Story. You may feel tempted to turn it down a particularly difficult part of the game but more often than not the battle is difficult to you simply because you are doing it completely wrong and are simply not dodging something that you MUST dodge to get through the battle. By turning down the difficulty to "story" the game becomes wildly different. It is far TOO easy on this setting and unless you just stand there, almost nothing stands any chance of killing you.
Often, the reason why it is "difficult" is because a game that isn't going to explicitly tell you how to do something is intentionally trying to teach you a new and necessary tactic. If you do not take the few minutes that it takes to learn this new tactic such as double jumping then dashing to dodge an AOE ground attack, you are not going to be prepared for when this happens over and over again in later stages. By turning the difficulty down to "story" you get past everyone easily but for me, since this game has so few moves in it anyway, you are eliminating most of the fun and satisfaction from getting past something that once you figure it out, is kind of super-easy anyway.
At the moment this game is free on PS-Plus Extra or above sub tier, and $5 on Steam. I think it is well worth the price for people who enjoy artistic puzzle platformers