Reviews from

in the past


time to bonk the boss with hammer combo

This review contains spoilers

(Despite the spoiler tag, I don't think the story in this game is good. I'll be talking about the game's ending, but I don't think it'll ruin your experience if you haven't yet played the game.)

I'm always impressed by games that blend two uncommon genres together to make something different. Rabi Ribi takes both metroidvanias and shoot'em ups. I'm a big fan of the former, just "sight" about the latter. The end result is mostly great, but the game does inherit a lot of both genre's most notorious flaws.

OK, its a game I recommend for sure, but lets start with the bad first because I'm an asshole. Boss design is... Not great. The flaws it inherit from the metroidvania side of things: bosses have invincibility phases; design usually ignores your mobility options and devolves to what I call the "skip rope then mash button" type of fights; and tons of bosses have "quirky" hidden mechanics that you'll only ever discover if you look up a walkthrough. From the shoot'em up side: it has bullets that blend with the background; regularly throws pattern shots and targeted shots at the same time, creating some real checkmate situations; an overreliance of both memorization and extremely precise inputs required.

Still, despite being one of the game's flaws, its not even close to the worst the genre have ever seen. You even get to enjoy them if you're right at the middle of a Venn diagram of "Ikaruga's diehard fans" and "metroidvania enjoyers". But for anyone else, for the most part you're just stacking attack buffs and saving resources to dump them all on the bosses before they get to do too much damage on you. Funnily enough, you'll even get some SSS and Max ranks doing this. My worst ratings in the game were the ones I tried to engage with the bosses on the game's terms actually.

Anyway, the second thing the game does poorly is story. I'd honestly recommend just skipping everything and enjoying the game for the gameplay quality only. The plot is a fever dream of multiverses that never explains itself and by the end even seems to actively mock you. Like, there's 3 "final" bosses in the game. The first two have understandable motivations and seem to raise interesting questions about the truth of Rabi Ribi world. You would expect the last one to be the sort of "mastermind" one that'll explain why and how everything happens and... Well it does. The last boss. The one with a really elongated fight and where the soundtrack goes the hardest. She's the one pretty much responsible for everything that happens in the game. Her motivation?

...she was really horny for bunnies.

I wish I was just joking. At worst, I'm exaggerating. But I wanna be clear, if this is an exaggeration, it is a really, really slight one. This is it. This is the ending. Imagine if you were served the dog ending in Silent Hill 2 by default and with a straight face. That's Rabi Ribi's plot. You just got pranked into playing a kemonomimi yuri. I almost respect the courage tbh.

Despite these two major gripes I have with the game, it really is a good metroidvania when it comes to mobility, progression, level design, and regular combat. The difficulty is really hyped up in this game, but it's honestly just your average metroidvania curve. Starts off incredibly hard, gets progressively easier as you get more and more abilities and items. The last minutes of the game are pure kaizo design nonsense, but road until there is good enough that it doesn't really ruin the experience. Soundtrack is good, artistic design good, overall gameplay is good. Rabi Ribi is a good game. It's only ever "great" if you're an huge shoot'em up fan with a soft spot for chibi animal girls though.

A highly enjoyable and intense bullet-hell metroidvania mashup with cute characters, pretty visuals, and rad music!
I played this back in 2018 and recall it was very, very fun! Need to play it again sometime!

Not finished because my dumb ass lost 3 hours of progress due to poor save management, but! One of the best Metroidvanias ever made, incredible depth and breadth of exploration here w great music and super super tight bosses. On Standard mode there's a bit of a tedious inverted difficulty curve which makes some later bosses less memorable, but the level of detail here is astounding

The best that Metroidvania as a genre has to offer. Unparalleled freedom of exploration, insane built-in movement tech that allows you to snap the game in half and complete it in any conceivable order, varied and challenging boss fights that are a joy to play and make you wonder how did one man ever come up with so many dank bullet hell patterns.
Nothing will ever compete until TEVI comes out (which is made by the same guy, isn't that cool)


Eu baixei esse jogo pensando que seria um bagulho curtinho só pra me distrair e acabou que eu dediquei 20 horas da minha vida sem nem perceber lol, mas não me arrependo. É um metroidvania com elementos de bullet hell (deve ser o primeiro jogo nesse estilo que zero) e um pouco de ecchizinho aqui e ali, então muita gente não vai gostar por: 1 - ser difícil pra caralho; 2 - não ser muito family friendly, mas é realmente muito bom, muito bom MESMO.
Todas as boss battles são únicas e bem divertidas, os rages que eu dei enquanto jogava foram muito mais por conta da decisão questionável de limitar seu ataque físico por estamina, o que real não faz sentido para esse tipo de jogo, do que mecânica de chefe zoada. E essas chefes também carregam a história porque todas elas são legaizinhas nos diálogos, lembra bastante Touhou no sentido de serem personagens que fazem suas piadinhas ao mesmo tempo que dão vida pro mundo (é estranho eu citar Touhou, mas o boss final tem padrão quase que idêntico a uma spell card da Flandre, então dizer que não tem influência seria loucura).

Ah, só pra constar: joguei no modo normal 'alternativo', que, pelo que eu entendi, tem a dificuldade completamente definida, diferente do normal 'padrão' que define a dificuldade dos bosses com base no que você coletou, então o alternativo vai te exigir que você explore e grinde bastante, tanto para achar as skills e badges quanto para achar dinheiro para que você possa evoluir essas skills e demais status do personagem (também tem um esqueminha alá Mega Man Zero 1 de quanto mais você usar um certo golpe, mais forte ele fica), então talvez ser "difícil pra caralho" não seja tão verdade dependendo de qual modo você escolher.

Bullet hell metroidvania with an incredibly well designed map and very high replay ability, although high difficulty plays are relied on hidden tricks and are just not as fun.

When sorting my Steam library by Steam reviews, I always forget to account for the fact that any sort of anime girl aesthetic results in significant ratings inflation. It's not that Rabi-Ribi is a bad game, it's just an eyebrow raise to see such universal acclaim. The character designs are skeevy and the dialogue and plot are childish resulting in me feeling like I needed to take a shower after playing this game. The gameplay itself also wasn't for me, I don't find bullet hell too engaging and I didn't like the combat mechanics. I will say that it's impressive how non-linear this game is, it may be the most open Metroidvania I've ever played.

Quitando de lados al montón de gente básica que no tiene ni idea de lo que es el moe y pone el mismo chiste una y otra vez sobre la estética del juego, diría que si tuviese que usar una analogia con Rabi Ribi seria (porfavor, espero que Backloggd no me fune...) serian como esas tipas de of que al principio piensas que son como la mayoría, solo son un cuerpo bonito, pero de ahí en fuera no tienen nada destacable, pero luego por curiosidad revisas sus redes sociales y te das cuenta de sus gustos y que realmente no es una posser, sino que también es una weeb de cultura la cual es fan de X obra underground que nadie conoce, pero que a ti te gusta y ves que a ella también y ya la dejas de ver como solamente un cuerpo bonito, sino que te comienza a interesar como persona.

Lo mismo sucede con Rabi Ribi. Al principio parece un simple juego fanservice del montón, pero mientras más lo juegas, más vez lo destacable y muy bueno que es como indie y como metroidvania con combates que si eres fan de los bullethells lo disfrutarás, además de que tiene arto contenido post game que fueron metiendo con actualizaciones. Su ost a veces no encaja con lo que se muestra, pero no quita lo bueno que es y su dificultad es, alta, pero justa, no sentirás que los combates sean injustos (al menos no tanto).

Por cierto: Sabes esos típicos carteles que aparecen al principio de los juegos que dicen "Este juego puede tener destellos fuertes, si sufres de epilepsia no lo juegues" y al final no hay nada de eso? Bueno... Aquí si tomátelo en serio si sufres de eso. Yo no sufro de epilepsia pero si tengo los ojos bastante jodidos y hay ciertos ataques contra jefes los cuales son destellos parpadeantes demasiado exagerados los cuales si me llego a causar molestia. Primera vez que me sucede eso así que de verdad, si sufres de epilepsia ve con discreción o juega con algún filtro que mitigue esos flashasos.

After 4 playthroughs of this game, including a 0% run, I couldn’t sugarcoat it anymore. This is a masterpiece. The story is definitely way more vague than it has any right to be, and its generally visually uninteresting, but the gameplay so damn fun. I thought I was done with the game after beating Hell mode but hours later I’d be back again because maybe I can get that one achievement now, or maybe I do have the skills and knowledge to do a Bunny Extinction run, or maybe getting 0% is more possible than I thought. This game had such a strong vice grip on me that I was not expecting.

The bosses, movement, power progression, difficulty curve, and nonlinearity are so well done that I was kinda left flabbergasted. After all, the look of this game doesn’t really scream “Metroidvania masterclass”, but I guess this world has lots of surprises for us. Another thing that surprised me was how I almost got hit on the emotional side in the dlc section of the game, but that’s mostly because the boss fight surrounding said moment is one of the peakest peaks to ever peak.

This review contains spoilers

Very fun metroidvania with incredibly questionable character designs, the reason I don't have the game higher is because I feel the way boss's scale with your items removes part of the reasons I enjoy roguelikes, getting stronger.

Your combos get better throughout the game, but the boss's HP just gets higher and higher, and it becomes dreadful by the final boss who is just a giant wall of HP who has very little time to actually attack. I enjoy boss fights in this genre to be short, hard, and snappy. Maybe it's a "skill issue" or smtn like that but it definitely did remove part of my enjoyment once the fights started dragging on quite a bit.

The Library is also just a pretty poorly designed area. I think I would have more motivation to come back if they had a fast travel point during that segment so you could easily come back with foods and buffs, but sadly they drop the ball and made an insanely trial and era, "I Wanna Be The Guy" type area, with a very cryptic way of leaving the area. Disappointing end to a pretty damn fun game.

Lo de la estética de este juego es una lastima porque a nivel jugable es lo mejor que los metroidvanias tienen que ofrecer

Was gonna do the post-game before reviewing this, but I think I'm good for now.

Surprisingly fun metroidvania that is clearly heavily inspired by Touhou. Exploring the world is fun and, for the most part, never gets too difficult other than a few obnoxious areas. Boss fights are clearly where most of the focus went, and they're all pretty memorable. I do think the game has a similar problem that many other metroidvanias have where it takes a few upgrades for things to really open up. Once you've gotten more abilities, the game gets much more addictive as both movement and combat improve quite a bit.

This game does have a bit of a weird, inverted difficulty curve. I was getting a bit frustrated with the bosses at first, but as I unlocked more stuff and got more upgrades things became a lot more manageable. That healing staff weapon was a goddamn lifesaver for a few battles.

I do think there are some boss attacks that are a little too unclear on how to avoid them (that and sometimes bullets are a little too difficult to make out against the backgrounds), but for the most part they're all well designed and unique. I do wish they were a little less spongy once you get close to the end. It can feel like it's taking forever to whittle down their health bars sometimes, although it is satisfying pulling off massive combos.

The game's very colorful art style and peppy music also help in making the game not feel too frustrating as well. I guess there's the cutesy story as well, but I honestly kind of stopped paying attention to it after a certain point. It's mostly kind of just dumb anime bullshit where despite beating the shit out of everyone with a hammer, you all become friends and everything's happy.

I do find it funny that so many people complain about the character designs. It's a game where the main character is wearing a playboy bunny outfit. What the hell were you expecting? Other than a couple characters, none of them are even that lewd. Sometimes I wonder how people like this would react if they went to a beach. Probably have a brain aneurysm.

Anyway, Rabi-Ribi is very good. Much better than I expected it to be. I'd even say it's one of the better metroidvanias I've played. Unironically better than Hollow Knight. Don't @ me.

MOM TRUST ME THE GAME HAS DOPE TECH

Clearly the ideas are there but:
- Exploration and worlds are boring
- Art makes me want to vomit (mod that removes portraits but I am still reminded of the fact that I am playing something made for gooning)
- Bosses take upwards of 10+ minutes and any attempt can go down the trash can in 3 hits

I'm too old to want to grind games like this. Life is so short and I would rather have a challenging game that provides more difficult sections in shorter segments like Super Meat Boy.

Bros will buy the game with scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it and complain that there are scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it. I just wanna ask what the fellas in the backloggd reviews were expecting when buying said game. This is the equivalent of some fella lookin at a war shooter and getting upset that it's indeed a war shooter but buying it anyways and complaining about that fact as if they didn't know exactly what they were getting into. I don't care how good the reviews are for said game, people should be able to recognize when something is clearly not made for them. (and also recognize that steam reviews normally don't mean shit in the first place)

Ignoring the weirdos that are upset about this and bought the game anyways, the gameplay here is good, very good, my favorite gameplay in fact. As someone who adores both platformers of the metroidvania variety and bullet hells this becomes something special with how it blends these two genres together perfectly. It really says a lot about a game's quality when I ACTUALLY want to go through the entire "beat difficulty to unlock higher difficulty" fiasco, something I didn't even do in something as good as DMC5. Also the boss fights are kinda phenomenal, they're very distinct from one another, have an absurd amount of attacks which constantly keeps them fresh, feel very fair despite the difficulty, and there's more than 30 of them lmao. The ost is also great with "Finale" being one of my favorite final boss tracks ever. overall a good time.

tldr game is very good but it attracts animephobic weirdos despite the very obvious exterior, obviously don't play this if you are for some reason scared of scantily clad anime girls like so many people in the backloggd reviews clearly are.

Edit after playing the Tevi demo: ANYBODY who likes this game needs to hop on Tevi, it's a spiritual successor to Rabi Ribi and is a perfect evolution of it. I very easily see it dethroning Rabi Ribi as my favorite game ever if it even matches the quality of the demo. The wait for Tevi's full release will be a difficult one... November 29th bros...

Rabi-Ribi is very uneven but still good.
To start with the elephant in the room I don’t really like the moé art style. It’s not a deal breaker but it’s definitely not helped by the boring story and weak characters. Outside of that major part the gameplay is pretty fun, some of the bosses are cheap and have way too much health but I respect the challenge and how it forces you to truly learn all the game mechanics. It was definitely frustrating sometimes and I don’t think the progression works well with it but overall the gameplay is solid, and if you like Touhou or other metroidvanias you’d probably like this to some degree

good game but i can only play it alone cause its too sus

This review contains spoilers

Silly games are fun. One of my favourite games is Rabi Ribi, it's a game about a magic bunny who gets turned into a cute anime girl with bunny ears who wears s wimsuit for some reason??? Then she meets a tiny fairy named Ribbon in a cave that sh esomehow got to and Ribbon tries to kill her but then you hit Ribbon with a toy hammer a bunch and then they become friends and save Ribbon's other fairy friends from a computer nerd girl in the cave that comes from human world and then there's bullet hell. It was made in Taiwan and the translation is extremely confusing :D
Music is top-tier seriously amazing though.

They then realise that the magic bunny world is going all weird and bunny rainbow particles start falling from the sky that make everyone obsessed with bunnies and Erina (the bunny girl) has to run away from them cuz they're all bunny crazy so then you find out that another bunny girl named Noah is responsible for it because she wants to save bunny world by doing something??? (I never figured this bit out but they all got amnesia as well I guess??)
and like
then
you go to human world where weebs try to photograph you cuz you're cosplaying as Erina but you're actually Erina but they don't know that you're actually Erina and the camera flash hurts you!
So you kill them with your toy hammer and then you're in space and you fight Noah who turns into a giant moustache
then there's a puzzle section with lots of spikes inside computer and fairies fight to Halloween music and you meet a succubus and you fly and shoot them in the sky with fairy bullets.

You go under-underground and have a poggers fight with yourself but all anime-wisdom-pilled and then the music is all like DOO! DOO DOO! DOO DOO DODO DODO!! AND THEN THE MAIN THEME MEODY IS SNUCK IN THERE WITH REVERSED PIANO SAMPLES AND STUFF.

Good game.

I have schizoid personality disorder.