Rabi-Ribi

Rabi-Ribi is perhaps my favorite game that's impossible to recommend. It proves that you can make an excellent Metroidvania while being completely unbeholden to any of Metroid or Castlevania's aesthetics or conventions. But most people will take one look at the box art and screenshots and immediately disregard the game, waving it aside as a "gooner game." And it's easy for me to say that those people are wrong, and that the game's aesthetic has no bearing on its amazingly-executed exploration, fun and well-designed bosses, and incredible replayability. But, yes, this is a game filled with attractive female characters, most of whom have a personality the depth of a puddle, that it likes to flaunt repeatedly, and it's reasonable to be skeeved out by that.
However, Rabi-Ribi is not solely defined by its copious amount of anime boobs. It is, as I have alluded to, the best-designed Metroidvania you can play right now. Many people like to praise the genre for its nonlinearity and freedom of exploration, and this game maximizes on that quality. If you know what you're doing, you can go just about anywhere as soon as you're past the tutorial segments, and it's extremely gratifying to feel like you're breaking the game by being somewhere you're not supposed to yet. It's possible to beat the final boss with every item collected, or none at all.
That, of course, brings us to the bosses, which are also excellently constructed. Given that you can tackle most of them in just about any order, their attacks are designed so that you can make do with whatever moves you've acquired up to that point, and even if you're well prepared, you can still get crushed. But it never feels like you lost without putting up a fight, since you get a fair amount of hits you can take before going down, and there are healing items you can stock up on (if you'd like). The end-game bosses, however, pull no punches, and require you to use your entire moveset to the fullest to have any chance. The game uses its bullet-hell elements well here, using tons of projectiles to box out where you can and can't move to make problems with specific solutions in a way that a game without these elements couldn't.
The graphics and sound on display are... they're fine. The pixel-art is importantly always readable, but none of the sprites or compositions really stand out, and with how sprites are stretched and squashed, there are often pixels of different sizes next to each other, which can be distracting. The music, for the most part, is memorable, but not something I paid much attention to in play, or that I'd listen to on my own time, outside of a few strong tracks (usually the final boss tracks).
As I made mention of in the introduction, the story and character-writing are definitely the game's weakest aspects. Most of the characters don’t have any identifiable traits, and exist just as objectives, bosses to be fought. The story never gets much more complicated than the opening suggests: Erina has turned from bunny to bunny-girl, figure it out. I think there was supposed to be some deeper stuff in the later chapters, but the writing is so muddy that it was hard to tell. Neither of these aspects hamper the game much; it is squarely about the gameplay, and the narrative exists just to further that along.
Overall, though, Rabi-Ribi is truly a triumph of novel ideas in a genre that’s beginning to become oversaturated with so many games that are content to remake the classics without much re-interpretation, to stick to the template put down by SM and SotN so closely that they become unmemorable. Just another game to be played and forgotten. But Rabi-Ribi, and its developers, have not left my mind even nearly a decade after this game’s release. I was extremely hyped for TEVI, and I’m extremely excited for whatever it is that they’re working on right now.
9.5/10

Don't let the scantily clad theming fool you, this is genuinely one of the best and most brutal metroidvanias out there and somehow made bullet hell + platforming work extremely well.

they're all so gay nothing about this game is straight even the slightest bit

The first time I played this game was back in 2018, where I did a normal run through everything and a 0% items run as well. Both of those were incredibly fun, and back then I was not as good at video games so just completing the game on a lower difficulty was still a challenge. I really liked the way that everything was so deliberately set up in the world for a curious-minded player, with so many hidden items and new paths that reward you for checking every nook and cranny. The combat is enjoyable enough, I liked the way that every boss got very unique attack patterns that made them all stand out from each other since the story doesn't give a ton of room for that. I do like the story, but it isn't particularly deep or anything.

I came back to the game briefly for the newer dlcs when they came out, but this year in 2024 I decided I would go back and try to collect more of the game's achievements, to revisit a game I love and challenge myself. After all, this game is amazing for achievement-hunters, offering a massive variety of tasks that aren't just difficulty-based, but also depend on things like your ability to speedrun, find secrets, play runs that prioritize or avoid certain items, etc. I probably had to do like 6 or so new playthroughs just to get everything, and that was with me already having about 60% of the achievements from my earlier time playing. Back then, my playtime was around 115 hours, this journey added about 170. Yet none of them felt too repetitive, because I always had special goals and progress to be made towards the many achievements. Getting good enough to actually complete everything on the highest difficulty, BEX, was very rewarding, especially being able to use all my game knowledge to gain as many item advantages as I could for every boss encounter. Even though you may not be given a ton of agency in how you are able to damage bosses, the exploration aspect always feels like the game is waiting to be cracked open by your knowledge of how to traverse the map and find its items. It really was a rush of a few months gathering up all those last achievements, from no-hits to boss rushes to cocoa mode and so many little fun tasks. Although, my incredible momentum came to a screeching halt when it came time to defeat SP Irisu on BEX. Unlike every single challenge that had come before, this one was so many steps above in terms of diffiuclty. It stomped me so hard that I had to put the game down for another month before I finally came back to grind out the hours of practice and beat her for good today. That marked the final achievement, and the last thing I will probably ever do in Rabi-Rabi. Despite the troublesome finale, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the bunny-filled journey that was my time playing this game, both in the past and this year. Seriously recommend it for achievement hunters and anyone that loves metroidvanias, since the game really feels like it was made with these people in mind.

"Rabi-Ribi" is a fun metroidvania game that combines exploration, platforming, and combat.
From the moment you start the game, the main theme plays, immersing you in the spirit of the upcoming adventure. The music perfectly enhances the atmosphere as you explore different areas, enriching the overall experience.
The level design is quite good; the locations create a labyrinth where certain areas remain inaccessible until you acquire specific abilities, such as a double jump or others. This is a common feature in metroidvanias, but it’s implemented in a way that feels enjoyable rather than frustrating.
The boss battles are meticulously designed, each opponent featuring a unique set of attacks and style. This makes dodging their projectiles engaging and prevents the encounters from becoming tedious. The difficulty level adjusts smoothly, and you have the option to change it during gameplay if you find it either too challenging or too easy.
Overall, "Rabi-Ribi" is a game that doesn’t get boring until the finish. Highly recommended.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

It's a really cute game <3 I haven't gotten far in it, but I enjoyed playing it. So far my favorite characters are Cocoa, Rumi, and Erina. If you haven't played Rabi Ribi, I recommend it. It's a 10/10 game in my opinion.