While I think the story of this game took a long time to grip me, and it has a few issues that stem from general otaku culture, the gameplay is some of the best in the genre. It's so much fun to learn hidden techniques and traverse to parts of the map you've never been, and learning you could the whole main game and non-dlc post game without even picking up the hammer was extremely cool and exciting! I think the combat and boss fights are super interesting too, there's a couple of nitpicks I have, esp with how only a few shot types feel useful outside of puzzles, but overall I think this game is an extremely fun time if you can get past its few glaring issues with presentation and dialogue that keep me from giving it a full 5 stars.

This might be the ugliest game I've ever played and it's not cause of the "Anime Fan-Service" Aesthetic.
Rabi Ribi suffers from the worst case of style inconsistency imaginable.
The quality, the art-style and even the pixel size feels completely randomized.
And i'd generally say this is worse than when a game consistently amateurish in it's art, cause at-least it's consistent.
For a Metroidvania it kinda loses a lot of the fun in exploring cause of it being such an eyesore.

But I gotta say the combat is pretty fun even if the animations are really awkward.
And the boss-fights are quite fun even if they can be quite dragged out.

OK HEAR ME OUT: if you install the steam workshop mod called "Portrait Remover Plus" or any other "no anime" or "replace the anime with something funny like tf2 characters" type mods, the fact that this is an ecchi game basically stops mattering, and all you're left with is a really competent Metroidvania/bullet hell action-adventure-platformer-shooter genre mashup that provides a nice, refreshing challenge for casual players, and the ultimate challenge for genre veterans and speedrunners. There is so much movement tech in this game, intentional and unintentional, that the developers have achievements for you using some of it, and the community created a steam workshop map that teaches you every movement trick in the game (which, depending on your skill level, might take an hour to even clear part 1 of like 5??? of it???) If Nintendo had taken this game's map and mechanics, but replaced the setting and plot with Metroid stuff and called it Metroid 5, it would have sold a bunnilion copies. Criminally underappreciated game that's held back by the fact that, well, the devs wanted to make an ecchi bunny girl game that just so happened to turn out to be a Metroidvania (according to the art book DLC, it wasn't originally one.) Please play this, even if you hate anime. You can remove most of the anime with mods, and what's left is something you can overlook to enjoy a best-in-class genre mashup with oodles to offer for casual and hardcore players alike.

Out of the haze of pixiv fever dreams comes one of the standard bearers of the "explaining to your Steam friends it's a real game with gameplay and it doesn't have a one-handed mode" sub-genre. It's hard not to take note of this one, with how often it's championed as one of the very best metroidvanias on the market. Having played it... I think that's somewhat fair, with some caveats.

The aesthetic takes a specific taste, but I can mesh with it. A constant stream of bright, colorful pixel art and a soundtrack teetering between pounding electronic and sickly-sweet j-pop demands a specific kind of upbeat optimism I found refreshing. The anime illustrations are also, in a word, cute, even if the constant malaise of vague horniness gives the entire proceeding a slightly creepy quality, like the game is a sexually frustrated aunt at a wedding making googly eyes at the groom cake topper. Another thing worth mentioning in passing is the visual clarity, if only because such a thing is critical for a bullet hell.

Exploration, as one would hope for in a Metroidvania, essentially involves finding a high ledge, a watery sinkhole, and a realization of the crushing weight of a conscious existence, before running back and forth over the map, searching for the double jump, swim ability, and indomitable human spirit to bypass such obstacles and progress further along the map. Exploration tends to be functional, but rudimentary; aside from one (very fun) section consisting entirely of platforming, few areas offer any unique environmental challenges. Instead, downtime between boss fights means boffing your giant-ass hammer against hordes of bunny girls coming at you with all the piss and vinegar of a baby sparrow, while simultaneously stopping every four feet to kick every rock and pull every blade of grass to make sure none of them are hiding a health potion or the entrance to the secret kingdom of the mole people. In this way, exploring becomes tedious, especially when the map notably omits pathways you haven't tried yet, so opening locked routes feels less like putting your new skills to use and more like a German tourist wandering around trying to find the best schnitzel in Bangkok.

At various locations throughout the map come the boss fights, which are easily the highlight. The combination of side-scroller combo attacks with bullet hell mechanics make these fights as much a test of platforming / maneuvering as they are actual combat. In addition, there is a staggering variety of different patterns, putting you through energy zig zags, spinning electricity wheels, arcing fire pillars, a sprite construction of La Pietà made entirely of bubbles, each with a specific dodge pattern before you can get in a couple of meaty bonks. Or at least, for the most part; when the game vomits out projectiles in every direction across the whole screen like Mr. Creosote, it feels like kind of a cheap shot. Regardless, these sequences are what make the game worth playing, and there are plenty of them, with your ever-increasing tool kit of carrot-themed demolition equipment providing added depth as you progress. By the end, you're swinging, rolling, and sashaying through 15-minute boss fights that really get the blood pumping.

From the best part of the game to the worst part of the game, I don't even know if I want to attempt to explain the story. It's probably one of the most incoherent plots I've ever experienced in a game. It's hard to communicate, however, because so much of it comes in the form of random non-sequitur pieces of information. For most of the "main game", you are a bunny who has been magically turned into a human girl through the power of weird fetishism, tasked with locating your owner's sister trapped in another world. This is achieved by scouring the land looking for magic users. The hands-off approach to how / where you locate these people was appreciated, encouraging exploration. The main thrust of the plot here is supposed to be the personalities of the various magical characters. If you've ever seen an anime before in your life, you've seen every one of these characters, and you've seen them written more interestingly. After four separate attempts to open this portal, the grand villain is introduced, her backstory is rapid-fired straight at you like a lawyer reciting the last deposition before lunch, she dies, and the game ends. Except, it doesn't end? It picks up again on a completely different one of the many plot threads introduced and poorly elaborated on. Then, the next chapter starts over again, before the game actually ends. Or, I should say, you arrive at the open lego peg the endless stream of DLC can slot on to. As much as the game likes to propose conflicts, it's less keen on actually showing any resolution to them. The sister is returned, but every threat concerning their connection to this other world, the main character remaining transformed into a marketable mascot, what precisely the deal was with bunny Cortana, is all just capped off with a big question mark. The horrible writing is equal parts frustrating and amusing, so I suppose it's not the worst thing to be the major bug bear.

Allora, Rabi-Ribi è oggettivamente fatto parecchio bene lato gameplay. Il level design a mio avviso non è praticamente mai particolarmente buono, rimane sotto la varietà e qualità generale di quello in Blasphemous II, ma rimane funzionale alla libertà dell'esplorazione

Vado a specificare che l'esplorazione in sé non m'è piaciuta poi tanto fatta eccezione per un paio di stage. Come dicevo, lato gameplay Rabi-Ribi è ben fatto ma a causa del level design stesso la maggior parte delle volte l'utilizzo delle proprie abilità per attraversare una sezione è quasi ininfluente - mi sono trovato a usarli quasi solo lì dove sono obbligatori. Infatti, teoricamente il gioco si potrebbe praticamente completare senza aver ottenuto nulla (forse eccetto le scarpe che permettono di saltare più in alto, ma dovrei controllare).
Poi, non ho mai percepito alcuna distintività: trovarsi nell'area vulcanica è più o meno la stessa cosa che trovarsi nella foresta o nelle grotte ghiacciate. Belli invece i background, in genere. Forse un'eccezione a tutto questo è il livello ambientato nel cyberspazio

Lo stesso discorso lo applico alle creature nemiche: anche laddove c'erano delle creature luogo-specifiche, erano sempre di una bruttezza e, per il moveset, di una banalità disarmanti.
Mi fanno cagare anche i NPC, per character design e scrittura

La scrittura, per me, è atroce e disprezzo anche la storia in sé: non posso neanche scendere nei dettagli perché molte cose le ho direttamente skippate. Poi magari a causa di questo atteggiamento mi sarò anche perso certe istruzioni, perché ho capito come fare per consumare oggetti di cura solo a 5 ore dall'inizio.

Le cose buone da dire sono comunque molte. C'è un sistema di progressione più vicino a certi giochi di ruolo, per cui l'utilizzo costante delle proprie armi ne comporta il miglioramento e level up: questo ha come esito un aumento del danno, della velocità, l'acquisizione di una combo a seconda del livello raggiunto. In giro per la mappa è possibile trovare tutta una serie di oggetti che, come in ogni metroidvania che si rispetti, permettono di semplificare l'esplorazione e di accedere a nuove aree: che si tratti del doppio salto, di un aumento dell'altezza raggiungibile con lo stesso, della scivolata, etc.
Per i completisti poi questo gioco sarà una manna dal cielo. Io non ho nessuna intenzione di collezionare manco la metà degli achievement ottenibili (o meglio, a me degli achievement non frega in nessuna maniera), ma credo che per farlo durante la prima partita bisognerebbe investirci almeno una trentina di ore

Particolare nota di merito per quanto mi riguarda va proprio alle boss-fight: diversissime, numerosissime e molte di queste difficili in culo, con moveset che ci si aspetterebbe da un bullet-hell. Nonostante la difficoltà, c'è sempre la possibilità di rinascere esattamente fuori l'arena di combattimento (che non è mai nulla di particolare, tutta l'attenzione è stata data esclusivamente al moveset dei vari boss). Inoltre, dopo alcune sconfitte, il gioco stesso chiede se si vuole abbassare la difficoltà. Apprezzabile.
Non intendo fare una seconda partita e non ho letto cose a riguardo, ma credo che, data la libertà di approccio all'esplorazione che si raggiunge da un certo punto, sia anche possibile affrontare molti boss seguendo le proprie preferenze in termini di priorità

Per il resto non ho molto da dire. La grafica, animazione, audo design e ost mi sono tra l'indifferente e il disprezzo. Un'altra nota positiva è la hurtbox, molto piccola come accade in molti shoot 'em up e molto precisa: lo sprite del personaggio è ingannevolmente molto più grande della hurtbox vista l'elevata quantità di sezioni bullet hell, e per ovviare a questo problema la hitbox delle creature generiche è più grossa dei loro sprite così da avere l'illusione di una effettiva collisione nel caso ci si dovesse finire addosso