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.
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.