Rabi-Ribi

Please stop the yuri-ing!
I just want to play with bunny girls...
I like to look at cute anime girls...
But, I'd never want nor need any yuri in this series...!! >_<
Nonetheless, if you can ignore those parts, you can enjoy this like any Metroidvania games.

Moving on~

They even created human girls in a bunny suit just to attack Erina in her confused state.

How low can they get...?!

How cruel!!!

So, if you want to save Erina from being enslaved by these characters, never play the game to get to the ending.

P.S. They can't even add voice lines to my waifus... >_<

Game is so good it creates a new standard for bullet hell games.

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

Absolutely lovely game in all aspects :3

This game is crazy good! After playing Tevi I decided to replay this one to see if I like it just as much as when I tried it in 2016 - and I fell in love with it all over again! I don't know which of the 2 I like better but there are different pros and cons. This game has a more open world exploration while you can still follow the story (in typical metroidvania style), the battle and combo systems aren't as advanced though. The bosses in this are quite the challenge (depending on which difficulty you play) and the patterns lean heavy into bullethell style games.

Probably a 9/10 for me. Fantastic visuals, character designs. The visual/audio feedback for when anything is happening is good. There is a ton of content! The writing and story is more of a side grade, nothing super memorable here, but there are some cute interactions between the characters. It has a decent variety of levels/biomes, and the enemies in them (usually) don't pose any bigger challenge or threat. Depending on how you look at it, you may or may not like that. However, you will need all the health you saved here for dealing with the bosses, which there are plenty. The bosses surely are the star of the game and you may need a lot of attempts to beat them. This puts the game on a very rewarding level of challenge (currently playing on hard mode). If you die to often, you can always turn down the difficulty (but it will be permanently) or make use of a generous assist system (if you died a TON on the same boss) which gives you temporary buffs for a certain duration at the start of a boss fight to help you beat them.

The one design approach I didn't quite like is that you sometimes need to remember when certain attack patterns happen, because you can't react to them. Without memorizing the boss attacks and attack orders before it will be impossible for you to dodge them. I'd have liked if there were (longer) anticipation animations for every attack so you can identify the attack but don't have to remember the exact timing when which attack happens.
I still don't know how to evade certain attacks in general as well but that might be more on me. It seems tricky to figure out how to dodge certain attacks, even if you have experienced them a couple of times.

Cute, fun, and frustrating at times. I suck at it, but I love it.

On a pure raw gameplay level this game is actually godlike. The story you can take it or leave it but to dismiss this game purely because you don't like the anime style would be doing yourself a disservice if you're a metroidvania fan. The hidden techniques the game has that it doesn't teach you feels like when you learned how to shinespark for the first time in super metroid, and there a a multitude of hidden techniques that allow you to really break open the game with some sequence breaks. The maps have tons of hidden things to find and if you're a fan of going at a metroidvania in a non-linear style this game is up there with the true greats of the genre. I'm on my first play through and selected hard and I must say this game can be truly difficult especially when it comes to some of the boss fights especially if you tackle some of them earlier than you're supposed to. Lots of patterns to learn and you get a real sense of accomplishment when you beat a boss you technically shouldn't be ready for, it's just a really great game.

This game is an absolute blast to go through. The movement shenanigans you can pull off when you figure out the tech is satisfying as all hell. The boss fights are a trip of suffering when you're struggling, and washes you with satisfaction when you finally figure out the attack patterns and slowly progress the fight. You would think the combat is as simple as doing the same melee input string and firing some shots, but you'd be surprised about the special spam you can pull off. The soundtrack alone is extremely catchy and amplifies the game play.

The one main thing which is somewhat lacking is the story. There's an idea of what's going on, but not much elaboration on it. You might end up left confused or dumbfounded about some of the story events that happen.

So uh, yeah, good video game.

This game is really enjoyable and chill and you can also set the difficulty if the game gets too hard.
The more you progress, the more new stuff your characters learns (new attacks, jumping higher etc) and you can also buy little Upgrades from the market NPC, like getting more ATK or HP and having a faster walkspeed.

bnnuy

bNuuuuuYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Fun and very cute.

bnuy

I played this on the PS4 back years ago and thought I'd get it again to actually beat it and man, it was a blast playing through it again. I am a massive fan of metroidvanias and the world is really big so it was nice finding the different collectables and trying to find hidden areas.

I absolutely love the pixel graphics as well as the Illustrations and the music is very memorable to me.

The story is well made and I did enjoy a lot of the characters, having them all run around town once you find them was a cute touch as well. it wasn't as big as I thought the game would be, even with the amount of grinding I did but that's not really a bad thing. There are a few other modes you can pick like boss rush or playing as some other characters so there was more that I could do but I never really got around to them yet.

This was kind of a given with a bullet hell game but my god, this game can be difficult as hell. I went through it on normal difficulty but still got my ass handed to me so many times by bosses and normal enemies alike, I know that's a skill issue on my part but I can't imagine me beating some of the bosses on the higher difficulties which is really unfortunate since I love to try and get every achievement in the games I play but that would take me a life time with this game.

Another thing that kinda bugged me was some of the hidden moves you can do, I wish they could just tell you how to do them instead of you finding them out accidentally and then getting an achievement for it. I mostly say this because it took me forever to realise you can wall jump to get to some higher places, so I was stuck in the snow area for ages before I figured that out by accident.

All in all though, I'd still recommend this game to bullet hell fans and fans of cute pixel graphics alike. I'd say play through it just to hear some of the great music they have to offer honestly. Personally, bunny girls and fairies are some of my favourite things so that maaaaaaaay be why I got this game in the first place.

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

Fun gae gaem

Metroidvania meets bullet hell in a hard-to-put-down package.

My first time writing this level of a review, hope to improve in the future! review does not account for DLC....yet

This is the first Metroidvania I've played to partial completion and I'm very much happy that this was the game that got me further into the genre (after Bloodstained couldn't get me hooked thanks to, from my view, it's more "hardcore" approach and difficulty).

PRESENTATION

Let's get one point of contention out of the way: the art style. Yes it's frankly leaning into that degenerate anime art style. Yes, the characters all have a same-face syndrome ala Saber-face from Fate. What you'll see for most of the game however is the well-made, cute and gorgeous pixel art. Whether or not this is a big deal is up to you, but being steered away (understandably) by the art is depriving yourself of a great game.

The music in this game is top notch and the compositions are appropriate for each stage and boss. It's so good it has a soundtrack release. The music selections enhance the mood and feel and the boss battle themes range from high-octane to the melancholic and desperate.

GAMEPLAY

Like the title says, this is a Metroidvania meets bullet hell. It's an odd combination on paper but good Lord do they marry so well. Exploration feels rewarding and exciting as typical of the genre, there are areas that are juuuuussst within reach but can't be accessed until later in the game, which encourages back tracking and curiosity. Nothing feels better in this game than getting a new movement option or figuring out what sets of options to use to get somewhere. Speaking of, the controls. It's buttery smooth, though you may have to re-bind your controls to get better use of your movement options and attacking options. Recommended to play on a gamepad, probably absolutely shit on a keyboard.

The bullet hell gameplay in this game is very very enjoyable. Dodging bullets here just scratches an itch that other games in that genre can't, and that's again due to the wealth of movement options at your disposal. However, this bullet hell can also be very frustrating and hair-pulling (from my experience, especially if you have a hard time with the bullet hell genre like I do). I feel like boss fights in the latter part of the main game and the post game lean too hard into the Japanese levels of danmaku that it just feels borderline impossible to dodge especially if you are a more casual/passing-by enjoyer of bullet hells. Either way, the frustrations and blood boiling all pay off once you beat theses bosses and breath a sigh of relief and satisfaction at finally beating that anime girl's ass.

The game DOES offer difficulty levels, and I think it's worth a shot to lower it if you feel like it. (As I'm mildly egotistical, I've refused to lower it hehe). There's also a mechanic where the game gives you a set of buffs if you die repeatedly to a boss. This game does everything it can to ease you into it, but I also feel like there is a difficulty spike imbalance at the latter part of the game (On normal, at least)

STORY AND GAME FLOW

The story is generally thin for most of the game, everything you really need to know is in the game's blurb. It's zany and borderline surreal at times. If you want something with strong writing, this ain't it. It DOES, however tread into this mysterious and emotional aspect at the latter part of the game. The main game is composed of 5 main "chapters", with what I think are 3 additional post-game chapters. As of this writing, I'm currently in Ch6, and most of the frustrations I write above occur here. It's to be expected since you have basically explored nearly everything, so the game just throws as many boss battles at you as possible. This part is what disappoints me a bit after beating the first 5 chapters as I wanted to do more metroidvania exploration, the latter part just leans too much into combat which may be a hit for some, and a miss for others. I'm 60% on the miss party for this one.

VERDICT

I think many would agree that this is one of THE Metroidvanias to play. If you can look past the anime art style, what you have here is a very fun, challenging, polished, and rewarding game. I personally would recommend it even for first timers of the genre, as for vets, well.... you guys tell me, this is my first one after all!

I got this as a joke, and then i played it Peak 10/10 game play

First played this in 2018, loved it.

Replayed it in 2025, still love it. Still tons of fun & tons of replayability. DLC helps enhance the experience, but aside from one DLC - it's all entirely optional to purchase.

This game is genuinely worth your time & your money. Especially if you're not one of those people who gets immediately turned away from it because of the outfits in this game. I think the soundtrack alone should be a reason you should get this game, it's absolutely fantastic. Oddly enough, this game's OST also works incredibly well as Terraria background music too.

Side-note: I think the "Is the order a DLC?" DLC is pretty much mandatory to get the "full story" of the whole game. I'm still not happy that they effectively locked behind the true ending of the game behind DLC.

Not to say that the base game's lacking or anything, far from it. Base game Rabi-Ribi is fantastic as its own standalone package, including the story. But without the DLC, some things ring a little thin. So I'd recommend getting both the game & that DLC I linked above. You'll thank me later.

Game of the year, every year.

Alright the story is mediocre (I haven't finished it yet, but even if I did, my opinion wouldn't change). but idc, I like bullet hell and Metroidvania, and this game is literally both. Also reminded me of playing kirby and the amazing mirror so that's a +

and bunny suit

I wish I had this game. :(

In this game, you play as Triple H and you are accompanied by your loyal companion, HBK. With your old friend sledgehammer, you try to survive in an isekai situation. Great game and highly recommended.

Very Fun Very addictive, hard difficultly can be lowered after many deaths. would recommend to anyone

For starters, I downloaded this game because I thought it was funny and I am a lonely idiot and I hate myself. After playing for five minutes, I realized I have found bliss, ecstasy even. From the very start, I told myself I love this game. I connected with the characters on a personal level. So much so, Rita started talking to me in my sleep telling me to play Rabi-Ribi when I left the game for three days. Hahahahahahahahahaha.

I felt uncomfortable by the lack of clothing until I found the TEVI x Rabi-Ribi DLC which gave Erina more clothes. Her little chirps and whimpers when she was wearing the uniform made me happier. I felt somewhat upset when Ribbon's TEVI uniform didn't do anything nor changed the clothing Ribbon was wearing, yet I found solace with Erina.

Speaking of Ribbon and Erina, I would love to talk about their personalities. 50% of the time, boss fights originate from Ribbon's attitude and inability to keep her comments to herself. I do love how oblivious Erina is to situations. She is so innocent, just like me before 8th grade. Master Rumi is very protective, yet doesn't tell Erina anything, especially with the beach incident. Oh, I forgot to give a spoiler warning, and I can move this warning to the beginning of the review, but ah, well.

The game is very entertaining, yet I do have some issues. One is Ribbons bad-attitude. Another is the boss fights. They have made me say things I probably should not have said, to friends as well. Why did I tell everyone to buy this game??? Whatever. Lilith is also pretty weird considering Erina is portrayed as a child-like individual.

The Halloween DLC helped remind me why I hate Halloween.

Sure, I agree that $20 dollars for a game about cute bunny girls is a lot, but I only spent $6 as of Steam's Winter Sale. Thank you Steam.

I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game. I love this game.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Why did I even download this game? Out of boredom? No, out of desperation. I love this game. Like a parasite, it has rooted in my brain. She talks to me. Oh, Erina, please comfort me. I have promoted this game to expand her reach. All hail Erina! All hail Erina!

who up here rabing they ribi rn

I'm playing it for the gameplay.

lesbians

Just to get it out of the way first, the character designs are weird. Luckily they don’t come up often so it’s easy to ignore if you’re really put off by them but it is still a needlessly weird thing to include. Your only real interaction with the characters (and their artwork) comes from their introduction before/after fighting them and some brief moments during the story. These sections are brief and the story itself is pretty unimportant so you could even skip it if you really wanted. It's all just an excuse to keep pushing you forward through the game rather than anything crucial to understand.

The greatest strength of the story is how it allows you to proceed at your own pace. You don’t unlock anything substantial through story progress and nearly everything you need is found directly on the map. There are bosses scattered throughout the overworld and the story unlocks new chunks each time you defeat a specified amount of them, but there’s little to stop you from going well past the required amount and fully exploring the map before you’ve even finished the 2nd chapter. So you can just ignore anything not immediately gameplay related until the very end and skip most of that anyway.

Rabi Ribi prioritized its gameplay over everything else and given how the final product turned out this was easily the right call. I haven’t played many bullet hell-style games so my opinion might diverge from the genre’s more dedicated fans, but I thought this was a pretty well-designed game overall. There’s plenty of variety to the fights and they strike a good balance between being difficult enough that you can’t relax mid-fight without being so overwhelming as to make the experience mentally taxing. I’ll confess there are still a good number of moves I struggle to deal with or don’t see a clearly reliable way to avoid, but most times I experienced this I could eventually find the tactic the game probably had in mind. So I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt for those where I couldn’t find anything similar.

What helps Rabi Ribi work compared to other bullet hells is the combat. You’re not just sitting back and shooting from afar or avoiding the bullets until a timer runs out. You need to be at least a little bit proactive, moving in to hit the boss whenever their attack ends or, if you can tolerate the risk, jumping in mid-attack and getting some extra hits in exchange for making it more difficult to avoid whatever they’re throwing at you. The melee combat forces a much greater degree of interaction between you and the boss compared to other game’s I’ve seen and helps raise the skill ceiling without throwing more and faster bullets on the screen.

There are only two noteworthy complaints I have about the combat system. While it does add a lot to the fights, there isn’t much depth to the melee attacks themselves. Bosses don’t respond much to being hit apart from a brief stun period, making the melee feel secondary to the rest of the combat mechanics. Enemies won’t try to avoid you, they don’t move after taking damage, nor do they have any melee attacks of their own to complicate your moves. The damage you do through your own attacks is valuable, but the skill ceiling for your offensive moves is much lower than the defensive aspects of combat. It’s only when you take on the extra risk and attack at the same time an enemy is attacking you when the skill ceiling reaches its peak, but the game often makes this impossible through moves that can only be avoided from a certain distance away from their starting point. The second issue I have is with the visuals during combat. They’re fine most of the time but there are a good number of times where the color of the bullets blends in with the background in a way that makes them frustrating to track and avoid. But that's something which could have been fixed a lot more easily so, while frustrating that it wasn’t fixed, it's not worth spending much time on to explain in detail.

Rabi Ribi’s combat is its main strength while the exploration was a lot weaker. While it worked as a bit of downtime between bosses, there was very little about the map itself that stood out as particularly engaging. It's just the standard 2d Metroidvania fare but without the strong visuals or level design typically used to keep traversal interesting. Movement is relatively simple and the platforming sections are rarely challenging nor do the generic enemies pose much threat. While I had a decent enough time with the exploration and the marginal upgrades scattered around various nooks and crannies was decent encouragement to pay attention while moving around, the map is still the weakest part of the gameplay. It would have been nice for the environment to play a greater role in fights (To my memory, none of the bosses were fought in anything but a normal rectangular room with no platforms) but I suppose it's not a huge loss.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Rabi Ribi quite a bit. Its a surprisingly engaging game once you get the hang of it and I’m definitely interested in checking out Tevi next time I have some time available. The core gameplay here is already pretty solid but I see quite a few areas where a spiritual sequel has the capacity to improve it even further. But even as-is, this is still definitely worth playing.

somehow the best metroidvania and it's not even close

My hands are shaking.

6.6 / 10

bnuy

bnnuy

Fully explored movement techniques in a deeply non-linear world that never reveals itself as such. The bullet-hell-style combat tests both reflexes and adaptability, while only turning from difficult to frustrating in some optional post-post-endgame battles in the game's 25+ hours long campaign. The music, marrying catchy electronica with cinematic leitmotifs, shines especially during boss fights. The game mixes pixel art and cel-shaded portraits in a charming (and unorthodox) way, but most character designs fail to be particularly memorable. The biggest glaring flaw is the ridiculous, meandering plot: while all dialogue can be fast-forwarded and ignored, every scene feels like a lost opportunity that barely justifies the events of the game and sprinkles in the occasional unnecessary fan-service CG. While the meaningless but light-hearted story could be much better, Rabi-Ribi doesn't get lost in it, managing to hatch as an unparalleled Metroidvania and a testament to the genre.

When metroidvania met Touhou

Rabi-Ribi is a delightful anime-styled Metroidvania with bullet hell combat. For context, I purchased the two relevant story DLC that contain extra super hard boss battles, as well as more plot and the "true ending" and I just wish this game was about 10 hours shorter or had the plot wrapped up in the base game as I did not have enough fun mashing my head against the wall in the DLC battles, so to YouTube I shall go for the true ending.

Base game - Gives me that same feeling playing Cave Story or Astlibra: Revision for the first time...exploring a vast, interconnected world with great combat, a story with memorable characters and plot with more depth than first appears and all from a Japanese perspective. There is so much content here for anyone who wants to dive deep into the bullet hell end of the combat pool will have a lot to master and enjoy. For me, I hit my enjoyment ceiling before clearing the DLC and decided to play their follow up, TEVI, instead of slogging through to see a few more cutscenes.

Great mix of platformer and bullet-hell. A lot of areas to explore with many hidden treasures.

I bought this game in honor of an aussie egirl named lolipilled my deepest regret is not telling her i would grape her...

The game has some phenomenal boss fights and great vibe with the music, characters and scenery. The only gripe I have against it is the slightly degenerate parts. Can't recommend it enough though, most fun I've had in a while.

lovely everything honestly. a really fun metroidvania but this game can get haaaard at least it was for me

yes

Game of the Year since 1775

So cute >.< ♥

i slept on this for years why is this genuinely so peak

I found the exploration dull because so many of the areas feel disconnected from one another, made worse by their layouts frequently being straight paths from the left to the right or vice versa. Combat against regular enemies was boring to me because there wasn’t a lot of enemy variety, and most enemies were extremely easy to kill. Combat only got exciting during boss fights, but because you are seemingly exclusively fighting against characters that are the same size as you, many of the encounters started to feel same. I wasn’t enjoying many of the aspects of what I look for in a Metroidvania, so I saw no reason to continue playing.

Exploration is great, bosses are great, combat is great, music is amazing. It does get harder in the later parts of the game but that's the point. Very good game + rabbit(s).

Good would recommend

my first ever bullet hell game, and its awesome.

the best game i ever played