Rabi-Ribi is a 2D Platform Adventure game for PS4, PS Vita and PC, which was developed by CreSpirit and published by Sekai Project. It's one of the Crowdfunding Indie titles from IndieGoGo that already has raised over $10,000 in year 2015, right just before the game was set released for PC in 2016 which received much positive reception from the critics and fans. It was then later released for Sony consoles in the year 2017 and hopefully coming soon for the Switch version in later future date.
What really made this game so special was that 2D platform Adventure game is combined with 2D Metroidvania gameplay with Bullet Hell elements and the cutie anime bunny girl as the main protagonist in the whole game, so it's sorta like Touhou meets Metroid that really made Rabi-Ribi quite interesting. I was quite surprised with this game that offers many of the positive things about Rabi-Ribi such as wicked gameplay with tons of exploration areas and over 40 intense boss battles, very cute visuals with anime-style animation, cool soundtrack, and it has whole extra content in the game that made the game worth playing. It is considered to be the hardest video game titles on the eighth generation era due to overpowered boss characters and so many attack patterns that made the game quite impossible to beat unless you need to be very professional at this game without having to throw rage quitting so many times, but still it's very fun and entertaining at the same time once you get hang of it with the whole game.
So without go further do, lets start the review.
Presentation
The game starts off with bunny girl creature named Erina who was a normal rabbit that lived in a peaceful life until one day, she found herself in an unknown place and noticed her appearance turned into a human. During her aimless wandering around the island, she meet the cheerful pink haired fairy named Ribbon came to help with her by searching all her missing friends and preventing the cursed magic from harming their peaceful islands.
The game has really weird story about the bunny girl thought she was lived as the real-life rabbit in her lifestyle, but instead as it turns out to be a human form which causing Erina to find out the reason why she's been transformed into the human, so the story in general is kinda mixed overall due to lack of Erina's backstory and below-average storyline which they should have been done better job by putting more effort on plot of the game rather than just making story sounds silly, but to be fair the half of the story in the game is somewhat pretty okay, but it's not that sounds great at the same time which makes a quite harder for western players to understand, maybe just because it's something to do with story writing or language translations on the story dialogue.
The rest of the characters in the game are all females, so you have all female characters that dressed up as random animal and fairy cosplayer such as Erina the bunny girl, Ribbon the fairy girl, Cocoa the cat girl, Nieve the bear girl, Lilith the bat girl and etc. Most of the characters in the game are quite adorable that adds up nicely for the game's presentation to make them look interesting.
Every each concepts of the level design are looked quite stunning overall. Some levels such as Starting Forrest, Rabi Rabi Ravine, and Spectral Cave are quite colourful and detailed which gives a nice Yoshi's Island vibe to it, while it does share with interesting cool levels in the game like Floating Graveyard, Azure Snow Land, System Interior, and others which is very well done with different kinds of themes in the game.
Overall, it has adorable characters, nice slideshow style and stunning level concepts, but suffered with below-average story.
Gameplay
This game contains 8 main chapters and 2 extra chapters were included in the game. You take control of Erina and her sidekick Ribbon to explore whole area in each levels where you can able to earn items, finding secrets, discovering new areas and talking to random people which is good for exploration. Using the map screen on the pause menu which helps the player to know where you're at and you will be given with the missions, which was added on the diary and the map points, in order for players to complete the certain of the main objectives during the gameplay. You can also fast travel in each levels by using the teleport area which allows you to choose which levels to visit. The player can also use the save points to save the game, so it will let you continue where you left off, but everytime you save the game can also give you a full health which is quite useful.
You will start off with a basic weapon called Piko Hammer which are used for attacking enemies in close combat range, but it can also drains your SP attacks which prevents you from attacking, so you have to wait until the SP automatically recharge itself. While Ribbon has ability to use magic firing weapon which are used for long range attacks, so you will have MP bar which tells you how much left you have it on your MP everytime you using the Ribbon's charged shot. Ribbon also has different types of firing attacks such as Sunny Beam, Chaos Rod, Explode Staff, Carrot Shooter and others which are used for shooting at different types of enemies in the game. Performing the boost attack allows Ribbon to shoot massive damage at the enemies including boss characters which are also making easier to defeat.
The player are required to earn enough items to make it even more stronger and plays better. For example: the ability items can be found in any of the levels such as carrot bomb that uses for blowing up objects, rabi slippers that allows you to jump higher while air jump can allow you to perform double jump and sliding powder that allows you to slide on the ground which are quite useful for platforming purposes, while Ribbon's items such as Auto Earrings, Plus Necklace and Charge Ring can also improve Ribbon's firing attacks such as rapid fire and charge shot. You can also earn skills items such as Wall Jump, Bunny Strike, Air Dash, Bunny Whirl, Hammer Roll, Hammer Wave, Speed Boost, Soul Heart and Spike Barrier, while the orbs items also reduces the dark places, freely move in underwater and melting ice blocks which adds more variety for both combat gameplay and platforming as well. The player can also earn EN points by attacking all the enemies which you can spend all the upgrades, potions and consumable items from the Miriam's shop. Spending all the upgrades and potions can rewards player's stats and skills allowing to increase the overall levels of health, mana, regen, pack, attacks, skills and orbs, which means your character becoming even stronger and easier to battle against the foes. Collecting badges in the levels which you can able to equip it from the badge menus and performing your buffs/debuffs assets can also improve your player's levels.
So far, I really liked the exploration aspects of the game where I enjoyed exploring around the non-linear levels, which kept me playing in whole hours of fun by finding secrets and earning items. The combat gameplay works pretty accurate overall with responsive hit detection and reliable player's combat weapons.
Depending on game's difficulty, the game gets even harder for later chapter. Each of the boss battles can be very frustrating to play due to overpowered boss health, using enemy's buffs/debuffs assets that weakens your character's powers and too many attack patterns that scatters around which made the game quite impossible to beat, so playing a bullet hell type of game is not very easy for the most of the casual players unless you need to be experienced with bullet hell type of game by practising it more, the better you will become which adds the whole challenge of the game. So far, the boss battles are quite epic to play which I was surprised to see how developers managed to make the game even harder, but entertaining at the same time when I kept dodging their attack patterns without trying to get damaged badly.
The game also features new game plus which you can able to play the whole game again while still retaining the same contents from the previous save, which adds up the nice replay values and you can also enjoy playing two of the game modes such as speedrun mode where you had to beat the whole game faster with best time record as possible and then you will have a boss rush mode where you have to beat every boss characters without having to be defeated.
Overall, it has great exploration, impressive combat gameplay, intense boss battles and nice replay values.
Graphics
I really liked the mix between the modern 8-bit and 16-bit style of in-game graphics. The character's design is well drawn in 2D sprites giving a cute look of the characters. Each of the whole levels are well built with full of great environments and the use of animation which offers colourful visuals details and parallax effects on backgrounds that made the level design looked amazing for retro type of game. For example: Golden Pyramid has light candles, doors, and gold pillars, while Azure Snow Land has full of trees and snows, but it has the water animation that really moves giving a nice variety of level design. I also liked the use of special effects during the boss battles, the enemy's attack patterns are looking spectacular with sparkly and glowing effects that made the game looked amazing overall.
Overall, it has well drawn characters, great environments, colourful visuals and amazing special effects.
Music and Sounds
The best part of the game was the whole original soundtrack that sounds really wicked overall. The music in the Rabi Rabi Town and Starting Forrest has cheerful tunes that puts everyone into smile, while the other music is sound kinda similar to other video game such as Golden Pyramid stage that has simular vibe as Shantae series and the Cicini's Computer stage which kinda sounds reminds me of 3D bonus stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. While the original soundtrack are absolutely sounds fantastic, it has really good use of sound effects for the environment noise and atmospheric sounds that really fits perfectly for the game's presentations and in-game environment.
Overall, it has wicked soundtrack and impressive sound effects.
Special Features
This game has unlockable contents such as gallery mode, speedrun mode, and boss rush mode. The game also have new game plus which allows player to start the game at the beginning while still retaining the same items which adds up the nice replay value. For PC version, they will able to puchase DLC from the steam store such as digital soundtrack, digital artbook, and of course Cicini's Halloween and Is the order a DLC features extra chapters, while Sony's console version will also have Cicini's Halloween and Is the order a DLC included on both physical and digital version of the game.
Advantages
Adorable characters
Great exploration
Impressive gameplay
Amazing graphics
Wicked music
Nice replay value
More special features
Disadvantages
Punishing difficulty
Below-average story
Final Verdict
Presentation 6.5/10 - adorable characters, nice slideshow style and stunning level concepts, but suffered with below-average story.
Gameplay 8/10 - great exploration, impressive combat gameplay, intense boss battles and nice replay values.
Graphics 8/10 - well drawn characters, great environments, colourful visuals and amazing special effects.
Music and Sounds 8.5/10 - wicked soundtrack and impressive sound effects.
Special Features 8/10 - unlockable contents, new game plus and DLC.
Overall 8/10 - Rabi-Ribi is a surprisingly fun 2D Platform Adventure game with great Metroidvania style exploration and insane bullet hell action that made the game quite fun to play. Despite the silliness of the story which is not the main highlight of the game, what really matters the most as long as the quality of gameplay and graphics are turns out to be quite epic which features impressive combat, intense boss battles, great level design and has replay values. This is definitely a hidden gems for most of the video game collectors should be able to pick this game up if you're up with the highest challenge, so good luck with playing this game.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Skip it
Rent it
Buy it
If you like my recent blog, please hit like and comment below for further questions.
This is Zeeshan Mirza's Blog and I'll see you next time, happy blogging everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment