Flubberwunked

Platinum  #219 - Rabi-Ribi (9000th Trophy)

Enjoyment: 8/10 - Difficulty: 7/10 - Hours Played: 35

It's about damn time I got this Platinum. I bought this game on my 18th birthday in 2018 long before I became a dedicated trophy hunter. I literally just seen the cover art and I bought the game lol it's as simple as that, but past me didn't know of the challenge that was waiting. Welllll I never went for the Platinum and forgot about the game for 3 years as I moved on to different games that had me more interested.

This game just sat near the bottom of my trophy list for years with no sign of progress ever being made....until now! (Finally) My interest for this game came back when I saw that there was a trophy guide created for it. I took one look at the time and difficulty requirements and welp...my interest quickly faded again. Fast forward to October 2021 and I now wanted my completion percentage to be above 95% and the best way to increase that percentage was by completing one of my uncompleted games. I'm not sure why I picked Rabi-Ribi, but I'm certainly glad I did because my love and appreciation for this game is unreal compared to my thoughts on it in 2018. I loved it so much that I made the Platinum my 9000th trophy. 

Yeah... 3 years is definitely a long time lol

When we first start the game, we see our main character Erina confused about what has happened to her. She has been transformed into a human and she needs to find her master and find out what's really happening. She meets many characters along the way to help her on her journey. 

I really did try to like the story, I really did, but it just wasn't that interesting or engaging. The characters aren't the best either when it comes to their personalities and growth as characters. There we're some characters I liked such as Erina, Cicini & Seana, but they aren't exactly amazing characters. The character design really does save the day here as it made these really forgettable characters at least somewhat memorable. I started skipping through the cutscenes less than halfway into the game and this unfortunately came back to bite me in the ass. I came across a bug that was preventing me form progressing further and it turns out the main source of the problem was because I was skipping the cutscenes. The game definitely got it's revenge there lol.

Having an attractive girl wearing a bunny suit and also in a box is certainly one way to get my attention

Rabi-Ribi is perfect example of a Metroidvania. Multiple areas with key areas and items being inaccessible until you have the right upgrades/items to reach them. There's obviously going to be a decent amount of backtracking, but it's no so bad because of the many warp spheres that can get you to certain areas in a flash and also that the world itself is extremely fun to explore. There are items and upgrades littered everywhere and finding them was a joy with and without a guide. Trying to find every single item and get 100% without using a guide would probably make you go crazy though lol. Some of these items are really well hidden and will require some genuine thought and planning on how to reach them, but there are also so many item spots that will make you go "How the hell was I supposed to know that was there?" Either way, exploring and collecting everything was really fun.

Rabi-Ribi's combat is more fleshed out than your typical Metroidvania. The best way to explain the combat would be Touhou boss battles except you're on the ground instead of flying. Each boss will have multiple unique attacks that will usually send a lot of small projectiles in your direction. There's so much variety in the attack patterns, which never made any of the bosses boring. There's over 25 bosses, so it's pretty impressive that they came up with so much unique attacks. There are a lot of other factors that make the combat really fun and engaging such as all the upgrades you get and having both a close up weapon and long range projectiles. Seeing the rainbow coloured damage numbers and hearing the sound effects made fights pretty satisfying.

Kinda hard to tell what's going on here to be honest, but it's basically just bullet hell things lol

The soundtrack for Rabi-Ribi is really good for the most part. There's a few forgettable tracks, but it's great for the most part. There's a lot of catchy tracks whenever you're exploring the world, but the best tracks are the ones that play in the boss battles. My favourite song would be "No Remorse". It's the final song you hear when you're facing the final boss and it made things pretty tense especially on the harder playthrough of the game.

This game looks stunning. I adore the character designs, CGs and the sprite work. Erina has to be one of my favourite female protagonists just based on design alone. Long hair, bunny suit, bunny ears and a nice colour pallet made her a very appealing character. A lot of other characters look really great as well. Seeing both their sprite version and drawn version gives us a nice balance of cuteness and attractiveness lol. The UI and menus look pretty cute too as they have a lot of chibi art of Erina and Ribbon. This is definitely one of the most bright and colourful games I've ever played. Rainbow colour patterns are pretty common in this game, which was always nice to see. There was a few times during battle that I had to use an item, but I paused at the wrong time. This resulted in the screen going absolutely crazy with flashing colours and it would definitely trigger someone's epilepsy, so be warned if you can't take multiple flashing colours although it isn't too common.

They're just vibing lol

Now onto the trophy list for the game. There's at least 3 playthroughs required with only 3 missable trophies. These missable trophies aren't bad at all because you can always keep track on what chapter they are obtainable on, so you just gotta remind yourself to not progress any further. As previously mentioned, the 100% playthrough was extremely fun and easy even with dodging every spike obstacle I seen, but the 2 remaining playthroughs definitely kicked things up a notch.

The second playthrough was beating the final post game boss (not really final post game boss actually) with 0 items. Not gonna lie here, this was an absolute bitch at times lol. Obviously bosses we're going to be a lot tougher, but I thought the real challenge was navigating through the world with very limited movement abilities. Trying to get past the "Hall of Memories" area in chapter 6 and reach the boss was seriously so much harder than the final post game boss I'm not kidding lol. You are allowed some items that don't increase the item percentage and you'll absolutely be depending on these few items. While a lot of deaths outside of bosses did feel really cheap, I still thought this was one of the most interesting gaming experiences I've had in a while. It was like avoiding the starting sword in Zelda 1 on the NES and trying to take on the entire game with only bombs and stuff.

The last playthrough was a 1 hour speedrun. This was so much easier than the 0 item playthrough for sure. This was actually the very first time I earned a speedrun trophy without looking at a guide first and I'm pretty proud of that. My run was 56 minutes long, but I did fight an unnecessary boss, so it could've been a bit better.

This trophy list is the perfect balance of hard, but fun and not frustrating and that's very important for someone like me who gets "emotional" pretty quickly lol.

There's a lot of really nice trophy icons here, so I decided to show some of my favourites

I highly recommend Rabi-Ribi and you should go for the Platinum trophy if you do buy it. You may need to sharpen up your bullet hell skills first before attempting the 0 item run. I'm so glad I eventually got around to this amazing game. Thanks for reading 

Special shout-out to @Joe Dubz for being extremely helpful both on the forums and helping me out too. He's a top tier guide creator who was very responsive and is always looking to improve his guides by adding more and more information. Any new information is extremely important especially for a sort of niche game like this. Thank you 👍