RBION may be one of those love it or hate it machines, but it's all Lawlor at its heart, and this is a champion's game among the early Y2K era Stern.
The playfield doesn't break a lot of new ground, but you'll instantly see self-quotation from Twilight Zone, Addams Family, and the 80's classic Lawlor machines such as Earthshaker. Among the familiar features: a between the bumper shot to the left (although relatively inconsequential for scoring in RBION), two tight up the middle shots and a close standup bank almost dead center set against a scoop, multiple top flipper orbit shots, and low side features. It has a second plunger lane, albeit an autofire one for locked balls, another Lawlor standard feature. There's even a talking giant head (the shrunken head), although thanks to the vintage and manufacturer it's not an actual moving head ala Red, Ted, Rudy, et alia.
The final product is a maven's variety of shots - fore and backhand options for almost every shot are available, none of them too easy (although the right ramp is pretty low difficulty), and while there's a little start and stop with some of the scoops, in general the action is pretty free flowing and can get fast. It's extremely easy to get a multiball of some sort (half the modes are multiballs) but the "main" multiball of three balls takes a reasonable sequence of shots, and the wizard mode is hellaciously difficult to get to, requiring successful completion of all the modes. There's a sort of bonus multiball, the slyly named RIPOFF mode, that's independent of the modes or the main multiball.
What sets RBION apart, though, is the layering. Modes can be stacked, and using the tic-tac-toe gimmick temple up the center ramp to time things like the 2X playfield in combination with one of the multiballs - or if you're truly amazing, the Atlantis mode - can lead to amazing point totals for rounds that normally feel like chicken feed. Because there's a set of several progressive goals, while it doesn't have the extremely deep rules set of some more recent vintage machines, it makes for a variety of game play and goals.
The Stern engineering is a blessing and a curse: game control is relatively easy, and outlane drains are boring (none of the panic of the left outlane of TZ), but flipper touch isn't as elegant as the classic Lawlor Williams machines. There aren't as many playfield toys -- a Bigfoot or a Rollerskating Penguin, or an actual Idol instead of an illustrated one, wouldn't have added more than a few bucks of cost and would have added to the fun factor.
Now, as to the theme (and artwork). This is where the love-it or hate-it aspect comes in. Ripley's itself is an old school throw back to a pre-internet time when a lot of weirdness in the world that was real, some that was fake, and whether any of it was significant or not was hard to evaluate. The Sunday RBION columns and the even older newsreels and traveling super-side-shows, only a few steps away from a carnival freak show, weren't exactly textbook anthropology or natural history, nor were they culturally sensitive by modern standards, but they did pique interest in people about things outside their sphere of experience. Fun, yes, even if you were left wondering whether it was all BS.
This is where I think it's a great Lawlor theme. Even though it's licensed, there's quite a bit of Lawlor whimsy built in that pokes gentle fun at the theme (not taking Ripley seriously, having him as a pseudo Indiana Jones figure as he painted himself in the 20s and 30s, the occasional self-deprecating joke such as "Ripoff" Multiball) while incorporating the essence of the old Ripley's books and strips (the Odditorium, with its one-line weird facts) and incorporating a sort of 1930's travel the world feeling. So it's supposed to be sort of dark, dusty, and leathery, like one of those local museums you stumble upon that hasn't been updated in sixty years. I can fully see why this might not appeal to some people, but if you're in the right mindset, it can be lots of fun to go along with the theme. My kids have enjoyed talking along with the Shrunken Head and reading the "facts" and looking for jokes and easter eggs. It's strange. And very unlike a lot of playfields in that regard. An acquired taste, yes, perhaps.
So, calling it "Stern's Twilight Zone" or "The Poor Man's Twilight Zone" are both fairly apt descriptions - it's not quite the equal of TZ or TAF but it's a very playable machine with its own rewards, and a celebration of odd and funky like the best of Lawlor with his fascination alternating between disaster zones and freakish characters.