About ten years ago, Rooster Teeth launched a new animated web series. RWBY, spawned a fairly successful media franchise. But aside from the rather unfortunate hack-and-slash game that bombed, his only representation of RWBY in video games consisted of a handful of his mobile games and cameo appearances. To change this, his new project called RWBY: Arrowfell, led by WayForward and Arc System Works, has been announced for his 2020. After nearly two years, the game is finally out. are you OKThose waiting for the RWBY series to finally get a great video game adaptation will have to wait and see, but RWBY: Arrowfell is a decent, if flawed, game.
RWBY: Arrowfell is the seventh volume of the anime, set shortly after Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang become officially licensed Huntresses. As you pursue your quest for fame, you come across a mysterious military technology that seems to attract Grimm, and you find yourself embroiled in a larger conspiracy as you investigate its origins. It’s not a particularly compelling story, but it offers enough incentive to keep you hooked, partly fueled by fully voice-acted cutscenes at key story beats that mimic the show’s animation style. Those without a RWBY background may find it a bit confusing as to how the various characters and organizations relate to each other, but the story is kept simple enough not to confuse them. .
RWBY: Arrowfell is an action platformer reminiscent of Shantae’s games, but the gimmick here is the ability to switch between any of the four lead girls at will. Each has its own weapon loadout and special skills, the latter of which is also used to solve simple environmental puzzles. For example, Ruby has a horizontal dash that makes her temporarily invulnerable in battle and can also be used to cross gaps other girls can’t. It can be summoned and used to weight switches that open doors.
While I understand that each girl felt sufficiently differentiated from the next, I also felt that there was a lack of mechanisms to encourage the use of the entire team more often. Once you’ve settled on a team member with a weapon that suits your playstyle, there’s no reason to switch to another member other than for diversity. This has the effect of reducing her three other team-her members to “keys” that unlock obstacles in the environment and return them to the drawer for later use. Having something like a combo system to switch between mid-battle and favoring certain enemies that took more damage from certain members of the team would have been more useful in this regard.
To give a sense of character growth, each girl can be improved via a series of skill points found or purchased around the world that can be invested in stats such as melee damage and defense. I admired the attempt to go deep, but found that it also encouraged sticking with just one member of the team. It doesn’t take long to max out the stats of one team her member. Doing so will give you a noticeable advantage over most enemies you’ll encounter. Any good reason to spread points and use the whole team is welcome here. Because if you choose to do so yourself, you voluntarily become handicapped.
Moment-to-moment gameplay follows solid, if unobtrusive, action platforming as you dash through frozen caverns and futuristic cities to chop up bad guys and take on more NPC fetch quests. Combat is snappy, but feels a little simpler and oddly balanced. For example, using ranged attacks consumes chunks of your energy bar, which also depletes when you take damage. You lose hearts when empty, and die when you lose all hearts. I’ve found myself using ranged attacks very little, as bringing myself to death’s door just to fire a few shots is of little value.
Additionally, all girls share the same energy bar and heart pool. That means the girl who invested the most skill points can regenerate energy faster, so the switch is less ambitious. However, there is a missing piece here as well, which is desperately needed.
RWBY: Arrowfell’s level design follows a wide linear format reminiscent of Metroidvanias, but with a bit more limited range. Rather than one big map connected to each other, self-contained levels are unlocked and can be selected in any order from the world map. Each level has several paths radiating in either direction that can be explored to find chests containing skill points and important items needed to advance the story. The level design is fine, but there is a decided lack of interesting stage hazards and obstacles to distinguish each level from the next. The lack of map functionality can make navigating some levels more tedious than necessary.None of the levels are big enough for you to get completely Lost, but there were a few times I found myself wandering around a bit because I couldn’t find the one hallway I needed to move forward.
For those of you who haven’t collected this far, RWBY: Arrowfell is the kind of game that has all the right elements but just doesn’t mix them well. I was losing momentum a few yards short of the finish line. With different playstyles and abilities, he’s given four characters, but there’s really no good reason to use them all. Combat has melee and ranged options, but overusing any of them is punishable. The stages are well stocked with collectibles and are meant to be explored, but no maps are provided for navigating.
RWBY: Arrowfell has many nice properties, but the problem is that almost all of them come with some kind of modifier or caveat. It’s certainly not a bad game by any means, but it’s pretty frustrating considering that a few simple tweaks and tweaks to some gameplay systems can lead to a pretty enjoyable experience.
From a presentation standpoint, RWBY: Arrowfell does a good job of adapting the anime’s visual style. It all seems to run on some version of his 2.5D engine WayForward, used in projects like Ducktales: Remastered and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. Although mostly using 3D models, many of the characters and enemies are created with the kind of outlines shown in this art style. look 2D. The only drawback here is that we didn’t see any examples where the frame rate exceeded 30 FPS. Additionally, the environment design can be a bit similar. You can only run before so many snowy caves and tundra melt together.
Conclusion
RWBY: Arrowfell is great enough, but it also feels like something you discovered in Newgrounds when Flash games were popular. Elements like shallow combat and the extra skill point system don’t feel properly fleshed out, and the repetitive environments and bland level design tend to get boring as the campaign progresses. If you’re a big fan of Wayforward’s other work in 2D action games and you’re looking for something like that, I’d recommend this game lightly, but you might still want to wait for it to go on sale here. No. There are certainly many, but many RWBY: You’ll find worse games on the Switch eShop than Arrowfell, but I’d rather spend my time and money on a better game.
