Admittedly, I am a little bit behind on watching RWBY. I like Rooster Teeth’s western animation series, but I fell off for a bit due to various commitments. My experience with the previous RWBY title, Grimm Eclipse, left something to be desired. RWBY: Arrowfell on the other hand has some issues but is a more cohesive and enjoyable experience overall.

Produced by Wayforward and Arc System Works, RWBY: Arrowfell features an all-new story set during Volume 7 of the series. On top of that, there are cutscenes crafted by the team behind the show, and the soundtrack is entirely built for the game. For fans of the series, this will likely be more than enough incentive to give Arrowfell a try.

For the uninitiated, in RWBY: Arrowfell you play as Team RWBY, a group of huntresses made up of Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. While fighting off Grimm creatures for their employers/the government, they discover a mysterious device that seems to be summoning Grimms. Additionally, Grimm sightings seem to be rising. So, Team RWBY must investigate and traverse over 25 locales to figure out what is going on.

Mechanically speaking, RWBY: Arrowfell plays like a side-scrolling Action-Platformer. Each location works as a level of sorts. You fight enemies, look for chests hidden in various areas, and use Team RWBY’s Semblance abilities to solve puzzles and progress. You can switch between the members of Team RWBY on the fly, and each one has their own upgradeable stats.

Stats are raised by using Skill Points, either from purchasing them in towns or finding them during exploration. The problem is that you can only upgrade one member of Team RWBY with each skill point, and their upgrades are split between Melee, Defense, Ranged Damage, and Energy Regeneration.

Let’s talk about Energy regeneration for a moment. RWBY: Arrowfell has the strangest health mechanic I’ve ever seen. You have an energy bar at the top, with multiple red hearts under it. Attacks will damage your energy bar, and if it runs out, you lose a heart. Once you lose all your hearts, you must restart at the last save/checkpoint.

Weirdly enough, your ranged attack also costs energy, which means you had better be careful not to get hit if you plan on attacking at range. Enemies have an uncanny ability to predict where you’re going to move in some cases, so avoiding damage is almost impossible. Each level of energy regeneration changes how much energy you’ll regenerate in total. You won’t regenerate your full bar passively, instead, you’ll have to break objects and kill things to heal the rest of the way. It is a strange system.

Another gripe that I have is that none of the levels have a map. Granted, they aren’t sprawling levels, but as you progress some of them get fairly large. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult to know where you have and have not been. This is especially an issue when a quest (99% of which are fetch quests) asks you to go to an area you’ve already been to pick something up.

It also becomes a problem later when you get an upgrade for one of your character’s semblances, which will undoubtedly let you reach new areas. I wound up having to just go through every area again to make sure I didn’t miss important items like Skill Points.

My last major gripe with RWBY: Arrowfell has to do with the level design. While the cutscenes are well done, the story is interesting, and the soundtrack is nice, the level design is…bland. Each level has a general theme such as a snowy mountain, cityscape, etc. However, the overall layout of each room tends to be the same (or similar) background, with just differently placed platforms and enemies. There isn’t really a joy of exploration in the same way that Wayforward’s other games (mainly the Shantae series) seem to have.

Overall, I think RWBY: Arrowfell is a nice companion to the RWBY franchise. It is much better than Grimm Eclipse, but as a standalone game, it has some really strange mechanical choices that make it more frustrating than enjoyable. Between the harsh difficulty, the lack of a map, and the bland level design, it turns out to be more average than fun.

If you are a fan of the series, I think that a lot of these gripes will probably be fairly minor. I know I still enjoyed myself despite the various issues I ran into. However, this is by no means a perfect tie-in, and I’m not sure if it is even accessible to people who aren’t fans of the series.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of RWBY: Arrowfell was provided by Wayforward for this review.

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RWBY: Arrowfell

$29.99

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• Beautifully Animated Cutscenes
• Interesting Story by Series Creators
• Simple Controls
• Great Character Designs
• Unique Soundtrack

Cons

• No Map
• Harsh Difficulty
• Bland Level Design
• Too Many Fetch Quests