Game Review: RWBY Arrowfell

In a joint effort by Rooster Teeth in conjunction with gaming studios Arc System Works (BlazBlue and Guilty Gear) and Wayforward (Double Dragon: Neon, Spidersaurs, and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Franchise), The game was first announced in 2020 but finally released on multiple platforms this year. And much like the previous RWBY game in the past “Grimm Eclipse”, The game attempts to tie itself further into the mainline canon of the story set during RWBY Volume 7‘s events with RWBY writers Kerry Shawcross, Miles Luna, and Eddy Rivas at the helm.

For those of you who don’t know, “Metroidvania” is a subgenre of platform video games focused on guided non-linearity and utility-gated exploration and progression. As the term implies, it amalgamates the names of the video game franchises Metroid and Castlevania, with games in the genre borrowing elements and gameplay mechanics from both series and was further popularized after the success of the 1997 Playstation classic, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or its Kickstarter-funded spiritual successor, “Bloodstained Ritual of the Night”. Typically, games like this are often based on two-dimensional, sidescrolling platform gameplay, and feature a large interconnected world map that the player can explore. Traditionally in games like this, parts of the world will be inaccessible to the player until they acquire special items, tools, weapons, abilities, or knowledge within the game. And it’s here where RWBY: Arrowfell excels the most.

While the plot itself goes as far as to proclaim that it’s “Volume 7.5” in the game’s intro, and a lot of the show’s voice cast is returned, a large portion of its voice acting is reduced to grunting or expressive sounds with text boxes during gameplay. The characters do talk during cutscenes, but those were often relegated to before and sometimes after boss battles in an attempt to further add details to the story. One of the other bigger selling points it attempts to claim is that the game’s plot is canon to the series. Yet these newly introduced characters within the plot of the game are never mentioned within the show during the proceedings of Volumes 7 and 8 and I doubt will ever be seen again. Heck, the game doesn’t even mention Robyn Hill or her Happy Huntresses whose existence became a point of contention for General Ironwood within the mainline story as this plot mostly takes place before the latter half of Volume 7 where it progressively takes a very dark direction, also with zero mention of other supporting characters such as Jaune, Nora or Ren but I’m betting they’ll be DLC in the future maybe?

In terms of gameplay mechanics, the controls are smooth, quick, and responsive. Since the game allows the player to switch between specific characters within Team RWBY on the fly, each one has certain attributes, powers, and abilities that can be individually upgraded with merchant purchases using In-store currency to upgrade your party members by using “Skill Points” to level them up, Heart Items can extend the players Life-Bar, A green energy bar is designed to keep the player from breaking the game with spamming each specific character attack, and a Ring Item exists that resurrects you in case your character dies at a certain point or discovering said items/power-ups as you traverse these levels, or through fetch/side-quests that sometimes reward the player with extra upgrades here and there, or let you enter areas that were purposely blocked until a scripted point in the story where it matters.



On the subject of fetch/side-quests, oftentimes you’ll find yourself with an Item and not know what to do with it, or when you do, You end up getting another item for another quest you haven’t fulfilled yet. But other times you can’t access certain parts of the map until you upgrade specific characters to find hidden spaces you couldn’t access before, or be forced into an “Ambush” mini-game where you’re confined in a small room to wipe out a group of enemies with no option to leave just to further progress to a certain level, but once they’re finished, they’re no longer an obstacle. As you obtain a specific item or are finished with said level, You’re given the option to leave on a whim to other areas on the map similar to Donkey Kong Country which thankfully makes backtracking a lot easier. But if all else fails, there’s a room where you can save your progress that will also instantly heals you and the rest of Team RWBY much in the same way the aforementioned Castlevania: SOTN does.



The enemies are what you’d expect from within the show’s universe such as Random Grimm creatures or random outlaws who often respawn offscreen when you come back. Easily one of the most annoying enemies that keep respawning is the Bat Grimm creatures with remind me of the floating Medusa Head enemies from Castlevania, or even the Grimm-looking Gremlin creatures that annoyingly bounce and attack you directly like the “Flea Men” also from Castlevania that can often make meticulous players seethe in frustration. The Boss battles are entertaining in different ways, though they have easy-to-follow attack patterns that reward people paying attention.

Overall, while it’s not a bad game in terms of pleasing the casual and longtime RWBY fans, It might not be for everyone as a stand-alone title since it requires people who have watched the series to connect the narrative dots or actually give a shit about these characters. Despite the selling point that it supposedly has of including game-exclusive animated cutscenes from the show, combined with the claim to be in-cannon to the mainline story, it feels almost out of place given how Season/Volume 8 ended, which gives me doubts that we’ll see these game-exclusive characters again assuming the writers and animation team will still remember them for later storylines. Mechanically the game also works as a jumping-on point for people who have never played a Metroidvania game before and that at least earns some merit to its existence for newbies. At the time of this review, the game is digitally sold for $29.99 on PlayStation Network (or $32.16 if you count the tax) and digitally available on current systems and Steam at the time of this review. But with a recently announced physical release by Limited Run Games who have a decent track record of sometimes publishing physical copies of digital-only games, there are plenty of options to play this on current-gen systems. But even then, you may want to wait for a sale/discount in the future…