The popular hero squad is back and this time it is for a side scroller action-adventure game. Based on Rooster Teeth’s anime of the same name, RWBY: Arrowfell is the latest title from WayForward and Arc System Works. This title comes with an all-new canon tale written by the original writers themselves, which takes place during RWBY Volume 7, and lets players play as all four members of Team RWBY.

Story

Team RWBY is designated to head out and uncover the mystery surrounding a dangerous new technology encountered near Atlas. This journey will require countless challenges to be overcome and for the team to take down various Creatures of Grimm, but ultimately, only Team RWBY can protect Remnant from a mysterious new threat. Along the way, they will find help from familiar faces, such as Penny, Winter, and General Ironwood, as well as the enigmatic new team of Huntresses, Team BRIR - who seem to be on a similar mission that is all their own.

Gameplay

In the first level you play through, the game will have you utilize each member of Team RWBY. Seeing how you will be playing as Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long all in one, it is good to start off with an understanding of each character. Whether you have a fond memory of each character in the show or not, this game makes it easy to understand each girl’s abilities and usefulness.

You can switch between the different girls in either cycle direction, but you won’t be able to rearrange their order in the cycle. Each character has their own weapon, special, and ability. Ruby can dash even in the air, Weiss can create an ice platform to jump on but it has to be suspended above a flooring, Blake can create a temporary clone of herself that stays in one spot and attacks while she is attacking, and Yang can do a shock punch that can break some objects. While some of these abilities can be useful in combat, they are mostly for puzzle-solving and map mobility.

While searching through each map, you can sometimes find a power-up shard. Each of the four girls has four different stats that can be improved with these shards. This means you will want to power up the character you utilize the most, which for me was Blake (that clone is incredibly useful in combat), and get them maxed out in each stat you use. For me, I didn’t use the range attack option on any character much, so I didn’t upgrade it to be better.

Instead of having individual health bars, there is one single energy bar that each character shares. Under that energy bar are hearts that act as your actual health. The energy bar gets lowered when you take damage, acting as a sort of shield prior to the hearts being used up, and it can also be lowered when you use your range attack. Be sure to manage the energy well because you only find more energy when you break some objects. If you don’t get energy from the broken objects, you’ll get money or even a heart instead.

Combat itself will have you facing off against a variety of enemies. Half of the battle is understanding their movement and knowing how to avoid getting hit while doing damage to them yourself. There are ambush sections where you have to fight until enemies stop showing up and then, of course, boss fights which are probably the most fun fights you’ll experience in the game.

As you progress through the story and complete levels, you will go to an overview map where you can pick from a few different areas. You can go into any level at any time, but to keep you on your quest line, the level with an item you need to find or the person you need to talk to in it will have an exclamation point on it. If you are looking for multiple items, you might see multiple levels with the exclamation point. As you complete objectives, you will get to witness fully animated cut scenes sometimes. Most of the time, the story is told through text dialogue.

At certain points in the game, one of your characters will have their ability empowered to make it even better. This will usually help you reach areas at levels that you couldn’t do so before. You don’t get to pick which character gets the upgrade either, as there is a progression reasoning as to why each character gets their upgrade when they get it. The good news is, if you head into a level to explore a new area that a new ability upgrade unlocks, you can simply use the pause menu to leave that level once you are done with the task in it. You don’t have to reach a specific checkpoint or location to get out of any level.

Audio and Visual

While the new theme song they created for this game is pretty cool, the majority of the game’s music is more fitting to the scenery and environment rather than a hype up to the adventure. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I just wouldn’t say the music and fitting sound effects throughout the game were particularly thrilling. Even so, they are definitely enjoyable and do well for the various environments the team ends up in.

I did really like the slight change in aesthetics that were made to make this 2D sidescroller really pop out. Even with the viewpoint of the game, it felt like I was in a filled-out world with 3D characters and enemies. The fully animated cutscenes helped drive that level of immersion as well. Clean, clear, and colorful sceneries and characters make for a beautifully crafted visual.

Replayability

With how linear the game itself is, I’m not sure there would be much reason to replay the game. You can play as all four members of RWBY though, so if you were interested in fighting more with one character on a second run rather than the one you mostly used in the first playthrough, then that might be a reason to play through it again, but the story, steps, challenges, and solutions would all be the same.

What It Could Have Done Better

The save system of this game is simply frustrating to work with. I could not figure out any sort of quick save or even a location to go to that had a save point in it. Save points seem to only be found in the middle of actually dangerous levels, which means you have to go find one if you plan to get off. Saving the game should be an easy aspect so if you aren’t going to just put it in the pause menu, then there should be an easy-to-reach save point in one of the many safe zone levels right from the beginning of the game.

Some sections of the game require some very precise movements which can be frustrating to deal with. I reached a point pretty early on that I knew I had to get up on a specific ledge, but to do that I had to cross a gap. The only way to pull it off is to use Weiss to make a platform on the very edge of the middle platform and switch to Ruby to jump and dash over at the highest point of her jump. It shouldn’t be THAT hard to progress through the main story segments of the game. This challenging aspect would make sense for a hidden or secret area, but that was simply frustrating to deal with when it happened.

Verdict

RWBY: Arrowfell is an entertaining side scroller and a challenging combat title! I really enjoyed playing through this one and love the character switch-out system in it. Honestly, I thought this was even better than their 3D action-adventure title. You can utilize each character for their individual uses while still taking advantage of the teamwork their skills together help pull off. Definitely a game I would recommend, even to those who haven’t enjoyed the RWBY anime series yet!

RWBY: Arrowfell is now available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.