I was about to give it a thumbs down. I mean, the game has some pluses, some minuses. But it has one egregious minus that is in itself thumbs-down-worthy, that is enough to bring down any and all other good aspects that this metroidvania might have:
It refuses to provide you a map.
This design decision is beyond obnoxious for a metroidvania.
Yes, metroidvanias have a fair amount of backtracking, by design. The need to revisit parts of the map because new abilities just got unlocked that let you enter into some new areas. This backtracking-by-design is in itself the reason many players shun metroidvanias. And well, like other metroidvania aficionados, I am fine with that.
What I am [b]not[/b] fine with, is the game intentionally not providing you with a [b]map[/b] of all these areas. So you're endlessly roaming around [b]blindly[/b] across screens upon screens of constantly respawning enemies - where most of the screens look much the same - to locate where are the bits that you were unable to visit the last time.
This happens in all metroidvanias, but [u]it happens with a map[/u]. In the case of RWBY Arrowfell, it's however painfully obvious why that design decision was made: to waste as much of your time as possible, so to hide how relatively little content the game has in itself.
I had completed the game in 7 hours, and [i]nearly half[/i] of that was [u]blind[/u] backtracking.
Yet at that point, I had found 63/64 team upgrades, which is super annoying for a completionist.
Of course that you must find them all to 100% the game -- and that one upgrade was the [i]only[/i] thing I was missing.
I spent about 2.5 hours more blindly backtracking, and decided that's it, giving this a thumbs down.
But I went to the guides, and fortunately found this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898820596
The comments also agreed that the last upgrade that everyone is missing is in the [b]Dust Mines[/b].
Fair enough, that was the one that I was missing as well to 100% the game.
I'd have given it "neutral" - which I remember Steam was offering as an option at some point, but no longer so? So I'll give it a thumbs-up, as I appreciate a number of other things that went into making this game. But if you want to play this game, do yourself a favor and grab that map. You'll thank me later.
That map will turn RWBY Arrowfell into a 5-hourish game which - having eliminated the irritating blind backtracking drudgery - actually has some nice bits. If 5 hours isn't worth $30, well, there's the occasional discount. But before going into whether the game is worth $30, first and foremost it must be confirmed if it's worth 5 hours.
I'd say: it is worth 5 hours, but it's [i]not[/i] worth the "drudgery-extended playtime" of 9 hours that I ended up having. And having that map is the difference.
On the plus side, the game has the original voice actors, and it seems that the original animation team assembled several key cutscenes. Those "OG team" cutscenes really stand out in terms of tone from the rest of the content of the game, which I assume was done by WayForward. The cutscenes seem right out of the original anime, in tone and everything. The other in-game scenes are tonally quite different, as if WayForward were going for some mix of Marvel-Cinematic-Universe kind of humor and Cartoon-Networkish super-sugary peppiness. You can have a taste of both in the trailer; the OG-team cutscene material vs. the WayForward drawings.
Aaaanyway, the cutscenes were actually nice to see.
The gameplay is not brilliant but it's quite okay. It's a fine short game, if putting aside that egregious decision about not giving maps.
