Red like roses
Fills my heads with dreams
And finds me
Always closer
To the emptiness and sadness
That this game has given me

I have had this game in my steam library since 2016 and today I decided to play this game for the first time, from start to finish in one sitting.

I played this game for 7 straight hours. For 98% of the game, I was mainly dicking around and beating up Grimm. The Grimm were not that interesting. There are three types of Grimm: lizards, bears, and wolves and there are mutant versions of all 3 of them. There are also two types of robots, a red and a white version where the red is more aggressive/fast and the white one fires projectiles. The lack of enemy variety makes for repetitive and boring gameplay, and this is for a very simple reason. Their attack patterns are not that distinctive from one another. Sure the Ursa Major enemy has an attack that has an AOE dirt attack, but the majority of the fight will still be it chasing after you and taking a swipe at you. Same for the lizards and wolves and their exploding varieties. The white robot is a joke because you can just dash and run away from the singular grenade it throws and dodge the bullet spray. The red robot was the one actual enemy I felt was a challenge and that’s because it’s attack range is far longer than any other enemy and one hit takes out half your health. The final boss was unique but in a terrible way, which I will discuss later.

Outside of the enemies, the combat is nothing. Each character has an ultra, a “super” move and a long ranged move. I played as Ruby so my critique will be about Ruby. Close combat in this game is absolutely useless, half because your character will be so squishy due to aura only taking about 3 hits, and half because the amount of time it takes to combine a normal attack with a super move leaves you open to hits and the Grimm can attack much faster than you can. The long ranged attack has absolutely no limits to how far you can shoot and hit a target, and with auto aim the gameplay ends up becoming sniping your enemies from long distances and running to avoid them chasing after you. The auto aim can get annoying at times though, as it will also select breakable items, enemies behind you, the corners of the arena, etc.

The stats system is also nothing. The way stats work in this game is that for every level you gain, you get 1 skill point that you can spend on levelling up your special moves or delegating it to health/meter bars. Since the level cap is at 10, I found out the hard way that there are more upgrade options than skill points to earn. There is an option to get back your skillpoints and reassign, but since there really isn’t much variety in how you can upgrade (you get 4 tiers in total, 2 of which you can choose from options), it wasn’t worth it to me. I leveled up Ruby’s long ranged move so that she had a shock ability, leveled up her ultimate to the final level and the super move to the 2nd level. I also increased her aurau, had her aurau regenerate faster, and a second bar for the ultimate meter. This had practically no/slim effect to the gameplay. The upgraded ultimate helped a bit but the amount of time it takes to get it ends up makes it relatively useless until you get to the final boss.

What about the art? Well, I did like the landscape and set design of this game. I personally don’t care for the HD graphics movement, so if I can make out whats on screen and an effort to try an illustrate a world to the best of their ability, I will take it. The 5th (?) level being a completely red forest and running around the grass and flowers made me relax and genuinely enjoy my time there. I liked the icky dampness of the cave levels and appreciated the texturing done to the labs that make them feel sterile and clean.

However, while I do like the visual appearance of the levels, I don’t personally like how empty the levels are and how a lot of the earlier levels lacked any creative design philosophy. I understand that the game was made incrementally over the years, and it does clearly show as the jump in quality from level 3 to the levels after it is vast. However I’m still taking points off for there being huge swathes of space to run around in during locked arena battles that made it feel a bit of a joke.

The music was…… Well I do like a lot of the music made in Volume 1 and 2 but the fact that there’s not really any new songs except for the credits song, and the majority of the sound track is just the instrumental version left me a bit disappointed. They work fine for what they are, but hearing the food fight battle theme being used in a fight against 5 beowolves is a choice that they sure made. Also they really made me hate Red Like Roses Part 2 because of its use in the final boss fight. I consider that a sin.

Speaking of the final boss fight, it was complete bullshit. I timed myself, and due to the issues I described above (not being able to do close combat, being squishy) , it took me around 40~ minutes to beat it. And that was on my 4th try, having lost several times at the midway point. Not only does the final boss have a health bar that’s about 4 times bigger than any boss that you fight in the entire game, but it also spawns in around 4 beowolves and 2 robots at the 75% and 25% mark.

Why is this infuriating you ask? Usually, it isn’t! I relish when bosses add in a little flavor and shake things up, but it’s the fact that the 2 robots persist even after you kill them. Yes, you heard that right! While you’re trying to avoid a huge fuck all boss with a health wall, there’s additional enemies that will not die! The first iteration was the white robot who would die and respawn, which isn’t bad because it’s just easy projectiles to dodge. However, after a while, a red robot will take its place and it is fucking hellish. To add to the misery, around the 25% mark is where a red and white robot will be there. Add in the auto aim issues where it doesn’t get the right target a lot of the time, and it is amazing how fast you can learn how to use the dash button. My hands hurt playing this fucking boss and I would not recommend trying. It’s a shame honestly because the scorpion boss actually looked cool by itself but the health wall and the dumb robot respawning bullshit made my 3 star review to 1 and a half.

To conclude my review, I’m going to wrap up by talking about the story and the miscellaneous thoughts that can’t be put elsewhere. The story is barebones but I can appreciate that the team was trying something different and new. Unfortunately, the lore was shoved in the last 2 levels and you could be forgiven for forgetting about it. Outside of that, the voice acting was bare bones. Ruby will say the same 3-4 lines after beating a wave and they’re all taken straight from the show. The audio mixing is also really weird because I could hear Oobleck clearly but for some reason they made some of Ruby’s lines very soft so I could barely hear it with headphones on. There also wasn’t much flavor text or worldbuilding added outside of the plot which is a shame considering I liked Mountain Glenn in the show. The UI was also very minimal and there was no way to pause the game, even in single-player. You can check the settings but still get hurt which really sucked when I wanted to take a break to eat.

Despite my harsh review of this game, it really isn’t the most horrible game to exist. I have played other games with worse controls, unclear objectives, and offensive storytelling. This game was made during a time when RT fans believed that they could contribute to the stories being told and Steam Greenlight was an actual useful tool to support developers. It’s something made in 2016 and everything about it shows. The fact this was made as a potential multiplayer co-op game and had people streaming and playing it during the early years, the fact that there are 4 different dlc packs with alternate costumes, the fact that people still post in the Steam Community forums of this game illustrates that there is (was?) a fanbase for this game.

While writing this review, I searched up the actual game programmer who worked on the first demo of the game and was planning to quit making fan games after he was done. As a game developer myself, I understand the joy of making games for yourself and the arduous process of having ideas that you want to be cool, look cool, and feel cool for your audience. So I can see the potential this game was hoping to have, and I respect Jordan Scott tremendously for trying to make something for a show he loved and getting a job with RT to fulfill that. But between RT continuing the game and the servers getting shut down in 2019, I wonder what went wrong here. Was everyone working on this game aware of the issues it had? Did they hope to expand it beyond what we see now? Was there publisher mandates and a limited budget, a common occurrence in game companies? Or did they simply finish the story they set out to write and call it a day? I will never get these answers, nor do I want to ask as I have other games to play and everyone has moved on with their lives onto greener pastures. I’ll be keeping an eye out on Jordan’s new game “Arbiter” but for this game, I think I’ll put it in the grave and not look back.

To begin with, I LOVE RWBY (and Bumbleby), it is the only series I am obsessed with (but I avoid the fandom, it's all about drama every day).

Despite the game having bugs and a kinda bad optimization for weaker machines, it is a very fun game. I repeated the story several times, whether it was either single-player mode or co-op. Each character has their speciality and different attacks, and we can build a loadout around them, with skill points we unlock by levelling up. The combos are satisfying and the game can be hard at certain times, ESPECIALLY AGAINST THE FINAL BOSS.

I gotta also tell y'all that this is a standalone story, although they indeed mention stuff from the main story of the series, so I recommend watching at least the two first volumes to understand it fully, although it is not required. It's too bad it is a short story, I wish they had DLCs to add more stories.

The soundtrack is the same as the series, and the credits contain the full "Lusus Naturae" song (while the menu only has the instrumental), and goddam I always loved that song.

Alright look. I didn't finish this game. I put a bit over an hour into it. I think that's enough though. This game was clearly made with care for the IP but the developers were very inexperienced. All 8 (Yes, 8. I bought the DLC. For the bit, of course.) characters feel super weak. Very few attacks are actually any good. Nora and Pyrrha are okay. But other than that no one feels particularly satisfying. The game looks nice though. The graphics do a nice job of replicating the visuals of the show, so it gets extra points for that. The animations are stiff and not very good which also looks like the show.

RWBY May Cry this is not. If you're looking for a new action game to play, stay away from this one. Even if you just want a RWBY game, it's really not worth it either. The charm of the show isn't present here and the game is barren of features. Your time is much better spent on other games in the genre. Honestly there's probably some mods for DMC5 you could use and get a much better experience than this.

Also, 20 dollars? Really? I'm glad I got this in a Humble Bundle. It's insane that this game costs that much when it's so barren of content.

Subpar co op beat’em up at best. Only reason people played this was because of the RWBY skin plastered over a mediocre game. The online works fine and was fun with friends for maybe a few hours.
Bland environment.
Nothing special about the combat.
Fighting the same waves of the same enemies over and over.
Sure there’s a story but it’s barely thought out. You would only want to play this game if you’re a big fan of the show. Otherwise, you have better options to choose from.