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Arrowmancer Review: Waifu Witches...in Space

27K View2022-06-23

Since I was young, I’ve always enjoyed watching anime and playing games that mimic the art style. From the Naruto Storm series to Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds, this look has kept me glued to games much longer than I would have been otherwise. The latest anime-esque title to capture my time was Arrowmancer, a challenging new gacha RPG that allowed me to customize my dream waifu and conquer the galaxy as the CEO of a witch tycoon. Yes, you heard me right.

Arrowmancer is a free-to-play RPG featuring turn-based elements, rhythm gameplay, and an in-depth combat system, all in a tactical and rapid-paced fashion. You embark on a journey as the CEO of a galactic business involving witches and waifu collecting.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

Arrowmancer has been praised by many across the animation, comics, and games (ACG) community in part due to its creator, Waifu Labs—the team behind a website that shares its name where you can generate anime profile pictures to help create your perfect waifu. As Waifu Labs’s biggest push into actual game design, Arrowmancer features an odd but surprisingly fun gameplay experience. Its storyline definitely hogs the spotlight via its unusual concept, though.

Set in space, Arrowmancer imagines a universe where witches, once famed for their power and ability to grant wishes, have grown sparse. Knowing that granting wishes doesn't actually pay the bills, witches have succumbed to more grounded career paths, like working at cafés. Two witches are unsatisfied, however; Kairos and Fig take matters into their own hands and embark on a business venture where they can use their power as beings of magic in a financially beneficial way: by charging clients money to fulfill their desires.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

As the latest hire for this business (due to a goofy series of events), your job is to help the duo rack up sales, build a clientele, and make the customers’ fondest wishes come true. Much of Arrowmancer’s wild story is told via text-based dialogue, as if you're texting other characters on your phone. A lot of that dialogue is pretty funny too. I enjoyed the bickering between Kairos and her enemies, Fig's constant worrying, and the mumbled points of agreement or support from an exceptionally cute black cat. The game also features unique quest lines that will take you to different planets across the universe, including Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Each world’s nine chapters provide fun and extraordinary experiences.

Arrowmancer's gameplay mechanics are relatively understandable, but they come together in such a way as to create a game that feels swift and dynamic. Once you enter a mission, you fight on a three-by-three grid with a squad of three witches. Once both your team and the opposing crew are set up on the grid, you need to “dance.” Dancing is the core of Arrowmancer’s combat gameplay, and it involves shifting a character around the grid in specific patterns symbolized by big flashing arrows. Following a character’s dance pattern will build up combo points, which get turned into greater damage when that character actually attacks an enemy.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

But don't spend too long busting a move; each turn has a timer. After the clock reaches zero, your combo points convert automatically to damage points and strike the opponent. If an opponent is already low on health when your turn starts, you can always swipe up towards the enemy to deal damage and move on to the next opponent in the chain. You'll also need to be wary of where you move during your choreographed waltzes, as your enemies occasionally launch laser strikes or plant mines that damage you if you get close.

Unlike most gacha games, Arrowmancer doesn't primarily focus on stars, stats, abilities, or passives. It's honestly all about the dance synchronization between your characters. If your waifus aren't compatible, and it's hard for you to perform dances and collect combo points during your turn, you'll have a challenging time. I got lucky with a six-starred waifu called Saika that had a relatively easy-to-memorize dance pattern. I also received two four-star units that complemented Saika’s dance well. Missions were pretty smooth sailing for me because of my team's combat compatibility.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

As Arrowmancer's main selling point, waifus are everywhere! You can even add your own character through the Waifu Labs creation hub and import it into the game by spending purchasable tokens. To acquire more waifus, you can roll the gacha once or in groups of five pulls. Like most gachas, you might need to spend a little real-life cash if you’re hoping to get some particularly strong witches. The game’s pity system is ridiculously high at two hundred rolls for a guaranteed five-star pull, so if you're not lucky, you'll have to purchase roughly $1,500 worth of cosmic gems to reach pity. However, you can optimize your chances by waiting for banners for the specific witches you’re looking for, and there are tons of ways to earn cosmic gems without spending money, including stage rewards, battle pass missions, and side quests.

Beyond just looking cute, Arrowmancer’s waifus add complexity to combat by employing elemental strengths and weaknesses and status effects. Each character is associated with either fire, air, earth, or water, and each also has a variety of buffs to apply to teammates (haste, fury, etc.) and debuffs to splash on enemies (poison, paralysis, etc.). These systems coalesce into a delightfully brain-busting approach to battles, where setting up your characters to counter enemies who are giving off the correct element is key to victory.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

But this is just the basis of Arrowmancer's RPG experience. A bevy of other systems, such as duplicated characters, level upgrading, limit breaking, synergies, and managers and contributors, all weave together to provide numerous paths for improving your characters and tweaking your approach to combat.

The only issue I'd say Arrowmancer suffers, especially from a beginner's perspective, is its pace. It's tough to avoid being damaged in battle, but that’s a requirement to get a three-star rating at the end of a stage. After playing hours of Arrowmancer, I only managed a couple of three-star ratings. For someone playing free-to-play or even just trying to maximize free rewards and minimize credit card charges, losing that final star due to one mistake can feel absolutely brutal, especially as you think about all the potential waifus you could be losing access to.

Image Credited to Arrowmancer | Waifu Labs

Part of the reason that the no-damage requirement for three stars seems so harsh is that the general gameplay of Arrowmancer is pretty dang hard. Blame my lack of rhythm and timing if you must, but I had a tough time juggling between inputting my characters’ dance patterns, dodging enemy attacks, and keeping track of all the other status effects and elemental affiliations and other bits of information affecting the battlefield. The only way I made progress at the beginning was to memorize my characters’ dances painstakingly. My capabilities did improve over time, though, so maybe it’s just a matter of getting in sync with this strange game’s funky flow.

Arrowmancer might've not been kind to me, but it compensated for that pain with everything else it has going on. Between its intricate combat, rhythmic dancing, electrifying soundtrack, and of course, tons of waifus to collect, Arrowmancer plays a tune quite unlike most gacha games I’ve played before. For someone like myself who resonates with the genre soulfully, this hit has kept me jamming and grooving more than I ever expected.

SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Rotaeno. If you enjoy Rotaeno's lively gameplay and soundtracks, you'll love Arrowmancer for the same thing. And if you haven’t heard of Rotaeno, take a look at our review from my colleague Aaron Jacobs.

• Genshin Impact. If you're more interested in Genshin Impact for its waifus than its epic action-RPG gameplay, you'll go head-over-heels for Arrowmancer's adorable cast and unique character creation system.

💬 Check out Arrowmancer and let me know what you think of it in the comments below! If you liked it, let me know who's your favorite space-witch waifu!

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