Rightfully, Beary Arms review

If the title Rightfully, Beary Arms makes you groan, you should probably know that the game’s balancing is just as bad. Yes, your early loadout is every bit as clunky as the game’s moniker, which you’ll have to wrestle with for far too long. What starts as a quirky, twin-stick roguelike about a gun-toting bear quickly devolves into a test of patience rather than skill.

The opening selection of three underpowered pistols feels less like a starting point and more like an exercise in gratuitous restraint. No matter the choice, it will take numerous hits to take down basic foes, and unlocking stronger options requires significant grind and good fortune. Runs that should feel like learn opportunities instead become repetitive slogs through the same weak gear, recycled tips, and predictable patterns. The difficulty curve isn’t so much an arc as it is a small cliff you’re told to scale with your “bear” hands.

Progress via Attrition

From the inexact twin-stick aiming, the puny magazine sizes, slow reloads, you’re severely disadvantaged at the beginning of the game. Worse yet, enemies sporadically spawn on top of you, which becomes frustrating in the game’s claustrophobic interiors. Then there’s the issue of Beary Arms’ map screen still highlighting the location of perk boxes after they’ve already been looted. When accompanied by several balancing issues, the game feels like it didn’t receive much play testing.

Roguelikes habitually thrive on “one more run” temptation, where you’re spurred on by the thrill of discovery and a sense of progression. But here, the randomness seldom feels rewarding. Most loot drops or upgrades “bearly” change how powerful your guns feel. And when you finally do unlock something interesting, it often arrives too late to make an impact, making victory feel more like luck than mastery.

One More Run? Nah, I’m Good

While the story might have been a cute concept on paper, in execution it can’t counterbalance balance Beary’s blemishes.  You play as a bear fighting to reclaim a devastated world from some kind of cosmic threat, but it’s mostly conveyed through ambiguous dialogue and minimal cutscenes. It aims for wit but ends up straddling between sincerity and self-parody. The objective of injecting some personality is evident, but it’s tonally convoluted and can feel like a stitched together patchwork of ideas.

This is disappointing because the game’s visual design hints at something greater. Save for getting caught on doors, levels are properly sized and showcase some impressive shadowing. And while there’s not a lot of different enemy types, getting chased down by pixel art peaches and animals that carry giant guns conveys some charm. And it’s hard not to fall for Paul, the black-tie fox shopkeeping with a cigarette perpetually dangling from the side of his mouth. It’s too bad that most of Rightfully’s creativity is confined to the game’s art style.

A Bear with Dull Claws

Combat, the core of any action roguelike, just doesn’t enthrall. Beyond enemies being bullet sponges, your mobility feels too sluggish to counteract their aggression. Some fights boil down to circling enemies awkwardly while hoping your paltry arsenal gets the job done. The result is not challenging in the way Hades or Dead Cells fans might appreciate. It’s frustrating in the way bad pacing and repetitive loops can be.

From Enter the Gungeon’s dance around bullet clouds to Risk of Rain’s gradually escalation of madness, action roguelikes often showcase innovation. But Beary Arms truly struggles to stand out from its peers. Sure, it checks all the boxes, with its procedurally generated levels, unlockable weapons, and irreverent tone. Yet each element feels taken from a game that already did it better. The bear costume might be new, but underneath it is a basic framework that rarely feels distinct. Perhaps Beary Arms most remarkable quality is the game’s six-dollar launch price, which does undercut some of its rivals.

Bearly Worth Your Time

No, Beary Arms isn’t awful. But it’s a painfully average and derivative effort in a field full of gems. Sure, seeing gun-toting furries shoot the stuffing out of each other is mildly interesting, but that’s largely the only divergence this title brings. For a game about a bear with massive guns, it’s oddly toothless, and that might be the biggest tragedy of all.

Rightfully, Beary Arms was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.