I enjoyed Walthros

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Bob the Hamster
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I enjoyed Walthros

Post by Bob the Hamster »

Walthros is one of the oldest classics on the OHRRPGCE, but I must admit I didn't make a serous attempt to play it until I was able to play it on my phone. I enjoyed it very much, and wished I had tackled it sooner.

Plenty has been written by others about this game, so I may not have much new to bring to the table, but here are my thoughts:

The graphics were simple, but clean, and they grew on me fast. I liked the sprites better than the maptiles, but the maptiles were adequate in that I could always tell what they were supposed to be. I really enjoyed the enemies. Although some were over-simple, I got a good feeling of an alien menagerie.

My total play-time was a bit over 12 hours. I felt like the story was well-paced. I never felt bogged-down at any point, and it kept me interested with new twists and turns. I remember the story exposition getting really wordy around the time I got Dr Pescado, but that didn't bother me really. I couldn't help thinking how many other RPG games will dump walls of cosmological background and existentially overwrought peril on you in the introduction before you even meet the character whereas Walthros waited 9 hours deep into the game before it dumped the exposition bomb on me. That is where it belonged, and it worked for me.

I think that what is going to stick with me most about Walthros is the cast of characters. I was already well aware of Bob Surlaw, Salom, and Super Walrus Man from their appearances in other OHR games, but I was delighted at the rich cast of goofy monsters. I think my favorite was Woo.

The cast was enormous. I ended up with 19 playable Characters, not counting the few temporary characters were were used for short sequences and then lost again. I am pretty sure I missed at least one somewhere.

In spite of the enormous crowd, for the most part they still each had enough uniqueness to be interesting. When I reached the Mouse wars sequence, the uniqueness of the characters broke down a little, but I was still having fun collecting them, I almost felt like I was Pokemoning, trying to catch one mouse from each town. Even after that, I was delighted to find unique characters. I wasn't expecting Captain Gru, but I enjoyed finding him, and using him, and although Lux was a total throw-away character, I did laugh the one (and only) time I tried his special ability.

I was very happy that I happened to keep a save right before the Lunar Endgame, since there are still mysteries that I left unsolved back on Walthros. Who is Musa and where has he gone? Can the Neon Dragon be defeated? Where is that last Brave Artifact I am missing? Was Guinea-Cow just pulling my chain, or did something really change in the alternate dimensions?

I know that Walthros is finished, but in an RPG-maker community it is impossible to avoid talking about revisions to games, no matter how complete. If I had a wish for an update to Walthros, I would like to see an audit and re-balancing of spell/special attack delays and costs. Most characters had at least one non-default-attack that was worth using (Yuk Deluxe being the proud and noble exception) but some of the attacks were just too expensive to be worth using, while others had such long delays that they were never worth using in normal combat. Prime offenders were most (but not all) of Bob's summons, and Dinosaur Micro's special attacks.

The overall difficulty was fairly low. I had to remain vigilant about healing, but I was never in dire danger. I understand that the game can be played in "Hard Mode" by making Bob refuse help from potential allies whenever possible, and I expect I will be trying this sometime in the future.

To conclude, although Walthros is not without rough corners, it brings everything together in a way that I found satisfying, and I am glad to have finally experienced it.
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The Wobbler
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Post by The Wobbler »

Thanks for the review! Really glad someone can still enjoy this game today for all its roughness.
Who is Musa and where has he gone? Can the Neon Dragon be defeated? Where is that last Brave Artifact I am missing? Was Guinea-Cow just pulling my chain, or did something really change in the alternate dimensions?
Musa goes everywhere! Good luck following his trail. Your second and third questions are related to each other.

There are minor changes in the alternate worlds that may or may not be worth returning to. There's a guide here that addresses each sidequest if you're not worried about spoilers! http://superwalrusland.com/games/WalWalk.txt
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

I liked this game too. I didn't even know you could get Captain Gru in your party, but I think I had some sort of samurai cat whose name I can't remember. Noticing that his crazy high accuracy stat allowed him to sometimes hit the Neon Dragon while nobody else I used could, I thought carefully about the special abilities of some of the characters I didn't like and figured it out after only four stubborn attempts to kill it with other party combinations.

Use Ketchup. Darn commie is a great sharpshooter.

Gulob, sadly, didn't really stand out any to me. He, Bob, and Salom are supposed to be some sort of significant trio but he didn't really seem to say or do anything memorable. Such is the weakness of having such a large and varied cast of playable characters, I guess. Likewise I can't remember much of anything about the purple mouse and the yellow mouse.
Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!
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The Wobbler
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Post by The Wobbler »

Welcome back to the land of the living my friend.

Gulob's definitely the worst developed of the main crew, and he's also kind of a dumb baby. He's so bad in this game that "I have no personality" became his running joke in Walthrus ROTC. Mustard's problem is he joins the party after his quest is already done, so you don't even get a chance to see him much.
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