Romancing Walker

Romancing Walker is a classic, and at the same time a game like no other.

Ryle is our typical teenage sword wielding hero, but he'll soon be joined gradually by a team of pretty girls (far stronger than him!) that will form his party. This reminds to me the modern Kemco free rpgs for ipad like the Asdivine serie, as here too you have a male sword wielding hero helped by an entourage of pretty girls, that during the course of the game will improve their relations with the main character if you, the player, will choose the correct dialogues. Of course this was really innovative at the time, for an Rpgmaker game, and it's worth noting that these features are still mantained and repeated nowadays.



The Good

Mapping is good, despite the use of the usual charsets and chipsets the final result is cute and pretty. I like the cities, the different locations and places and how they are styled differently, there are lots of items and details everywhere. Facesets are well done and expressive, and they match their charsets, there are also some pictures of mixed quality.

On the funny side you will find some orbs lying around that will let you witness some hilarious (cut) scenes or bloopers.

Combat is the classical Rpgmaker standard system with front view of the opponents, as usual you learn new skills by leveling and you've to spend MP in order to use them. So far nothing new, anyway there are some cool features: for example the special attacks have some cool animations of the character attacking, then there are some clever ideas applied in combat. For example there is one section in which you have to attack some items that mind controls your opponents, but you have also to avoid killing them in the process, so you've to be careful not to unleash all your powerful area attacks. This is something alike some situations commonly found in the Final Fantasy games, like the combat with Ymir (also known as Whelk), in which you cannot just use your must powerful moves but you have to plan a bit. Nothig complex, but at least this means that there was an effort to make something different.
Difficulty is well balanced, combat is easy while bosses are totaly another matter. But it's ok! And look, there is more: there are also some puzzles, secrets, hidden boss, an unlockable extra party member and different endings! Lots of fun!



The Bad
The translation is... meh. Well better than nothing, so I guess it's ok but it could have been better.
Also most parts of the game are really "ordinary", that's not an extremely bad thing, but be prepared for dungeons with lots of random encounters, grinding and old-style jrpg tropes. And be prepared for bad stereotypes too, starting with the good-hearted clumsy hero, and other really classical anime tropes that you probably have already seen a thousand times.



The Verdict
Romancing Walker is an old classic game with a generic plot that, despite this, is still enjoyable today as it was well designed and combined some innovative features with a typical jrpg gameplay. The translation doesn't help much to improve the game, still this is a unique take on the jrpg genre, with lots of content for hours of fun.