Walthros: Renewal

RPG where chilling with friends is as important as saving the world. Colourful world and it's inhabitants with supernice characters emanating goodness and frienliness (Bob is the sweetest protagonist ever). It's also well written, with natural dialogues, humble yet rich sense of humor and no heavy handed delivery of more serious themes or thoughts. Walthros might be heavily inspired by classics (time travel, alternative dimensions... wink wink), but is way too clever and imaginative to be a mere copy or pastiche. It's great standalone game, one of the best among all the jrpg-likes. It also doesn't bother you with countless random fights and endless dungeons, maintaining healthy flow all time through. Extremely pleasant experience.
P. S. If you want to discover other less known gems, you're welcome to visit my curator page: Nods for Underdogs.

I have to say I really enjoyed my time going through the world of Walthros, getting to see this adventure with bob and his friends to save their world from being destroyed while having fun and going out to eat and solving other peoples problems, all while making yourself stronger, I really enjoyed some of the silly things that happen during the adventure and the serious parts really hit for me, the simple character designs for most residents work fairly well to keep the game from feeling too noisy and it really gives an old hippie vibe to the world (from the music to the outfits and media) and the fun lil refrences to other games or cartoons/movies really make it exciting (i loved catsuma) I fully 100%'d this games achievements in a few days, but because i was able to do them while exploring the world, this game also makes me really think of 'MOTHER: Cognitive dissonance' alot, mostly because of a ragtag group of alien creatures working together and the music (even if MCD had more midi lol), The combat isnt really hard (not saying its boring, its fun to do, Bob is really a great healer when you realize his magic stat scales how strong his healing is which makes charge a great skill to use before using party heal) but can get a bit challenging when fighting optional fights or late game if you arent prepared, but overall I'd say this 20 hour experience really hit well with me and I wanna try the game again, but in HARD MODE to really test my skills!

SWG's newest RPG is just as lighthearted and well written/interesting as their latest game, but now with the addition of some genuinely creepy world-ending horrors lurking in the shadows!
I'll update this with more after I beat it, but the moment I got a party member who was a goth goose shopkeeper who's reason for being able to fight monsters is because they work in retail, this became the easiest recommendation of my life.

This is a very well-rounded JRPG, and that could be a pun with how rotund many characters are. The story and world is fascinating, the gameplay is solid, and the presentation is crisp. I know that the game has a simple, cartoony look but I think it served the tone well. It’s expressive although there is a same-face problem with some kinds of characters. While the music might lack emotive structure, it’s usually idiosyncratic and atmospheric– sometimes wanting to be a chillout funk tune and sometimes and sterile bit of ambient music.

Idiosyncratic is also how I would describe the world the story takes place in. It’s a futuristic planet full of cute animals but has a quiet seriousness that got me invested in the story. Evident by the main character Bob being a doofus, the story has a goofy sense of humour. There’s also a lot of bespoke characterization in the world of Walthros, like how clowns and clowning is a capital-I Important aspect of language and culture.

The gameplay follows a lot of typical JRPG fare, but it’s snappy. There are no random encounters; all the enemies appear on the map and you fight a battle when you run into them. The fights are paced out well with story: I don’t think I fought more than 300 battles. I found the gameplay to be easy, though, but I was playing on Normal mode. I will play this game again on a harder difficulty and see how that goes. Easiness aside, there was still richness in the mechanics so I still had fun choosing parties and selecting equipment.

The story has a lot of good mystery although towards the backhalf of the game, I don’t think the narrative parses out information in a way that’s really exciting. Towards the end, the story wasn’t told in a way that resonated with me deeply. I just wasn’t feeling much emotion in the last act. I still enjoyed the experience overall.

I’ll recommend it because it’s still memorable for being a weird, oddball JRPG that’s still concerned with being an engaging mechanical experience. There’s a lot to like here and it’s easy to love.

Comfy, rather light-hearted RPG with lots of different characters and encounters. Definitely a labor of love, and it's a pitty it's so unknown. Personally, I wished the story was a bit darker and more twisted, or alternatively a bit whackier/quirkier (as in Kaiju Big Battel). But yeah, that's a matter of preference - if you're more into heartfelt stories about friendship and different characters growing from their struggles, you've come to the right place.
Gameplay-wise, it's the typical JRPG you get. The cast of party members is quite large, but I think it often comes down to AoE vs single target, and you either deal damage (various kinds against various neglectable weaknesses), or manipulate the attack/defense stats. When it comes to healing/recovery, it's almost solely tied to the mandatory main character, so no futher complexity regarding party combination is introduced here.
To wrap it up: I think the combat mechanics are just to simplistic to make such a huge range of party member choices. I wish there where complexer synergies between different characters, more status effects besides stun and poison (charm, confusion, frenzied, frightened, ...), more distinctive skills (e.g. something like a tanky character with taunt and reflect abilities, a character which grows the more powerful the less hp it has and maybe can even survive negative HP for a signle turn, a character that boost enemies for more XP/loot, a character which can morph/switch stances etc.) I don't want to say a single dev could implement all that complexity, but gameplay-wise it should be balanced with the number of possible party members Without this complexity, most combats and most combinations play similar.
Still, there aren't so many combats to be fought that it's getting really tedious, and on normal difficulty you can go with the flow without any need to retreat or grind. If anything, there might be too less fights where you have to retry/reconsider (the Kraken was a nice exception).
What the game did really well was the side-quests, which are often interesting or funny, and rather diverse in their tasks! No quest feels like another one, and despite not many of them offering huge rewards, you get motivated to complete them all.
And all these unique NPC dialogs deserve an honorary mention. Every dialog has its unique quirks! This holds also true for an uncountable number of individual object descriptions.
Recommended if you want a (somewhat happysad) feelgood story with a broad range of different characters (story-wise) and lots of interesting side-quests (for such kind of a game)!

Walthros is a charming indie RPG with heavy JRPG influences and a unabashedly clownish sense of humor. I was not expecting to feel so many emotions and be as attached to the characters and universe as I ended up toward the end of the game. Genuinely one of the best sleeper indie hits. Don't miss this one! If you like indie game and JRPGs, you owe it to yourself to try this one out.

Tis a fun game, and it works great on the Steam Deck! I played the original game on my phone back in high school. In many ways, this game is what I wished the FF7 remake was: A straightforward remake of the original game that expands on the the story, setting, characters and gameplay, while updating the graphics (I wish the graphics were of the same detail as Kaiju Big Battel, but I haven't played that one yet). The fact that this game feels significantly different from the original despite being on (well, barring updates) the same engine is a testament to the versatility of the OHR Engine (Thanks for introducing me to it, megaman sprite game).
EDIT: Aw, I called it too soon! I just got to Part II, and the battles are insanely laggy on the Steam Deck, making them impossible to play on there. I continued my game on PC, and I found myself stuck in one spot after going through a fight with several purple monsters. I saved in this one spot, so I don't know what to do now. It's a good thing the dev is good with trying to address bugs that get reported to them.