Untrue Air's Epic Review
Graphics: 10/10
Honestly above everything else I think the graphics are INCREDIBLE. The credits say that the sprites are all made by Ralorche and if that is true then the creator is an AWESOME pixel artist. All the characters look cartoony, but generally have more realistic proportions than most Mario games (especially with Mario himself). All the sprites are extremely detailed and the colors are kind of saturated. This comes together to make a unique, somewhat serious/gloomy, somewhat funny/cartoony art style that both looks good and fits with everything else in the game.
Plot: 8/10
The plot is somewhat serious and somewhat gloomy, which matches the art style. Obviously, being a Mario game, the plot isn't that involved. It is serious and compelling because Mario wants to find closure and revenge after Luigi's death, which is a good motivation for the player. However it is silly because it is filled with wacky Mario characters. I like this balance a lot.
The main thing i don't like is that it is a little confusing; simple stories should not be confusing at all. Up until you actually defeat the essence, you have no idea what Mario is actually trying to do. In regular Mario games, it is easy to understand that Mario is going to Bowser's castle to save the kidnapped princess. But in this game I don't really know where Mario is going or what "setting things right" even means. And it's never explained what the difference between Waluigi and the Waluigi's essence is. Overall, this is a great story to get through the game but when you try to think about it it doesn't really make sense. But it is much more on the "good" side than "bad" side.
Polish: 7/10
This game has very good polish. The sound effects are extremely fitting, the audio is not too loud, the framerate is good, there are not that many glitches, it is satisfying to hit blocks etc. Honestly this is the area where most fangames fall short, but Essence of Waluigi impressed me.
However, I could definitely tell the difference between a real Nintendo game and this game from its polish. Some examples where it misses the mark are when you triple jump and land before you finish spinning you stay at an angle when you land, the sky parallaxes during the Mario fight and shmup section (the sky should never parallax), some decorations in the background like the treasure chest in the water level look like you can interact with them, etc. This general "not perfect" polish is everywhere in the game. Still, unless you spend hundreds of hours checking everything, nobody can achieve a perfectly polished game. And you also need other people who are willing to test your game and say "I don't like this." Unless you are a AAA studio nobody can get perfect polish, but I think it should've had a bit more time in the oven and more betatesters.
Gameplay: 9/10
I LOVED how creative the gameplay is. You have your normal running and jumping action, but you also have a hammer spin and dive. Even though the spin and dive are useful, they are "extra" and don't get in the way of your ability to run and jump normally around the level, which keeps that classic "Mario" feel. The enemies are well designed and have predictable movement patterns so you always know how to deal with them. The triple jump was there too. In most Mario games, you need a long open space to do them so you can only use triple jumps in special situations. However in this game you can do them from a standstill which made me actually consider using them a lot more. Normally this would be broken but the level design takes your high t-jump height into account so it is not. Back to the dive, I think it was a great addition. It is so much fun to fly around the whole level and there were many parts where it allowed me to skip otherwise tricky platforming. However, this is balanced because since you go really fast, it is hard to control. You need to be brave to use it because it is easy to go too far and hit an enemy or pit. This is classic risk vs reward game design. The hammer was awesome as well. It gave Mario a new way to dodge bosses and interact with enemies, and some enemies interacted with the hammer differently than others.
My one complaint is that the hammer has a lot of reward and no risk. You can spam the spin button forever and you stay invincible, so there needs to some downside to using the hammer. I literally beat the final big Waluigi boss by closing my eyes spamming jump and hammer spin for a minute or two. You are invincible to attacks and Waluigi shoves his hand right into your hammer and gets hurt. Still this is one small thing and otherwise the gameplay is SO much fun.
Level Design: 8/10
In general the level design is extremely creative. It works very well at using all Mario's abilities, such as pits you need to dive over, fish enemies that come at you from the side so you should use the hammer, and ledges so high that you need to triple jump. Coins and ? boxes are often placed out of the way or near enemies so players who put in extra work get more, but many are placed in your natural path for all players to get and feel satisfied. There are also many types of levels such as your basic "run to the right" level, a water level, a vertical level, and a collect-a-thon level. This serves to break up the gameplay because you do different things each level. The game also has a mild difficulty curve with the later levels being harder.
However, there are a couple nicks here and there in the quality of the level design. Firstly, the collect-a-thon level is a bit confusing and hard to know where to go to get the stars and coins (and why am I collecting 7 stars and 8 red coins when I could just collect 15 stars?). A map would be useful. Secondly, the Waluigi essence power up, although it is cool, isn't utilized too well. If it is supposed to let Mario kill enemies then why aren't there a ton of enemies in my way? Also the way the bill blasters are positioned in the pier level makes it really easy to get hit once and get knocked into the void. This makes them the only OHKO enemies in the game which is out of place considering how common they are.
Music: 5/10
The music is very fitting in the game and gives it an nice atmosphere. The songs are very catchy.
Unfortunately these are ripped from other games and are not original or remixes. This is unusual considering that all the sprites, level design, many enemy designs, story, etc are original. It still sounds good, but I'm rating "Essence of Waluigi" not "Smash Bros. Brawl" so I'm going to ignore the quality of the music. However I will leave this out of my overall score cause it doesn't really matter.
Overall Score: 8/10
Overall, this is an incredible fan game. I am glad that people out there like Waluigi as much as me and are willing to make awesome fangames about him. My favorite part of this game is the incredible spritework. Everything else is good but not perfect. Even if I wrote more about the negative stuff that doesn't mean that this game has more negative stuff, that is just because feedback is more useful for negative things than positive.