I feel bad giving this hack a ‘no’ recommendation. This is one of those instances where I wish that this website had a bit more of a nuanced recommendation feature. The word “no” can be stated in many ways, from outright screaming to something a lot more hesitant and unsure. In this case, my “no” falls into the latter category.

Let’s begin with what’s good:

1) Battle music. The battle music is varied depending upon where you happen to be when fighting. If you’re in a forest, it’s one song and if you’re on the plains, it’s another. Deserts have a different theme as do caves. This is extremely welcome. I had always wondered why video game composers couldn’t be bothered to make a few more tracks for battles so that they aren’t always the same thing ever single time.

2) Balanced difficulty. This one truly surprised me. You see, for some reason, FF6 appears to be a very difficult game to balance. I say this because despite the numerous mods for this game, it either turns into a hard-type hack or does little to nothing to the difficulty at all. This hack certainly felt more difficult than vanilla, but it wasn’t anything substantial. Overall, it was a welcome change.

3) Portrait/sprite changes. The portraits of the characters, as well as their overworld sprites, were altered. For the most part, these alterations were very well done. I think some of them could be debatable as to whether the original was superior, but I felt that they were generally much better. They were clearer in terms of what they were trying to represent and provided more personality.

4) Cyan’s bushido. It builds much faster which is so much better than the vanilla. This is exactly the way it should’ve been to begin with.

Now onto the more mixed/neutral stuff:

5) Dialogue. Much of the dialogue is improved and provided with more clarity, but that only makes the mistakes stand out that much more from the vanilla. For example, Cyan’s dialogue has been changed from “thee” and “thou” – which is fine – but when Gau is met for the first time, he begins saying “thou” a bunch from out of nowhere. Up until this point, “thou” is not even said a single time. It doesn’t make sense. Shadow’s somehow become nicer and more congenial (a change I vehemently disagree with and don’t think aligns with the original intent). And things that should’ve been fixed, like Cyan not really caring that much that his wife and kid and everyone he has ever known are all dead or that Setzer appears out of nowhere and joins with the Returners for no good reason at all, are left intact.

And now the things that bothered me enough that I gave up on playing to the end (hence the “no” recommendation):

6) “Class” gameplay balancing. One of the things that the author of this hack claimed in the readme was that “classes” were “more defined”, offering the idea that there were mages, warriors and a mix of both. This was certainly not my experience at all. Instead, I was given characters who could cast spells and characters who could not. Otherwise, they were only differentiated by their unique ability (such as Cyan’s Bushido or Celes’ Runic), something that is already present in the vanilla version.

This bothered me in particular because I was very hopeful that despite not being able to cast spells anymore, my non-spellcasters would shine. Instead, they just couldn’t cast spells. It felt like a nerf rather than any kind of balancing. The equipment could’ve been used to offer some kind of differentiation but it really wasn’t either. My “fighters” – i.e., those without spellcasting – had no bonus stats to offset their deficit. They were just characters who at one time could’ve cast spells and now they couldn’t. It made any grinding or leveling very boring and meaningless, which actually brings me to the next negative point.

7) Leveling. Leveling felt like it didn’t matter at all. Barely any changes took place between levels. I expected that the “fighters” would’ve gained more HP or something over their counterparts, but they didn’t. Sabin felt the only exception to this rule (he had a bit more HP, though still nothing that substantial), but if that’s the case, was Sabin supposed to be the only “fighter” in the game?

8) Stealing. Locke’s ability to steal is pretty cool. Unfortunately, in this hack, it almost never works and thus has no point to being used; that is, until you start getting items that help it along (Thief’s Gloves, etc.). This effectively means that to steal properly, you must have Locke equipped with “steal-only” items. I think a better solution would’ve been to allow Locke to steal worse items without gear and better items with gear, not make him unable to ever use steal properly unless he’s geared that way.

I will end with the nitpicks (things that were bothersome but not overly so):

9) Back row. Back row reduces damage by 25%. Why? What was wrong with 50%? The back row feels almost exactly the same as the front now.

10) The phantom train sequence suddenly drops the XP gained dramatically for no reason whatsoever.

11) Throwing. Throwing is much too expensive for a greater part of the game. To balance this, I would suggest that either the cost of what is to be thrown be reduced OR that there be an expensive item that allows infinite throws (like a boomerang).

12) The Veldt. This was very confusing. In the vanilla game, it was very clear: Gau learns rages on the Veldt by leaping at enemies. The end. In this one, it appears that Gau learns rages anywhere at all. What’s the Veldt for? To just have a place where all the enemies you’ve fought before reappear? Sounds okay, but why no XP gains then? In the vanilla game, there was no XP given on the Veldt and in this hack, it’s the same. Why? I believe that not providing XP on the Veldt in the vanilla game was a poor choice to begin with. If the Veldt is going to be changed, why not change that too?

13) Monsters. This may seem to contradict my “balanced difficulty” advantage at the top of this review, so let me explain. It’s true that the monsters provide more of a challenge, but it’s really only in the damage that they do. It gets to a point in the game where all that’s taking place is a damage game. I would’ve loved to see more variation in the monsters, especially given that relics can protect characters from all sorts of negative effects. This would encourage strategizing certain relics over others.

Conclusion: It was the lack of differentiation in the “classes” and the underwhelming advantage to leveling that ultimately led me to quitting early. One might argue that I needed to keep playing to really see the benefits later on, but I’ll simply counter that a game should be good from start to finish. If a game is excellent during its last half but poor in its first half, then I would suggest that its first half should be worked on.

A game is not absolved of its problems because it’s an overall enjoyable experience. The problems still exist. And for some, they are not worth suffering through.

This hack had an enormous amount of potential and I still think it does. What it really needs help with is balancing. The “classes” should be much more clearly defined and obvious, right from the outset, especially since many of the characters endure a colossal nerf (no spellcasting). It should be painfully obvious who my “fighters” are and who my “mages” are. The back row should be a safe place for my squishy characters. Every single level should feel substantial. And if everyone’s leveling too fast and thus making the levels too powerful, then just change the threshold necessary to acquire a level.

If those things were achieved, I would gladly offer a “yes” recommendation.