It’s very difficult for me to place this rom hack. On the one hand, it’s more or less the vanilla game which is by default a stellar game and a must play for any fans of the RPG/JRPG genre. However this hack has a few things that really don’t sit well, but it’s not all bad.

The minor touches and QoL improvements are certainly welcome. The game progression does feel a little better, the biggest of which is not needing to waste an accessory slot on triple techs whereas now they are permanently learned when you acquire them. The updated item descriptions are also welcome, giving some much needed context to what some of the added effects are.

The extras in the game, while rough, are charming enough and are a fun peek into things like that were left behind. Songs such as the Battle 2 theme and Singing Mountain are welcome additions especially and are placed in great spots to really help immerse you in the situation. The added side quests are nice too, adding some fun extras. Though they are very rough with dialogue that doesn’t stand up to the rest of the game (We can’t all be great writers but it’s worth mentioning to set expectations) and the tiling/graphics do get a little screwy. But a solid attempt for sure. The side quest areas ARE accessible for the most part as soon as you are able, but be warned they are insanely difficult and some even needing NG+ to even really complete.

My biggest gripe, and a serious turn-off for me was the random difficulty spikes. Perhaps that was a side effect of the difficulty balance patch, which was nice having to really conserve items and having some other small tweaks. Some bosses just require the extra grinding and that seems unnecessary, this isn’t a case of just rework a strategy or party all the time. Sometimes you will just get party-wiped the second you enter battle. Twin-Golems being a frustration in the Ocean Palace being a big one, and Lavos in general as his big party attacks will kill almost everyone instantly or close to, leaving you little time to recoup before he goes for another attack.

It’s moments like these that feel so radically unbalanced (whereas some fights seemed like a joke from what I remembered in the vanilla game) that it really takes away from the care put into the hack. Hopefully in future updates these get tweaked, as this really is a big barrier of entry for those who are more casual fans looking to have a fun revisit.

Lastly, the writing as stated earlier that was added in or modified isn’t stellar. And the 600 AD Old-English medieval speak just isn’t fun to read, but all in all it’s passable and doesn’t take much away from the game so no real knocks against it in that regard.

I do recommend this for fans of the game who are looking for a real challenge and to see some cool extras, but really can’t recommend it over the original and some of the others I’ve played. Overall it still needs a lot of work, and hopefully future versions will remedy a lot of it if they are coming.