Return of the Dark Sorcerer is a fantastic hack of FF6 with something for anyone that grew up in the 16 bit era, particularly the SNES era. Essentially, the hack improves the easy difficulty from the original game (it’s a hack of the easy FF3 version that was released in the states), as well, numerous other parts of the game are changed. Characters, music, maps, enemies, etc. Most everything was changed to create a mostly fresh experience. As well, there are surprises left and right. Music is almost all replaced with music from numerous SNES games such as Mystic Quest, Drakhen, FF4, and many many others. Enemies as well are from numerous games. The real surprises I will not spoil here, but once you get nearly half way through the game, you will probably be happily surprised with all of the sudden twists and turns the hack throws at the player.

Aside from my praise of the hack, there are a few parts of the original game I wish had been changed as well. Although both world maps have been drastically altered, most of the dungeons and towns remain mostly the same. There are some minor changes, but not enough to give it the completely fresh feel I would have liked. It isn’t discouraging at all as the minor changes did make for some nifty surprises.

Also, the change in difficulty, although quite welcome since the original game is way too easy in my opinion, is now a notch too difficult at times. Some of the bosses can be a bit unfair and it just can get sort of frustrating when leveling up doesn’t seem to help a whole lot… I believe if the difficulty were changed to still be harder than the original game, but not as hard as the hack is in its present state (v1.2), it would be much more assessable to everyone. Nothing is more frustrating than getting wrapped up in a storyline and not being able to go forward because a certain boss is way out of line tough.

Regardless of the criticism, this is a really awesome hack and a lot of time clearly has gone into the creation. I would highly suggest fans of FF6 check this one out. It is really worth the time.