Let me get this out of the way: PLAY THE ROMHACK. It is absolutely beautiful.

This is a gamer’s hack. It is play tested, challenging, and extremely interesting. The new weapons, revamped overworld, new enemies, new classes, and extra dungeons are an absolute joy to play.

Manall has changed the combat system so that each character’s turn queues individually, and action is taken immediately by that character. It makes the combat incredibly deep and tactical and you are NOT relying on turn RNG hoping that your heal happens before someone gets killed. And… you never EVER see “ineffective” because you killed an enemy before another character attacks it. I don’t know how I’m supposed to play other hacks now that I’ve experienced this.

I’ve played through the game once so far and I’m already stoked for my next run. The new characters (archer, green mage) are interesting and bring unique spells and weapons to the table. The fighter is still good but doesn’t render the other classes useless.

The pace of the game requires some level grinding but nothing that ruins the fun. Honestly if you don’t like a little grinding then FF1 probably isn’t your jam anyway. The economy is paced so that you are neither gold starved nor is the economy broken until you are at the end of the game.

There are secrets stashed all over the place (look around carefully especially in dungeons) and after my first run I still am missing some of the equipment and things seen in the documentation.

Speaking of documentation, Manall did some really quality work putting together a useful, and entertaining in itself, guide that includes maps, equipment lists, detailed enemy lists, and other things that are not required reading, but definitely helpful. It even includes the boss spell scripts and if you don’t read up on who you are fighting, you will be in trouble!

All of the spells are useful now and that even includes such throwaway spells from the original like Dark and Conf. The magic charges are still not as plentiful as I would like but that could be a result of coding issues… I’m not sure if the game code would easily let you get double-digit spell charges but I wish it would. Regardless, with some grinding you will get multiple charges of your high level spells and won’t be starved for magic like in the original.

One of the cool things about the hack is that the ship can dock anywhere, and this really opens up the world for exploring, especially once out of the inner sea. The vanilla game always felt so scripted with only a few sequence breaks available and rushing for the airship was the only way to get places in the north (Castle Ordeals canoe trick notwithstanding). But that’s changed in this hack.

I could nitpick at some of the things I wish were different in this game but I won’t even bother because they are things that are easily mitigated with modern emulators (buying potions remains tedious. Use the Nestopia speedup and rapid fire A button feature. Problem solved.)

Hope this was helpful to anyone wondering if you should play the game. Have fun and be careful out there!