There is a lot to like about this hack. It keeps the storyline intact, while adding side quests during the game to improve equipment and such. The QOL improvements in other hacks are also implemented well here, like the improved info for weapons/armor. Additional save points are a very welcome addition, and they are placed well.

There are also some points where it is clear this is not done by a game designer, and it takes away from the experience significantly. For one, Yang is utterly broken. With midgame weapons, he does 4x more damage than Cecil with the Crystal Sword. Some landscape was edited for seemingly the sole purpose of increasing walking distance by forcing you to land airship farther away, which didn’t add anything but made for tedious navigation and very unnatural looking world edits. Very bizarre choices. Some new monsters are well designed, but very overshadowed by some that are horribly designed. Take one called “movers”, which appear in some chests late game and thus cannot be run from. Appearing in groups of three, each with almost the max HP the game allows for an enemy, triple that of the late game Behemoth, they take forever to kill. Which would be ok, but unless they are killed at the same time, they revive the others at full HP. Ok, tedious, but would be manageable even at crazy high HP levels, but then throw in that damage is bugged so you can’t keep track in your head (elemental effects sometimes stack unseen damage). So just use scan spell to monitor? Nope, can’t do that, if you cast a spell on them they spam one hit kills called “laser”. Ok, so use bahamut over and over to drop HP evenly since summons bypass the spell counters? Maybe, but sometimes one of the three is immune to all non physical damage and it misses. Gale (previously “weak”) doesn’t work either. This is the type of stuff you have to deal with, it’s not that it’s difficult, it’s just annoying. I spent an hour fighting them before turning it off while still alive. That is pretty unacceptable for a game that is designed to be completed in 12-15 hours for a random enemy to take an hour to kill. There are more examples of bad game design that you’ll have to endure.

So you’ll have to take the bad with the good. I’m not convinced it’s better than simply playing the main game, but if you’re itching for a new way to play this amazing game, this is an option. There’s definitely good aspects. But be prepared for some very basic game design mishaps along the way.