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This hack had good intentions, but I feel like a few changes should be made.

Anyone who has played Final Fantasy VII more than once can tell you that the game is far too easy once you know what you're doing. This hack aims to re-balance the game and make it more of a challenge. It succeeds, but, there are some issues that remain.

First, magic is practically useless, since either all magic has been nerfed or all enemies are now much more resistant to it-I can't tell which. By itself, that's not bad, but it causes issues along with:

Enemy strength increases. You pretty much NEED to be in the back row for the majority of the game or else the random battle enemies will one-shot you. Alone, this isn't terrible-it forces a more strategic approach-however, there are times when it becomes unfair. The only point I found ridiculous was the Sector 7 plate scene, where Cloud and Tifa fight to the top of the support; I game-overed automatically when I was attacked on both sides, since the enemies kill me in two hits and I need two hits to kill them (first turn someone dies and I was unable to kill one and heal before being slaughtered). Overall, the balance at the beginning needs a little work-even with the extra materia.

The major issue I found was that, due to the enemy damage increasing and the fact that magic was almost useless, I had limit breaks constantly, to the point that this became like Final Fantasy 8, where limit breaks were my primary form of attack. I would have been able to work with different strategies, had I been able to protect my party a bit better (barrier materia should really be given at the start, or at least be available early, since Big Guard is unobtainable). Honestly, limiting access to Enemy Skills like Aqualung was pointless, since the damage was was so much lower than normal anyway, it would have made no difference overall.

After a while, the difficulty leveled out, and the game played almost normally, so I suppose that overall, it was okay. The Weapons were still no challenge and most of the late-game bosses were still push-overs with the proper preparations (not talking about Knights of Round or Omnislash, by the way, just proper materia set-ups).

TL;DR:

Overall, the changes were good, as it forces a new perspective on the gameplay of this classic title. There are some areas of unfair difficulty and some tweaks that could improve the overall enjoyment of the game, however.

If you're interested in a new take on this classic masterpiece, give this a shot, just be ready for some unfairness in the early stages of the game and to dedicate a slot on Cloud to the Long-Range materia.

Played this a while back, thanks to DrDimension for making this one! I like FFVII a whole lot but was hankering for something to make a replay interesting, and this is exactly that!

I won't lie, I Game Overed a couple times, but overall the challenge level is appropriate and pushes you for strategy and to actually use FF7's nuanced mechanics, yet avoids being one of those hacks whose battles have to be completed with very specific solutions in mind.

Great job