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The original CT had fun, fast paced battles that veered towards the easy side. This hack greatly ups the difficulty without (generally) extending the length of battles. Double techs and triple techs find a whole new worth here, requiring you to think carefully about party combinations. Careful thought went into the design of this hack and it shows.

Going into Guardia forest with lv1 Crono can get you killed, and I don't think I ever took a loss to Gato before this. You have to exploit enemy weaknesses now, such as Yakra's "too close to counter" bit, though occasional game overs are inevitable. This hack though difficult is always manageable. Late game the difficulty spikes a bit, with the black omen being the outlier of the entire game in terms of difficulty. I did feel accomplishment after figuring out how to deal with the harder black omen mini bosses.

On the topic of party members I found that in different game segments a specific party member's usefulness would vary. A perfect example of this is Marle, who's usefulness is great early game but wanes mid game, though unlike vanilla CT she becomes a valuable asset again later on. I didn't use Lucca as much as I would have liked but I did notice that late game allot of enemies aren't protected from fire magic. Also I took time to farm some shield/barrier items so I didn't need her for protect, which along with mbarrier are required to beat the game. Perhaps she's the weakest link this go around, or maybe Magus (who still has his uses as well). Both are still pretty good though.

My few minor gripes with this one are carry overs from vanilla CT. Some characters combinations weren't that good to begin with, and it's felt allot more now that double/triple techs are the ideal means of doing damage (and sometimes healing). Marle's cure2 is still worthless (cure1 does the trick. Boy I wish someone would replace that, maybe with a reraise spell or something).

New game plus is easy with my lv90's crew. The level zero hack had potential to address this but for me turned out to be just a novelty. I only played up to when they teleported to the future, and up to that point it was a joke; easy as pie. So yeah lavos awakening can't be faulted for this, and I guess new game plus is supposed to be like that any way

You do have to grind for the last 10-20 levels. I went through black omen all three times and did some grinding and the only one who's star is Crono, with a few members at lv 90. That's not that serious though and original CT gave allot less exp so it's still an improvement.

I'd recommend turning down the battle speed and choosing wait instead of active. It's a really fun hack with a good challenge and is my new ideal way of playing CT. I googled ways to beat a certain super hard mini boss on the black omen, so if you get stuck there's help on insane difficulty and other forums.

All in all a great hack. I wouldn't recommend it to first time players but for CT veterans who've beaten the game dozens of times then in my opinion it's the best way to play it. It's tough but not obnoxiously so, unlike final fantasy tactics 1.3 (a few black omen mini bosses are kind of close though).

Big thanks to the creator of this hack. I really had a good time fighting my way through battles that I could game over if played sloppy