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At first, it seems like a real shame that this game is based off of the US SNES version, with its amazingly terrible translation/localization and easytype-based braindead level of difficulty. However, once the timeline starts diverging, things get... really good, and really interesting.

Like many players, I always found the sudden unexplained dick move of Leviathan attacking the ship to be extremely infuriating, especially since it's never really mentioned again despite the obvious wide ranging effects of that, and he's never called out on it. Aside from the neat changes to your party's abilities, this hack really *starts* with answering the question of: what if that didn't happen?

Rather than going into the Baron Waterway with a full post-Scarmiglione party consisting of Paladin Cecil, Yang, Tellah, Palom, and Porom, you are going in with a mere four-member party of... a Cecil who is still a Dark Knight, a child Rydia who may be a better summoner but doesn't know any normal White or Black magic, a Yang with no elemental claws, and an Edward who... is actually much more powerful than usual, but is still Edward. With all that working against the party on top of coming in one dungeon ahead of schedule, the easy type enemies here certainly manage to live up to the hard type ones.

The difficulty just keeps going like that from there for a while, often briefly becoming even more extreme as it skips ahead multiple dungeons, or creates entirely new ones. Most of the bosses live up to that increased difficulty as well; when you actually do fight Scarmiglione... despite the unchanged health, he is certainly far tougher and more believable as The Elemental Fiend of Earth than even his hardtype canon counterpart. Buy potions, lots of them. With things this much harder, I am *almost* willing to cut Leviathan some slack for his actions in canon.

As for the new plot... while it lacks the pacing and storytelling of the original, it makes up for it in that almost everyone seems generally saner and more intelligent than in canon, while remaining true to themselves. They do things because of who they are and what the situation is, not because they are holding the idiot ball and the plot says so (or because mind control is everywhere). The thing with Leviathan isn't even quite the first instance of this, another major idiot move shortly preceding that was changed; rather than your two female party members getting told by the king of Fabul to go wait out the fight with the women of the kingdom and be healers instead (despite Edward obviously being far more qualified for that), they are helping with the battle from the battlements as long range attackers (mostly offscreen). Post-Cagnazzo is full of little moments like that. And don't worry about the original game's translation, once things diverge... well, let me put it this way: Yang is the high monk he's supposed to be, not an inexplicably constantly sneezing "karate man".

My biggest point of criticism though is that party members leaving and various points of no return tend to be even more abrupt than in the original game, and feel far less deserved. First of all, once you jump down the hole in Eblan Castle... you will abruptly discover that maps have been rearranged and changed such that you aren't getting out for a long while, and by the next time you are outside of a dungeon, your party composition will have significantly changed. And once you return from the underworld to the surface... well, the hack lets you go into the endgame with any party composition at all, but it does it in a really strange and unintuitive way, where you have to complete sidequests to make party members LEAVE, which is done for the sole purpose of freeing up a slot so someone else can join.

The canon game's way of having a changing 5-person-max party is by making them drop like flies either from apparent self-sacrifices or from Leviathan being an evil jackass (and then mostly turning out to be not quite dead, just recovering from severe injuries in bed for the rest of the game). It's hard to decide whether that is worse or better than this hack's solution of having so many of them just suddenly... *leave*, with all their valuable equipment, to do something else instead.

Overall, though: I DEFINITELY recommend this hack to fans of Final Fantasy 4, in terms of both the gameplay and the speculative alternate history it is extremely good. Also, it has some interesting replay value and secrets; after beating it the first time, try going into the final dungeon with just Cecil, both as a Dark Knight and as a Paladin, and also maybe try the Mist Skip glitch.

This hack is presented as a tech demo of the hacking tools, but it is a fully fleshed out complete hack.

The general plot follows the original Final Fantasy IV, but about 1/3 of the way through, events start unfolding differently. I won't spoil anything, but the changes are very tastefully made. Characters still feel like the good old characters you are accustomed to. I did particularly enjoy the way Kain's story has been tweaked.

There are a few nods to other games in the Final Fantasy series which were nice Easter eggs to discover. I think my favorite change is how the gathering of the dark crystals in the underworld is fleshed out. In vanilla Final Fantasy IV, it almost feels like part of the story is edited out, as by the time you get there, Golbez has already gathered 2 of them (from where??). In this hack, you get to deal with all 4 dark crystals, which really reinforces their importance to the plot.

Overall, I really enjoyed this hack - I firmly believe that anyone who enjoys Final Fantasy IV should play through this hack, along with A Darkness Within and the Ultima hack.

I first played this hack last year, and I still remember it fondly. The game essentially remixes the plot from Fabul onward, taking the same premise and characters but creating a new adventure.

The end result is a re-imagining of FF4 that's just as good as the original game. It's a godsend for FF4 fans, offering 25-30 hours of new content, including new areas, new movesets, new abilities, a brand new story, and the ability to pick your own party.

That last one requires some explanation. At the endgame, a huge number of side-quests open up in the world that allow you to customize your party. The process is a little unintuitive: every character has a quest, but completing the ones for those in your default endgame party (by the way, your default endgame party is different from the original game's, owing to the new story) will remove that character from your party. Conversely, completing a quest for someone not in your party will let them join the party - IF you have a free slot already. So to customize your party, you have to do the personal quests of whoever you want to leave first, and THEN seek out whichever new member you want.

The new story, along with the new side-quests, are well-written and fit into the world nicely. There's no eyebrow-raisers so common to fan hacks, and everyone stays in-character throughout. While some character's actions are different in the new plot, they always stay true to who they are. Of course, there's the occasional clunky line, but they're few and far between and won't detract from your enjoyment of the hack.

I give this rom hack my highest recommendation.

There are some great modifications to the game mechanics from the very beginning, but about 1/3 of the way into the game, the story diverges from the original in very interesting ways.

This is a lot of fun and I would highly recommend it.

It all starts like normal FFIV with a few changes, then after the intro parts everything goes completely non-linear similar to how some of the SaGa titles do. You can do whatever you want and recruit/dismiss whoever you want. There are all sorts of scenarios, even beating up the boss all on your (Dark Knight) lonesome. There's also some new ideas added to the plot, including a continuity nod.

If you're looking for a way to shake things up, look no farther. You might never want to go back to the original again.

Well done completing your Unprecedented Crisis Final Fantasy IV romhack! You've done a nice job using FF4kster adding a new twist to Final Fantasy IV linking to the original Final Fantasy. I saw your playthrough and good job.

I really enjoyed this hack! Well done in the new Level designs, and I really applaud you for linking FF IV with FF I, well played sir! I enjoyed this hack so much, I honestly don't think I can ever stomach playing the game normally now.

Keep up the good work, thanks!

This is a great hack. I have enjoyed it. I just wanted to point out that after Lugae, when the party faces Golbez in the scripted lose battle, Shadow demolishes everyone except Kain. In hackster, it appears that Shadow is looking for Tellah. The battle never ends. As a workaround, you can have Kain down before the battle. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

I've played FF2/4 a number of times since it came out in the early 90's. I've played the original US version, and I've played a few versions that basically translate the old Japanese version.

What I hadn't played was a full hack of the game that changed gameplay and plot up at all. This, however, is definitely that, and it is great. The hackers clearly put a lot of work into adding additional content, cutting some of the filler from the original, and making every character extremely viable to the end (including my personal favorite, Edward).

If you're looking to replay FF2/4, but pretty much know the entire game like the back of your hand, this is an amazing hack to add some difficulty and intrigue to your playthrough. There are difficulty spikes of course, but the game gives you all the tools you need to get past them if you're willing to look for them.

Okay, just finished up a playthrough of Unprecedented Crisis and thought I would leave a review.

I hadn't played FF2US for a little while, so it was nice to enjoy something new. Although, my experience wasn't without hiccups. I found a few glitches that seemed rather weird.

When I was renaming my characters at the beginning, the alphabet letters on the left side wouldn't show the cursor beside them, so I had to guess their position. I only tried at the beginning, but that was odd.

A bigger bug I found had to do with the Big Chocobo. I usually stash cool weapons when I play RPGs, but when I first got the Big Whale, I went to the Big One onboard, deposited a couple new things and when I went to take a look at what he was holding, everything was all messed up. Things I deposited changed into other items and in large random quantities. For example there were 4 Megalixirs, even though I never found one. I had 2 Murasames, 52 Wooden Staves, 50 knives (forget which one), 30 Wooden Spears, 10 Dummys and all sorts of other random things. Strange.

Was sad to see that you could still dupe weapons, haha. I can usually resist the temptation, but sometimes dupe weapons to throw, just for the heck of it.

Couple spelling mistakes in the dialogue too. I only remember the word 'wield' being spelled incorrectly on Mt. Ordeals.

All this being said, had a lot of fun though. I know it wasn't a hardtype, but it's pretty easy throughout. I messed up my team at the end and only had four characters, not that it mattered much.

The new areas, spells and items add a lot of flavour. Wish the game was a bit longer with some supreme dungeons or something, lol. But, as the information says, it's to showcase the hacking utility abilities.

Well, if you want to play a cool new FF2 quest, try it out!

Thanks, great job.