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This hack makes a lot of changes to make this classic game fun again, but there are some minor issues.

Issue #1: The first phase of the fight with the goddess is scripted to end when you have removed about a third of her health. The removal of the damage cap makes it possible to kill her outright with a critical rolling attack from a sufficiently leveled Puka (I grinded everyone to level 99 beforehand). This will soft-lock the game.

Issue #2: The Infinity form is restricted to doing 999 damage, even when individual characters are capable of doing more.

Issue #3: The S equipment seems fairly overpowered, especially considering that, with patience, you can start accessing some of it as soon as you get Gobi.

Seeing as how issue #1 can be avoided easily by using Infinity right out of the gate, issue #2 can be avoided by only using Infinity until the goddess reveals her true form, and issue #3 is more of a matter of personal preference and can be avoided by simply not using S equipment, I still think this is an excellent hack that breathes some life into a childhood favorite.

Breath of Fire is one of my favorite games and I always wished that it were a little harder, but not unfair. This hack does exactly that. Instead of sticking to the usual party makeup, I ended up experimenting and using different characters. Heck, there's now even some benefit to not fusing Karn. There's a couple annoying bits when it comes to enemy strength progression, but it's nothing that being careful or leveling up a bit won't help with. The only place where things get a bit iffy is magic in the late game. Magic damage is still fixed and that ends up making magic (or Blue's entire character) useless for anything that isn't crowd control by endgame. When you can have characters like Ryu, Ox and Box easily outclassing things like BoltX and Comet in terms of damage AND for "free" since they don't need MP, there's really no need to use magic. On the upside though, it means that Ryu doesn't always have to be stuck transformed and you can feel like you're playing a proper game again instead of spamming attack with Agni for the final battle.

This hack is excellent, and definitely BREATHed some life into Breath of Fire. I wish it had a complete change list tho :(

OH, if the hack reduced the enemy encounter rate it would be perfect, but even without doing that it's still a great hack.

Made an account just to give a shoutout to this, I live and breathe these mods for old jrpgs and without them I probably wouldn't play these games, so leaving my recommendation is the least I can do. Here everything comes in a neat package which I appreciated a lot (the snes restoration ones) and if I'm not mistaken, some bosses are tougher as well which I loved. I didn't expect it though because there's no readme or a comprehensive changelog, and their absence is my only gripe about the whole thing.

Let's Play available here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0nrY61pho&list=PLVFlHPy0Pa9tWzbYDOqQZ3yeObmtGIDck

A great hack! I don't much like the level rebalancing but I can see what the author was going for and I think I just have a bias. All the stat balancing, item renaming, color palette restoration, etc were all so necessary.

I used this hack alongside Vivify's soldier name reverter and Bregelad's Sound Restortation (I patched Sound Restoration, then Name Reverter, then Improved)

All in all, this is the best version of Breath of Fire 1 available. Small improvements could be made but this is 9/10

I played Breath of Fire on the SNES back when it first came out. It was my first RPG and quickly became my favorite. I returned to it about 10 years later, still loving it, but finding it to be easier than I remembered.

I returned to it again using this hack, hoping for more of a challenge and a grand experience. I was not left disappointed.

Pros:

• Story makes a lot more sense
• Karn's Doof transformation isn't superseded by Puka due to MP
• Leveling feels good. It really feels like you are getting stronger as you progress.
• Bosses are challenging with the HP pool you are given
• Sounds is amazing - just like the SNES
• Color is amazing - just like the SNES

Cons:

• The first time you run into the "Midget" enemy is not fun. A group of 3 is way too overpowered for just Nina and Ryu.
• Magic damage doesn't seem scaled correctly for the new HP pools of your characters. Zog's fire magic easily kills Nina and Bleu in one hit. The same can be said for some of the enemies' magic in the dream world.

Notes:

• The Rudra Dragon shrine is no joke. If you go in as soon as you can, getting critically hit once will likely mean you have to start over.
• Nina's levels come fast... TOO FAST. And then they just stop around 45. It's like hitting a wall. This allows your other characters time to level up to her spot, but it doesn't feel good when she just stops leveling all together.
• Gobi's flee market has new items! I found 3xS.Helm, 2xS.Armor, and 1xS.Arms. These overpowered items only show up once in a blue moon (I must have spent 5 or 6 hours looking for them). The appearance rate must be mad low. I wish there was more information on these occurrences.
• Unless you rock the Agni dragon in the final fight, you're going to have one hell of a battle ahead of you.

TL;DR: I highly recommend this hack.

If you are a fan of Breath of Fire SNES or GBA, then please do yourself a favor by getting this version. While not as finely tuned as the graphics were for the SNES, this hack does its best to bring back the color palette of the SNES, while also making the script a little more enjoyable and balancing the game play out for all the characters.

If you really want to make BoF GBA the definitive version, then you will also want to patch in the sound patch as well.