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All the new skills in particular make this a really fun new way to play Lufia 2. I also appreciated some of the rebalancing, such as Tia and Dekar having more normalized stat growths and everyone feeling pretty useful.

I mostly experienced it by using debug to play through the story in gift mode, which gives you 2x XP/gold with normal mode monster stats. Normal mode feels a little too grindy, while the hard mode that replaces retry increases XP and gold but also raises monster stats in an already quite tough hack. I found both modes to be too much of a slog, frankly. Having access to all 7 characters throughout the game in gift mode is also extra fun since you can customize them with all the new skills and have an "all in" game where you complete all the AC stuff in a normal playthrough while having permanent access to all characters outside the AC.

So on the whole it was a ton of fun and a nice refresh of the game. My biggest nitpicks mostly relate to the balancing, which is definitely a little off, with only a couple of minor subjective things otherwise.

• the revisions to spell mechanics means that new tiers of spells only slightly improve damage while having much higher MP costs. I found myself consistently using tier 1 spells like Spark even in the late game because they tend to do around 85% the damage with 20% the cost, which is kind of broken. Even in the early game, due to higher levels, the spells are insanely cost effective and Tia & Selan can last hours without a rest. It just doesn't quite feel right.

• difficulty is a bit too punishing and also uneven at times. I found the early game pretty easy with a couple of spikes in the middle. The Gades fight in the Ancient Tower is just flat out overtuned, and I abused save states to finish it. Some of the late game bosses are punishing, but generally fun, while the sinistrals at the end are blatantly overpowered. They either need lower HP or less intense attack/defense power, and even knowing how to fight them I still struggled and used save states and still took multiple tries to beat them. Not great, really.

• the hack would benefit from some additional polish; although it has all the major bugfixes featured in other hacks, it still uses the original text (frue's text cleanup is vastly superior to the original) and has a couple of its own bugs like random glitch-outs, XP display bugs for the CMs (since they are scripted to level alongside Maxim), and an OP monster with OHKO in the mid-game.

• I've made some edits to suit my tastes, but some things are edited in such a way that it's hard to tweak them, like monster stats & attack patterns.

Despite the above complaints, a lot of work was put into this hack and it shows - it's worth your time to check out.

The major flaw of this hack is that the creator added a bunch of new skills including passives that boost stats, but never bothered to increase the number of total skill slots. He planned on having an option in Merix where you could talk to an NPC that gave you the option to reset & clear all your skills (you can always re-buy them) because all the original skills take up most of your skill slots already, so you may not have room for later skills if you acquire too many early. But the option to reset your skill list only leads to the entire game resetting instead.

I went on the creator's site & left some feed back about simply expanding the total number of skill slots. Not only did he NOT want to expand the total slots, he actually said he wanted to REDUCE the total number. That was a huge deal breaker for me. Also, he made the boss fights harder, including the 1st fight against Gades (which you can optionally win), which means that the passive stat boosting skills are almost mandatory to survive those fights, which hog up skill slots from later skills.

This is my first review of anything and I feel this Romhack needs to be known a bit better; so far I completed the game on Retry/Hard, some spoilers are going to be said, so, a slight warning.

The Good: As stated they have new spells and techs that even guy can learn; they also alter your stats a bit which gives some fun for experimentation and even a dash(sigh, but only a dash) of character building: this is an improvement due to the script changes for many bosses and enemies, you WILL need to make use of skills on everyone, especially if you play on retry/hard mode.

the stat potions are much harder to come by and this negates the potential to overpower your characters, as you cannot get them from drops, now you will need to hoard and take care of how you spend the potions, also you take more care about the Dragon's wishes and how you will utilize them as well. I enjoy thinking about how to and who to with the stat gains(I will address the problems soon though.)

Ah, the bosses; now you need to take care and even in normal random battles you will need to take care too, MP conservation is god with random battles and you will need to play smart, especially on Hard mode. The Sinistrals are just sinister in difficulty and they now represent the Godly force that they are said to be......not just that but Daos uses his own music and Guard Daos also uses another theme which actually fits VERY well.

The Bad; the loss and reset of your stats upon resetting your skills in Merix...is....flawed, you lose all your stat potions and even the Shrine Boost in the Divine shrine! There seems to be no way around this; a suggestion to the dev(Prae if you are reading this) would be to reset the flag for the Divine Shrine....somehow, maybe a new NPC in Eskerito? I dunno, but, yeah it did make me restart once.

Also, it happens VERY rarely, only once(which led to a frustrating restart) where use of the "Reset Man" in Merix led to the game crashing. there were no old saves or anything but it still happened! I have no idea how but, anyways, I always limited my use of the "Reset Man" to three to four uses and it never happened again.

Egg dragon? Really easy, I mean really easy. Even on Hard.

I also hoped for a way out of Portravia at the end sequence. it would be nice to also save or just have a way out to wander around with the pearl equipment/dual blade. I had to use a WTW in town cheat to leave just for the fun of it. that would have been a nice thing to implement.

Also; Darkness is a really overpowered skill against randoms, it worked just too well, even if it does not work vs. Undeads.

Those Reaper looking enemies have a bit of a bug too, they cast mirror on themselves, and then they.....attack themselves; which auto-misses.

The Recommendations: If you play? I recommend the following skills. *Cut-All. *Darkness. *Critical. *Reduce(especially for the endgame) *Resolve(endgame, you will love it). *Resist(Ditto). Other honorable mentions are the Buff spells, and HeroSong. Keep all potions until the end of the game/Divine Shrine, if you are playing on Hard? Use the shrine around level 60/80 or even 99 AFTER you use your potions for your "final setup."

Overall: Lufia 2 fans might like this one more than the "Frue" mod, it adds something that always felt missing, it gave weight to an ending with a fun last boss and it just felt.....right, I do hope Prae fixes the issues in this/ adds a shrine reset NPC, but, as is, yeah, I recommend it, even if there is some issues.

my Rating? 8/10