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(Note: this hack was played on Normal Mode, alongside the INT/Luck Fix patch. Soma was Lv. 48 at the end of the game).

With a few caveats, I was ready to recommend this hack as a must-have for players wishing to replay Aria of Sorrow. The majority of changes served to breathe new life into the game, and I found myself using weapons and souls I would originally ignore or sell immediately. The reworked equipment and Yellow Souls also aided in making builds that favor either STR or INT, without feeling biased towards one or the other. Most importantly, the Claimh Solais got a much-needed nerf, allowing weapons such as the Dainslef or Balmung to shine.

However, where this hack falls apart lies within the changes made to the final boss, Chaos. It was given resistances to everything besides Holy damage, in addition to much higher HP and Defense. As a result, only 1-2 points of damage could be done to it, even with the best stats and loadout. Eliminating the four eyes at the corners of the screen did nothing to weaken it, and even hard-hitting souls such as Balore couldn't break it.

It's because of this that I cannot endorse this hack, despite the good things it does to the rest of the game. Ideally, an update would address the issues it has, but it's not known if the hack's creators are still active.

To start with, this hack is pretty good overall. It changes up the game pretty heavily without going TOO far overboard. That said, it goes overboard.

On one hand some of the enemies that you normally curb stomp are finally challenges. Some of the souls got some really good buffs that improve them a lot. Several weapons that needed help in the vanilla version get some buffs they needed.

On the other hand, early game enemies gain resistances to one of your few attack elements and defense and health. Some mid-game enemies get some questionable buffs to damage or HP. Some late game enemies do over 300 damage if you aren't focusing on defense. Some enemies get completely embarrassed by the defense you can get late game now.

Then there's the final boss. Form 1 I was doing 500 damage at level 52 (a bit high for that point in the game, but I was grinding for items and souls). Form 2 I was doing 1 damage per hit with everything except Valkyrie soul, which got 2 damage. Even when I buffed my INT to 200, I still was only doing 2 damage with Valkyrie. The bosses got huge buffs to their HP and defense and in most cases are just damage sponges. The item drops mentioned I never seemed to get (though that is probably just from RNG).

Overall the game is helped by most of the changes made. A few of them are highly questionable though. It needs more testing before it can be called 1.0 though. Very fun hack in some of the interesting ways they changed things around, but still feels like there was more work that needed to be done.

Note 1: I merged this patch with another patch for fixing INT and Luck. Neither of them should have caused any problems with the hack. In fact, with those fixes the game should have been slightly easier than it would be on it's own.

Note 2: This is taking into account the fact that the submission sounded a lot like it was an unfinished hack that was being submitted by someone else.

EDIT: I'd really like to recommend this hack. And I do if you're willing to get to form 1 of the final boss then call it quits. Or don't mind doing one point per hit for hours on end. If this ever gets updated with some minor changes to normal enemies, reduce how damage sponge the bosses are and fix form 2 final boss, this will EASILY be one of the more fun hacks for this game.

Awesome hack! It serves as a extra difficulty combined with hacks that give out extra luck or int stat. That being said it's not recommended for a normal playthrough, or it could be very tedious to level up or even fight bosses.