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An interesting mod for ff6. as the title of this review implies, it is extremely easy. The author like many inexperienced FF6 players was under the impression physical attacks were weak (they aren't) and buffed accordingly. The result is a game where trash mobs are just that and go down extremely quick which is nice, and bosses can be hit quite hard using the right weapon to target weaknesses and the like. Status attacks are extremely useful as well, a rarity for JRPGs not named dragon quest. No numbers were inflated for the sake of fake difficulty either, a rarity in the romhack world and a welcome omission.

The playable cast has all been modified with new skills gear pools and the like. There really isn't any thought to game balance here, some characters are downright terrible (Edgar, Clyde) and others are hilariously overpowered and could easily win the entire game by themselves (Terra, Lady Cyan). In general skillsets that aren't Terra's or Cyan's aren't worth using due to nerfs but weapons and late game spells will serve a player fine.

With the changes to the cast the story was modified as well, the changes are welcome to mix up the experience a bit especially during the split scenario sections, but the dialogue and characterization in this mod is outrageously bad if that sort of thing bothers you.

Another subjective thing that has been complained about by other players are the monster graphics. They certainly are different but I tend to value gameplay above all else and largely didn't care.

Overall this mod is worth checking out, it changes enough to be interesting, isn't unnecessarily grindy and the story tweaks are imaginative if poorly written.

First off, I greatly appreciate the work that goes into every hack that's posted!

I agree with some of the other reviews that the tiny sprites take so much away from the game. The enemy field just seems empty space in comparison to when the sprites were their original size. It does a better sense of enemy size when compared to each other, but I much prefer the larger-than-life images. If anything, the player sprite size should've been increased (though that likely would've caused sprite limit issues on the SNES...).

I played until roughly the end of the 3 scenario section of the game. There just wasn't enough to keep me going. I really wanted to enjoy the hack..

I was thoroughly impressed with everything here. The added storyline branches and the neater layout of everything plotwise. And although I appreciate the usual enemy/boss artwork, I have to give props to what the author did to size down the enemies to realistic proportion. That's a lot of work!! Amazing job, and I'm thankful you created this. I'm very impressed by what you did to reprogram some of the autoplaying story elements and would love a video about how you did it! Incredible.

First off, I have to address the new enemy sprites. The whole point of the sprites being larger than your party members in the original game was to allow for the artists to include more detail. They were working against the limitations of the SNES/SFC hardware, which limited the resolution and color depth that they could use. Many of the new enemy sprites seem to be just resized versions of the originals, and the end result is that many of them just end up looking like blobs of pixels.

Some of the new abilities are neat, and I kind of like that you feel slightly underpowered most of the time, but some characters like Edgar have been rendered completely useless for most of the game.

Not really bad, but there are other FFVI rom hacks that are more worth your time.

In a nutshell: I have issues with the changes in the art direction, but despite that this is well worth your time because of the changes in characters and story that make it feel like you're playing vanilla for the first time, while still being respectful to the original. I thoroughly loved this mod.

So the positives:

• The story is mostly vanilla, but there are some incredible changes with the characters that I think are excellent, with one exception (I'll discuss spoiler stuff further below). But there are significant changes to Shadow, Setzer, Umaro, Gogo, Cyan, and Gau. There is also some personality adjustments for Celes that I think are great and make her feel more like a general to me.
• The story has been streamlined early on when the divergent paths happen that I think should have been in vanilla and I believe are an excellent choice. I'd like to think of Square were to remaster this game, this mod is how they'd do it.
• The game is challenging, but far from hard (with one major exception I'll mention in my cons). I found myself no longer blindly just using the Fight command and stomping my way through.
• Script changes are controversial. I'm of the side that I like to remain as close to vanilla as possible, and that additions to the script should support the original or clarify things. Of all the wonderful things that BNW gets right for me, I absolutely HATE that script with constant meta-jokes and vulgarity. THIS mod does what I think a good mod should do, as mentioned, add and give it flavor without diverging too much. And areas where they did diverge, I think were well done, and actually added some flavor to certain background characters in ways that I absolutely loved.
• Spoiler stuff with the character changes: Cyan and Setzer have had a gender swap of sorts. Cyan completely changed, being a woman whereas Setzer is now his rival Daryl and both changes are great. Cyan was bland to begin with in vanilla and while she isn't given much more here, I like the addition of more women in the game. Daryl is probably me absolute favorite change, and she quickly became my go-to in party creation because of how versatile she is, but her addition and story changes actually fixes one issue I had with vanilla in that, I always found it kind of creepy that Setzer was essentially about to kidnap a woman he was infatuated with. It didn't match the rest of his character (what little of it there was). While Daryl is still going to kidnap Maria, it's made a little less creepy because she's doing it more out of spite AND because Daryl is given more opportunities for characterization, I can totally see her doing that just to screw with people. Great change. Oh, and Umaro is now Biggs, one of the soldiers you start with in the game. Umaro had NO characterization so what he was given here is not only a welcome change, I personally think it's brilliant.
• All the minor character changes I think are great which include: Ghosts are now mini moogles. Additionally, the generic ghost models are all different NPC models, which I like. Ultros, while I'm not a fan of his model change, has been given some fascinating characterization and some story changes that I think helps fit him into the world more than he did in vanilla. Celes has been "hardened" and made to seem more combat weary. She comes off as more of a bad ass, and I love it. Shadow, which has been unmasked and now called his real name, is a bit less edgy than his vanilla counterpart, and I think that's for the better. Don't get me wrong, I loved Shadow as a kid, but as an adult he kind of comes off as a bit cringe. Now that we're dealing with classical literature here, but I think some of the changes to his character and dialogue are much better. I no longer get the feeling he's going to teleport behind me and whisper in my ear "Nothing personal, kid". There are more things like that which did not go unnoticed and were warmly welcomed. I am not joking when I say I think the character and script stuff in this mod are absolutely wonderful.

The cons:

• The biggest changes brought with this mod, and the main focus of it is the changes in art direction, and as someone who is into game development, I want to preface this by saying I do personally know how difficult it is to do pixel art: the time and dedication that was put into this cannot go unappreciated....having said that, and I really hate to say this, a lot of the new enemy models are just flat-out hideous. There were plenty of times when I thought "Oh, that's cute" but there were plenty of times when I'd pause the game because I was trying to figure out what exactly I was looking at, and would even pull up the original character art and think "What was the artist thinking with this change?". Then you get close to Zozo where you encounter Wasps and you're staring at what looks to be an almost blank screen because the enemy model is just specks basically. And I'm guessing that the size of some of the enemy models were based on the player models, but there are human enemy models that just seem too small. Additionally, Esper models were mostly changed, and I didn't like any of them except for Shiva and Ifrit, which were super cute. I think I get what they were going for, and this is perhaps just a difference in philosophy and no fault of this mod itself, but the battle screens aren't meant to be literal and the game itself makes this point in the case of Kefka battles. When you first meet Kefka at the Imperial Base Camp and you enter battle with him, it's his world sprite. He's a joke. When you finally face off with him in Narshe, you're surprised to see that his battle sprite has changed to match that of the others. It's because he's become a real threat. Many of the sprites now have no gravitas and, frankly, many are just downright ugly.
• Gogo has been removed to include Banon as a playable character, and while I loved every other character change, this is one I couldn't get behind. Banon is worthless in vanilla, and equally so here. In fact, he's made even less likable here. I firmly believe Gogo should have remained as a playable character and Banon left to die in the WoB. He's the weakest addition.
• Some of the new spell animations have also changed, and as with the other stuff with the art direction, I don't care for it.
• I never once felt the game was unbalanced, although many enemies had been reworked and changed, but once I got to the Esper caves to the sealed gate and encountered the Lich, I experienced wipe after wipe. And what is weird is once you make it past them further into the caves, the difficulty ramps back to normal, but it took me nearly an hour of pure luck to survive my Lich encounters. It's the strangest ramp up. Essentially, they hit hard and fast, constantly spamming Fire 1 or 3. They can be muddled, but it doesn't matter because they start with wall up, so they're still raining fire down on you. Not before or since did I encounter such a brutal enemy. Perhaps it is just me, and maybe I was underleveled? But as I said, once you make it further into the caves, and they no longer appear, the difficulty was normal again. Maybe, MAYBE if they didn't start with wall it wouldn't be so bad, but why are they SO fast?
• Anyone coming from BNW may have a hard time readjusting to how Gau works. I got to say, I'm actually not a huge fan of BNW, but mechanically, the changes they made to Gau were phenomenal and actually made me want to start using him in combat. While ReCast's Gau is great in his own aspects (he eventually can get the command Juijitsu which I think is awesome, despite me not being a fan of that name), the Leap on the Veldt is old school. Leap into enemies, then battle over and you must recollect him. There was one time when I literally went through 9 battles before my Gau reappeared. I knew that moment I was never going to get all his rages because I just don't have the patience or the time like I did when I played vanilla for the first time as a kid.

This is a hack that I would recommend to somebody that is looking to play a hack that is "vanilla, but different". I think the hack has accomplished its goal in that sense. It is advertised that the difficulty is about the same as vanilla, and I think that assessment is correct. While enemies do slightly more dangerous things when they do get to attack, it's easier to defend your characters with equipment and buffs. In addition, I find that enemies typically don't act as often to begin with.

While your damage output is typically slightly lower than in vanilla, and you generally need to be slightly more creative to obtain that damage output, most bosses still die before their second attack and don't do anything threatening with their first. To give an example, I killed Kefka and the third tier before they moved; the enemies in the other two tiers acted once apiece (except Magic, who I disabled with Runic to spend time buffing, although said buffs were a complete waste of time).

Overall, I would have enjoyed the hack more if it was a tad harder, but that explicitly wasn't a goal of the hack, so it would be unfair to really complain about that.

One philosophy of this hack is that it's better for a mechanic to be OP than boring. Because of this, status effects are also extremely powerful. Full-party image basically makes enemy physical attacks irrelevant and Shell (which can also be applied to the whole party) cuts enemy magical damage in half now. In addition, casting a negative status in a random encounter will usually disable the entire enemy party. Bosses (up to and including the final boss) are pretty much always vulnerable to a status, which means that you can instantly win boss fights if you know what they are vulnerable to (or just win the guessing lottery). That said, I guess you can also pretty much "instantly win the fight" just by hitting the boss as hard as possible, so maybe that's necessary for status effects to compete. If a boss can be hit with percentage-based attacks, there's basically no reason to use anything else.

One nice thing about this hack's balance is that magic is typically less powerful and more in line with your other options. Surprisingly for an FF6 hack, attacks with weapons are often the best way to put on the hurt, though usually the attacker needs to be in the front to do so effectively.

Characters are also designed "not to be boring", and this is followed fairly consistently with the exception of Clyde; his only special ability deals mediocre magical damage to a single target, his magic is only slightly better than the lowest common denominator, and there are usually better options for attacking physically as well. I also find Cyan somewhat unusable unless you're fighting a boss that can be cheesed with the percentage-based TetraSlash. Cleave and TetraSlash take a long time to activate, so usually all the enemies in a random encounter are dead before these skills are even used. And because TetraSlash isn't a standard heavy-hitting attacking move anymore, Cyan has no option to achieve more than a couple thousand damage in most end-game boss fights. And in this game, that's pretty bad.

In terms of the script and thematic changes, I find them to be a mixed bag. For example, Celes was intended to sound more like a general. Sometimes this effect was achieved, but at other moments she seemed more like a fifteen-year old trying to sound tough on the internet. Several songs were also swapped around. Catastrophe starts playing on the WoB overworld when the Floating Continent is raised, making the situation feel more dire. Since this situation should feel dire, I think that's a good change (despite the jank, which I'll discuss later). On the other hand, Awakening plays when riding a chocobo, making it feel more sad instead of fun. This feels out-of-place when riding a giant bird across the plains and waltzing straight past all of your enemies.

ReCast has a decent degree of polish, but interesting changes are often prioritized over polish when the two come into conflict. For example, when Catastrophe is playing on the world map, there are quite a few different ways to break the music so that the wrong song plays until you re-board your airship. Furthermore, Terra's Aether skills mostly absorb HP since they have the effects of black, white, and gray magic rolled into one. This makes Terra pretty much invincible for the first third of the game since she will never die if she spams these skills. Not to mention just about anything to do with the invisible monster that indicates the enemy status effects. If you've played a lot of hacks and you're fine with the jank, these things probably won't bother you much. If you're looking to play a game that feels like it could have been made by Square, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.

I wasn't sure if I'd like the smaller enemy sprites, but for the most part they're pretty cute and it's fun to see how the more iconic enemies were minified. The humanoid sprites are especially nice and have a lot of effort put into them. There are a couple inconsistencies like the canonically enormous seahorses in the Serpent Trench, but 98% of enemies are reasonably sized in comparison to the party. Some of the enemy sprites were simply downsized; this is generally amusing when an enemy goes from small to tiny, but it doesn't look as nice for enemies that go from large to medium. The Malboro in particular looks kinda gross, and not in a way that's appropriate to the enemy type. But again, note that this is only a minority of the enemies; most of the designs look good in my opinion.

Most of the character sprites have also been changed to varying degrees as well. I like that the general trend is to give people (and Espers) more practical clothes. Personally, I find vanilla's leotards and loin cloths ridiculous, and most other hacks tend to go the opposite direction and be even more "uncensored" with their designs. Sabin is the only character whose clothes seem out-of-place; I'm not sure how he's able to do martial arts while wearing those bulky robes. Some of the sprites still have their flaws though. WoR Gau looks like he's flailing his arms around when he walks vertically, and Relm's animations look awkward when she does something like blinking repeatedly or nodding her head.

This is my first time playing a hack based on PowerPanda's Divergent Paths mod. The changes improve the pacing of the WoB dramatically. Terra's scenario is still somewhat shorter than the other two, but it's a far cry more even than before. It's hard to tell exactly what writing came from PP and what came from C-Dude, but the scenarios are much better written than in vanilla IMO. The enemies that are normally in Sabin's scenario give less EXP than the enemies from Locke/Terra's scenarios, so I wish EXP yields were adjusted to account for this.

The scenario split in the WoR is fantastic as well. If you're one of those people who didn't like the way that the WoR lets you go anywhere at anytime (I've heard people say that they couldn't bring themselves to finish vanilla because of this), then this hack's WoR is structured more to your liking. Story-wise, the changes aren't quite as solid as the WoB scenario split. Among other things, Gau sends letters to Lola instead of Cyan, which isn't as fitting for a dozen reasons. But if you know the usual story inside and out, it's still fun to see how it has been changed.

Overall, while I wouldn't say that this is one of "the" definitive FF6 hacks by any means, it's still a solid hack to recommend to people who want to play a different version of FF6 despite not being experienced with the game. It's also nice if somebody wants to relax with a chill romp or see what surprises the game has in store.