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It's been ages since I've played the original, but it was fun playing Manall's hack the first time through without a guide and finding the secret stuff on my own. Manall's vision of Final Fantasy is hard enough that the bonus stats you got from finding a few very easy to miss upgrades that only stand out only subtly was a nice touch.

I love hacks like this that change enough of the core game without ruining what made it great and make you feel like you're playing something new and worth your time.

What elevates this hack above most others is the amount of time, effort and obvious love for the original game that Manall has. Have you checked out any of the "bonus content"? The maps are awesome. There's optional hacks for additional classes if you want to replay again with a different experience and what looks to be maybe a half-dozen of other optional changes you can make to experience ranging from cosmetic to an even higher difficulty. But the document she put up on Google Docs is a downright shrine to this hack. It really does remind somebody of a link to an old RPG game on the RPGshrine and was very well done.

I found this guide absolutely essential to use during my playthrough, which is something I don't think I've ever experienced with a hack before. The guide seemed overwhelming at first, but by the time I had finished my 2nd playthrough I knew it back to front. I don't think I remember the last time I cared so much about status effects and elemental strengths and weaknesses while playing a game. Without breaking the game, you're going to need to actually learn what all these things mean and use that knowledge to your advantage.

I've rarely if ever seen anything like this hack when it comes to external content before. I wouldn't be surprised to find out from Manall that the time spent hacking the rom was quite a bit less than all the other stuff that was put together here.

The surprise when you beat the game is something I'd ever want to ruin for Manall. I just wanted to say that I'd never seen anything done like that before and thought the entire presentation of everything was pretty cool. Thumbs up on the entire production here.

Full Disclaimer (And mostly just an aside to the Hack Author): I'm a severe save state abuser, and I know that ruins the true experience of a game like this. I like using them to figure out how the random mechanics work, and I abused them while playing this game late through the first quest and all through Magecore.

I thought it was interesting to discover that in this hack it was quite easy to get the enemies to behave different on their next turn because each enemy action was on some sort of global timer that changes very quickly. I'm not sure if it was always like that, or if it's a side effect to how you managed to change the entire way the flow of battle goes in this hack.

But then to find out how extremely difficult it could be to change your next pattern of enemies if the one you got was an unfair instakill ambush on your party. In order to evade that next encounter, you either had to get to an area with weaker monster pools before the next attack, or you had to get to an inn or use a cabin/tent to save the game, then reset the system to spawn a different rolled grouping.

Anyway... Because of all that, I'm not the one to speak about the true difficulty of this hack. I might not have been actively able to manipulate the RNG because I wasn't messing with code, but once I threw in the towel late through the first playthrough after an unfair death or two and devolved into save-state-mode like I always do when playing old games on emulators, I had dice that I could re-roll infinitely if I wanted to.

I can say that this hack is quite a bit more brutal than the original game was when it comes to your stats vs. those of your enemies, coupled with the fact that they use a lot more magic and more effectively than they used to. Because of this, particularly in the first 2/3rds of the first playthrough, I really had to actually sit there and have legitimate battles without fast-forwarding through most of them like I do when I'm power-leveling an early RPG and everything is on easy mode. I actually found it surprisingly enjoyable to figure out enemy weaknesses and ways to carry my party when resources were limited, but ONLY because of all the awesome work Manall put into the external content that laid out in great detail how everything works when the NES just doesn't allow you to put all the important stats on display for you.

I can only imagine how difficult trying to balance a game like this out would be. I think it was a success overall, but like I said, since I ended up abusing save states I'm not the one to comment on that.

My only criticism of the balancing would be with some of the mobs you get rolled. As I said above earlier, there were only two ways to get a re-roll if you get a terrible roll and sometimes it just wasn't possible unless you already had the Exit spell and could do an immediate reset. This still continued when I had all the best gear and maxed out all of my characters to level 50 while also save-state abusing and giving them far higher overall end stats than were intended possible with this hack. Every once in a while I'd still get slammed with a mob that would strike first and insta-kill a member or two before you even got a chance to strike back.

I think that's probably fine to leave that in the normal mode of the hack when you can raise the dead, but if there is a way to prevent insta-kills or damage leaving you with less than 1 HP before your turn comes up when Permadeath is a thing, that would probably be the way to go. Maybe you still get two bad rolls in a row and you're not able to save the party, but if you at least got one character's turn before a second random roll knocked a character out then it would feel like it was still a fair fight. This game is plenty hard enough where preventing an enemy ambush which leaves a character below 1HP on Magecore isn't ruining the difficulty, but just preventing cheap and completely unavoidable deaths when you get a bad roll.

Just my opinion there.

A generous rework for a classic, this mod is more than a simple makeover. OoL improvements (sprinting, bulk-buying, auto-targeting) are implemented into the game along with new classes, magics, weapons, armors, enemies and skills. All character classes have been reworked, and sprited, and new ones introduced making a total of nine classes over the original six. Two being unlocked after beating the game once, and the third, exclusive to a special game mode called Magecore which also serves as the mod's hard-core mode. More improvements have been implemented into the mod, both visually and gameplay wise.

This does come with the cost of the base game being somewhat harder than the vanilla game is. However it's not so difficult that it can't be beaten or to the point being frustrating to play. If you try to play it like vanilla FF then your going to be setting yourself up for constant defeat, so try to approach it with a fresh mindset. Another problem comes from the class limitations. Even though there are nine, you can only still pick from 6 at anytime. Two extra classes, Cattail and Blue Rose, have to replace the Archer and Green Mage respectively. So Archer and Cattail can never be in the same team and so on.

Another flaw of this mod; you have to patch a lot of the features to a rom. Beat the game to get the new classes, unlock new classes, patch to a fresh rom, play again. Magecore? Fresh patch, new game. It's not hard, just not very convenient and kind of messy as you have to use a clean rom every time. There are other flaws to the mod but I think I chalk that down to personal preference and programming limits, and at that point it's subjective.

Overall, this mod is a nice investment of your time should you wish to try something different, and challenging, from the original.

I've played Manall's FF1 a handful of times over several revisions and am a big fan.

Since I last reviewed this hack, I've played many other hacks of FF1 including Grond's, Zz Hardtype, FF1 Restored & Rebalanced, and Ultra CE to name a few. When Manalls version 3.0 came out, I gave it another spin and wanted to update my review.

Manalls stands out in its unique playable units, custom magic system, and more tactical combat. It also has a very distinct equipment set and features secrets that can be found by poking around and pressing A on suspicious objects. The ship docks on any land, which makes things very interesting once you get access to the outer sea.

Version 3.0 includes a ton of QOL features such as purchasing 10 potions at at time, cycling through status screens by pressing left/right, and the ability to arrange and 'forget' spells.

I have heard a lot of folks take issue with the pacing of the game, and I think I agree it could be tuned a bit still. While the game really encourages you to use magic and fight battles tactically using status protections and AOE nukes, the level curve is steep and the game is very stingy with magic charges. So while you want to use your magic, I found that I was more often than not running from battles to conserve charges. I also really noticed this time around how long it takes for your melee units to get multiple hits. I am not a huge fan of the archer being so desperate to get class change ASAP (so that she gets +3 hit per level instead of only +1).

The endgame and optional 'postgame' content is very difficult, and overall the game becomes quite hard once you reach the northern continents. You will need to get your levels into the 40's to kill Chaos. Which makes me wonder why the game doesn't just give you some more XP or lower the level thresholds earlier. This would provide the player with more spell charges along the way and avoid the issue I ran into of having to grind eyes in the ice cave for over an hour just to progress.

I still think this is a top-notch FF1 hack, and the latest version only improves it. If you love FF1 the way I do, you'll enjoy it. But be aware! You will need to grind :)

This mod has brought about many changes to FF1's systems that are very hit or miss, depending on the player. I, personally, enjoyed most of the changes, and the idea behind some other changes. The changes were more than good enough that I had to come back and rewrite my review to reflect my changed thoughts.

For starters, the turn based combat was changed to be similar to Dragon Quest 11's turn system, which I, surprisingly, came to enjoy while playing this mod, despite hating it a lot when suffering through Dragon Quest 11. It certainly isn't perfect, as most of your planning is entirely reactionary, but it does elevate the usefulness of White Mages by an astronomical amount, and FF1 doesn't have strategies that require super specific planning to carve out huge chunks of bosses' HP in a single attack over 2 rounds.

The spells got a pretty major overhaul to make most of them useful across the game, giving more value to the Mages, especially the Black Mage. White Mage has her status curing spells condensed and targeting the whole party. This is super helpful, as it frees up more spell slots and saves on spell casts, which is even more important here than in vanilla as more enemies cast status spells that target the whole party. Black Mage has more powerful Status Spells to debilitate enemies up to the midgame, and has stronger attack spells to deal with late game enemies. The most notable changes are with the Instant Death spells Black Mage has: there were too many in vanilla that were incredibly redundant, but are now each valuable in this mod due to them being different elements and enemy resistances mattering FAR more. Unfortunately, not all of these new spells are useful later on in the game, or even at all. I'll address why later in the review.

Now for the jobs, the changes brought to them do an incredible amount to make this feel more like a fresh experience, even if it is still FF1. Warrior's power being reigned in is incredibly important for letting other physical classes shine, however, I think this job may have been nerfed too hard. Enemies hit FAR harder per hit, and get more hits per attack, which causes Warrior to die far faster than she should. Meanwhile, her more agile counterpart, the Thief, has FAR fewer problems surviving in the lead slot thanks to her high evasion letting her dodge more hits without compromising much bulk compared to the Warrior. This issue is also in FF2, where enemies hit so hard that evasion easily beats out raw defense. I think a fix for this would be to give Warrior stronger armors exclusive to her while only having about a -5 Evasion penalty so she's not eating every hit thrown at her while still taking the hits better than the Thief in her respective strongest armor.

In the previous version of my review, I complained about the Archer job being far too weak and unreliable to use, as she missed far too often and was far too frail, on top of not critting anywhere near as much as advertised. In the current version of the mod, the Archer is now one of the top damage dealers, with her sheer power more than making up for how frail she is. Bosses, while already far easier than everything else in this mod, are made even easier with an Archer to tear through their HP after being buffed with a FAST spell. The Archer now crits often enough to pierce the obscene defense enemies have at the end of the game.

Green Mage is another Job I complained about in the previous version of my review, and unlike Archer, my thoughts haven't changed on her. Green Mage is still the weakest link in the Job line-up. Her focus on supportive spells is interesting and cool on paper, however, in the 2nd half of the game, enemies become far too resilient to status effect for her to be reliable in her niche, with basically everything being immune to her status spells at the end of the game. Green Mage just ends up being a slightly worse White Mage by the end of the game as her defensive support spells are the only things to stay relevant through the whole game, with her Lv.8 Green Magic spell, Haven, being a real kick in the teeth as basically nothing left in the game from when you can get it onward isn't resistant to Status Magic. There are two ways I can think of fixing this: One is to simply make her able to hit harder physically so she's able to keep contributing to battles when her Spells aren't useful. The other would be to add an Intelligence stat that influenced Magic Damage and Ailment Success rate, and give her the highest intelligence so her status spells are far more reliable at all points in the game regardless of enemy resistances.

Lastly, I want to mention the actual difficulty itself. Generic Enemies are easily FAR more dangerous than the bosses, which only becomes more and more of a problem as the game goes on. Hard Mod or not, it feels incredibly wrong when a purple worm is far more likely to wipe my party than Chaos himself despite my party being worn to hell and back when fighting him. The game really is just trudging through gauntlets of bosses with an occasional normal battle at the end of some dungeons, and this is including the Final Boss. Heck, my preparation for ending the game was less about being ready for Chaos, and more about just surviving the endless random encounters before even reaching the floor Chaos is on. I feel this would have been a more fun experience with random enemies being nerfed by about 1/3rd of their current power, as each one individually is about as strong as an actual boss, and buffing bosses by a substantial amount as they still feel no different from vanilla. Adding Intellect would help with balancing generic enemies vs bosses. A random horse casting Fire 3 shouldn't be as strong as Lich casting Fire 3, y'know?

Overall, this mod has improved DRASTICALLY since version 2.22.2, with a few quality of life things that improve the early game. The new sprites and additional promotion sprites are HIGHLY welcome and make promoting the gals feel far more worthwhile. I'm highly interested in trying out the Magecore challenge bonus patch at some point, and will likely revisit this mod in a future version. I highly recommend giving this a try if you're interested in a brutal FF1 experience. Just be prepared to grind a lot.

This *May* be one of best NES hacks out there. Period.

For context, I received FF1 for my 12th birthday. (I'll let you all do the math.) I've been playing FF1 off and on for years and probably know everything about the vanilla game that you could know. I recently got back into NES and have been playing ROM hacks on real hardware.

When I first tried Manall's FF1 hack awhile back, it was a much lower version, and to be honest, I wasn't crazy about it. When 2.3 came out a few days ago, I decided to give it another try. I am so glad that I did! Not only was there a remarked improvement in the sprites and graphics from previous versions, but the game balance has definitely received a make-over as well. Admittedly, It is extremely difficult in places, But that's the point, right? For instance, I could play through FF1 vanilla in a few hours and probably never die. And even though I love the game, there were no surprises, and even as a kid, things seemed broken and battles seemed mindless and boring. With this hack, now there is a much steeper difficulty because monsters now behave like enemies. They are not just simply buffed with more hit points. They will actually use real spells, heal themselves, target particular party members, and will seemingly react to your actions... You will have characters die, a lot. You will have your entire party wiped out, a lot. And if you're like me, you'll come close to rage-quitting in certain areas. Haha. But then you realize you will just have to re-learn tactics and strategies and actually think during some battles and prepare yourself with the correct magic instead of just attack, attack, attack. And you realize, that's the whole point of this!! You will also have to level up appropriately. That's just part of life of these old games, and is actually half of the fun for someone my age who grew up playing them. It's the journey, not the destination, remember? The active battle system is a god-send, and will help negate some of the steep difficulty you'll face if used correctly. And... no more party members attacking already dead monsters with the "ineffective" message, or spells being wasted!! But do not expect you can just waltz into Marsh Cave (for example) on level exp. level 4 or 5 and get the crown or many similar situations. You will have to put in the work. I finished the game on level exp. level 33, where as in vanilla, I could probably have done it on level 23. There are also a few new areas with secrets to explore, (such as a Ghost Ship!) with new weapons, new enemies, new art, etc. I found myself actually wanting to re-explore the overworld and every dungeon just to see what was snuck in there. And there's a lot! But, it stays true to the original and it NEVER felt so different that it didn't feel like I wasn't playing FF1.

It's clear that Manall has dedicated years of work and love into this, and for free, mind you. If you are a true old-school fan of this game, you will always have that place in your heart for NES vanilla as I do, but it is just so refreshing to have a new experience when playing a much-loved classic. I can't thank Manall enough for this. I created an account just to review this hack. lol. I can't wait to see what comes next!

Give it a try, and you'll probably enjoy it as well!

This one caught my eye, and I had to give it a shot. This hack was really well-made, and the companion guide that came with it was a lot of help.

One thing I have to really give the author credit for is the workarounds in place. IE, having the ship able to dock on any shore might have made the trip to Sarda's cave instant, rather than double-dipping into Earth cave, but rivers were put in place to block access from the shore. Fences were put up around the Floater, preventing the old Warp trick to bypass the Ice Cave loop. Well played, author, well played...

Speaking of which, I have to mention how clever it is to have "unlockable" content. The download comes with a password-protected .rar file that contains the two optional classes, but you have to play through the game to find the password. Nice touch!

THE GOOD: Personally, I liked how the main cast was changed to an all-female party. It didn't feel like some "hAsHtaG gIrL pOwEr!" kind of crap, but instead, I felt like I was commanding a team of anime babes, and that's good stuff.

Heal pots now give 50HP out of battle instead of 30.

Some new tiles were added to give some of the dungeons more flavor. IE, columns around the water in the Sea Shrine, overworld mountains LOOK like mountains now, instead of fields of cottage cheese, the starry floor around the warp to Chaos' lair. Also, the window separating your party from the enemy has been removed. I like it; it feels like a battlefield now.

The new classes work pretty well. The Thief no longer sucks, and I really liked the Archer. She ended up being my main damage on some bosses. I liked the Green Mage: how she looks like Rydia, her whips and her new spell set, though it came with the cost of having no direct offensive spells. The White Mage FINALLY held her own and did some respectable attacks instead of being the weakling with the hammer we all knew.

The one-turn-at-a-time mechanic was mind-blowing! At first I thought it'd slow everything down, but oh no, not at all! Normally, every battle in vanilla, it ALWAYS felt like the heroes just let the enemies go first, THEN attack. I hated that! No, this time, it feels far more balanced and satisfying. Your healer will always get the intended heal off when you get their turn, instead of hoping your target won't die! I dunno how I'll be able to go back after that.

THE MEH: While some things were uncensored, like the Medusas being topless (and Kary 2!), others were not, which I would've liked to have seen. Such as: the "clinics" being reverted back to churches, and the floor in Chaos' room reverted to a hexagram. I could take or leave the Eye being reverted to a Beholder. All this seen here: https://tcrf.net/Final_Fantasy#Graphic_Changes

Not a big deal, but still neat: the famous Invisible Woman of Corneria was restored!

Most dialogue was left unchanged, which is fine, but there was one NPC in Ornac who says "Mohawk guy." Odd. I was also confused by one NPC in Gaia who said something about a dragon in the forest to the south. Never figured out what he was talking about.

You still have to buy Heal potions one at a time, but you're on an emulator. Hold turbo button and fast-forward.

THE BAD: This will be meh for some, but it's a big deal to me: there are no graphical changes for your party when you class change! That was always my favorite thing in the original game, and I was really excited to see my Archer become a Ranger, Green Mage to a Green Wizard, etc. Was it a limitation for the hack that had to be done to make way for other features? I don't know. Manall, if you're reading this, I have experience with sprite editing, I'd be happy to try to make some myself!

The "Large" enemy type felt a bit too overdone. Large enemies take less weapon damage except from Archers' arrows, which is why I said she was my main damage source against bosses, most of which are Large. Even a Fasted thief will still do single-digit damage to larges and bosses most of the time outside of lucky crits.

Chaos' sprite was changed to be... just a white outline. Very strange. What prompted that change and why, I don't know, but I felt underwhelmed.

BOTTOM LINE: The game is more challenging overall, but not ridiculously so like so many other hacks. I had a ton of fun, and I'm looking forward to another playthrough with the new classes I unlocked. If you're a fan of the original, you'll love it. 8.5/10

Just finished this one recently and I had a whole lot of fun with it. Might play through it again to give other classes a try but my first run through made use of the new "Green Mage" that replaces the old Red Mage. By game's end, they command some of the most powerful status effect magic in the game. Breaking the old trope of status magic in FF games, this mod has a lot of fun turning the old standby of just laying waste to the field with a few tier-2 elemental spells on it's head and making you have to consider the best way to use your limited resources as you move along. Not that I ever really felt limited after the first few levels were behind me and I got a good handle on how to approach the new mechanics and battle system. You learn that blanket damage is less-often the best approach to a situation.

I admit I've been spoiled by other mods that had the Buy-9 or Buy-10 options in the shops and I missed it here...and that is the biggest criticism I have over the whole mod. It's a wonderful experience that gives the old classic a fresh feel with a lot of familiarity but just enough newness (and hidden extras that feel rewarding to discover and claim) to keep veteran fans of the original engaged from start to finish. I think that unless one of your favorite classes was completely replaced (Monk or Red Mage) you'll have fun with this. Really nicely done and the amount of time and love that went into polishing up all the little details in this shows. I look forward to playing through again with a new party configuration!

So, first to review here as i just rocked through that thing.

The patch does not change the game in its entirety, so map, story, progression, towns, npcs, etc are all left untouched.

Some mechanics were modded, some bugs got a treatment, so no useless spells, etc.

Some small and mostly subtle changes were applied to the graphics, which for my liking rather enhanced the overall look.

Some palettes were also changed. No real opinion on that, but i liked the blue - orange Warlords.

The classes got changed a bit, fighter got buffed, thief on the other hand a bit nerfed, a ranger replaces the monk, and a green mage replaced red mage. and the two other mages, business as usual. Liked the green mage a lot.

So balancing is important especially for those kind of games. This is in my opinion where this hack shines. It adds an overall challenge to the game which is great for people who can walk through this game blind or are experienced rpg players in general. I opted for the bigger enemy encounter variant for some little extra struggle which made it a tad more tricky which i liked.

There were two little, but thoroughfully laid out extra areas here with some boni and few extra secret ways added to vanilla FF, which is good!

One suggestion though: Please add a convenience hack that enoubles buying potions stackwise. perhaps i have played this game too much but i can't stand buying 99 potions before going in a dungeon piece by piece anymore. Tedious annoying hell. It is just a small hack i saw being applied in other hacks too, so this should be no problem.

All in all i can recommend this if you like a bit harder FF hacks (like FF++).