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I had attempted to replay ff6 multiple times over the last decade but always stopped mid way. This mod brought it all back to life for me.

I enjoyed all the changes and special thanks to the dev for including 3x moogle charms, one of them available very early in game. Being able to treat the game more as a boss hunt rather than a dungeon crawl suited my preferences well.

One other note:

• I got really confused about the location of Umaro's rage ring. The location has been changed.

Final Fantasy VI: Divergent Paths could easily be called the "Director's Cut" of VI because like any (good) Director's Cut, it fixes all the issues of Vanilla, adds content that once you're exposed, you don't know how you ever lived without, and makes the entire experience better.

While the overall changes to the main story can range from minor to large, every new sequence makes the story feel more complete. Without giving away any spoilers, situations will occur that differ from Vanilla and you'll find yourself saying, "That just makes more sense" or "What a fantastic change!"

One of the biggest changes from Vanilla (and arguably one of the best) is the expanded character roster: being able to add General Leo without sacrificing another main party member, a brand-new character that helps round-out the roster, and being able to recruit NPCs who vanished from Vanilla but can help you in your quest to defeat Kefka. The WoR in VI felt very incomplete story-wise because many of the character relationships from the WoB vanished; Divergent Paths does a fantastic job of restoring them.

Some of the smaller changes (e.g., Relm learning natural magic, character class changes, the addition of new Espers and spells, the modification to Relics, increase chances of desperation attacks, etc.) change the game enough that while Divergent Paths' game mechanics are close to Vanilla, there are enough new pieces to give the game a brand-new experience beyond just the changes to the story. All of the QoL changes that you'd expect in any hack of VI (e.g., a faster Bushido charge) exist within Divergent Paths so the player won't be losing any of the new mechanics that make parts of Vanilla better.

Divergent Paths also does an excellent job of fixing all the bugs in Vanilla. While some of these bugs are very popular to the Vanilla audience (Vanish + Doom), it does give the game a bit more challenge because you can't "auto kill" bosses throughout the game. That notwithstanding, the overall challenge feels very close to the original version.

As someone who plays VI quite often, I haven't picked up the Vanilla edition of VI since I played through Divergent Paths – it truly is what VI was supposed to be. If you want to revisit VI but aren't looking for a ton of new content or major changes to the game, Divergent Paths is the best way to do so.

I will start saying that this was a fantastic experience. When I read some of the changes I was kinda thinking "Why did the romhack dev changed this?" but when I actually saw those changes in the game itself, I was flabbergasted. Everything feels in place, and every character has a more in-depth arc than before, and Leo in particular was really good. Unfortunately, for Leo to get the spotlight in some scenes, some characters had to step down. I'm speaking about Celes here.

Celes "arc" in the original game was she defecting from the empire, slowly getting closer to the main cast, up to the point when they finally thrust her it's when Kefka tricks them to believe she was a spy all along. She then rejoins the party before the Floating Continent, and it's there where she has the scene in which now tricks Kefka herself and stabs him. In this hack that scene was granted to Leo instead, which kinda takes away from Celes arc but it's okay I guess but paired with the fact that this romhack gives you a reason to save Cid at the start of the WoR is which kinda makes the character of Celes worse in this version. Obviously, the fact that the scenario in which Cid is still alive is kinda worse for Celes' character development isn't a problem that the hack created, but this hack did a lot of good changes to other scenes to benefit the characters, and I seriously believe that in this romhack both Celes scenes should have been different.

Both Leo and Celes were screwed over by the empire, let both of them have their spot in the Floating Continent! Both the Emperor Gestahl and Kefka are there, and Leo clearly shows devotion to the Emperor up to the point where he recognizes his faults. Celes here should stab Kefka, like in the original game, and Leo should stab the Emperor. I think it would fit perfectly and it would benefit both characters; Celes because she's getting her revenge on Kefka, and Leo because he has finally snapped out of the Emperor's lies and even when its probably hard for him to do it he has to kill this man despite all the love and apreciation he may have for him.

In the solitary island, make that if you get to save Cid at first something happens and Celes believes he's dead, so the whole scene in which she decides to take suicide and fails happens, so when she comes back at the cabin after seeing Locke's bandana in that bird she notices how Cid is still alive and then the scene resumes as normal. This would be FANTASTIC, because the game would trick you into believing that Cid is dead when everything seems to go wrong, but after Celes finds Locke's bandana and recovers the hope is when she will discover that Cid is actually fine, which would give her even more hope to search for her friends.

Gameplay-wise, Jump doesn't fit Celes either. I probably missed it, but there isn't an explanation of why getting "augmented" by magic gives you dragoon powers in the game, though runic wasn't explained either but it somewhat made sense that someone infused with magic could "absorb" it. It would be somewhat stupid and boring to have both Leo and Celes with runic, so I kinda believe that even when runic isn't the most useful ability it should probably remain with Celes while Leo should have shock again as his default ability.

Everything else is perfect. All of the QoL improvements are fantastic. I finally used Gau for the first time in my life! And I would be happy if more of this QoL improvements to characters were implemented in the future. Make that you can see Sabin's blitz inputs in combat (like the Pixel Remaster does), an easier way for Strago to learn his lores, give something more unique to Shadow since throwing doesn't feel as powerful or impactful as it should, etc. Also, I would suggest a revamp of how espers work because thats easily the worse part of the original game and this hack didn't do much to solve it (I'm speaking about the leveling with certain espers to get their bonus part, as well as the grinding required to max out characters with them).

I would recommend this hack to everyone that wants to experience a new/alternative vanilla experience, or even to people that didn't play the original game and want to experience this new version of the events. This is my favorite game of all time, and this hack gives new life to it.

First off, I love this hack. It's something Square themselves should have done for the GBA or DS.

But there is also enough to make me wonder why change this? It's not broken don't fix it! Here are s few things that people who love this game should know going into this hack:

Relm can naturally learn magic. Makes sense seeing as how her mother was a magic user, but I think her sketch ability should have been fixed instead. Having her level match the ability used would have been nice.

Coin toss should really be Setzer's move. It shows gambling as a waste of money, and it doesn't fit Shadow at all. I don't know why this change was even considered much less implemented.

Breakable weapons. Specifically Edgar. It makes his character almost a nuisance which is a shame because he was one of my favorites. Turns him into an almost Inspector Gadget bumbling buffoon character.

Those are my only gripes really. Everything else is smooth like butter and I can't thank the hackers enough foe undertaking such a huge project.

This hack strikes so many cords and, in many ways, improves the story and mechanics of the original. The scenarios flow in a more logical way, the story updates surrounding many supporting characters feel very satisfying, and it contains a lot of bugfixes and miscellaneous enhancements that feel just right - not too much and not too little. I love most of the class names, and Celes as a dragoon fits her really well and helps to differentiate her from Terra.

There's a lot that I love and very little that I don't, but for completion here are my only significant gripes:

• it changes the game comprehensively enough that making your own edits is a little trickier, and there's little room for ASM changes. He's graciously included information and a patch for this in the readme. Hint - make sure you use a headered version of 1.0 as a base.

• Relm gains natural magic. This is a little pointless, and I would have significantly preferred her sketch be fixed and upgraded instead, so this is a bit of a missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned.

• The secret character is... an interesting pick. At first I felt a little disappointed but I must admit it's growing on me.

• I'm not really a fan of moving Coin Toss from Setzer to Shadow. It's not really meant to represent hurling coins like a ninja to injure enemies; it's more of a comical ability that abstractly represents the power of wealth. As such, it makes way more thematic sense with Setzer and is also more useful for him since Throw is generally a superior command to Slots.

(this review will contain heavy spoilers)

Just finished playing this hack. A few years ago I played and loved General Leo Edition, in which Leo was kept alive in a very nice way, at the cost of Shadow since Leo took Shadow's slot in that hack. Divergent Paths aims at adding Leo without this setback and goes way beyond that, tweaking all sorts of things in the story.

I can say Divergent Paths was a blast to play from start to finish. Leo is really well implemented into the story, and it was cool to be able to have him and Shadow at the same time. The 3 scenarios changes were very well thought-out and made a lot of sense. Generally speaking the whole plot made a lot more sense than in the original, as far as I can remember. But this is still the FF VI plot, only enhanced, and I love this philosophy of adding stuff by small touches while respecting the original, of knowing you're not the creator of the game but still can add your own touch to the work without twisting or falsifying it, of serving the game instead of the other way around. This kind of humbleness and self-consciousness is rare enough to be acknowledged.

Thank you for keeping the vanish/doom bug intact, it allowed me to streamline my playthrough and grind faster. It was actually the first time I played the game that way and it was fun to dispose of some bosses the easy way.

The new Moogle relics are such a good idea. The major setback in old RPGs are those constant random battles. Being able to escape them when you wanna explore a bit is a godsend. I do wish this had just been implemented via some options command instead of relics, because it's a bit of a chore to have to switch them around for that, and it can get tricky when you have split teams. Still a great idea.

I can see why the hacker felt it was better for Banon to lose his native healing powers, but beware if you used the Moogle Charm a bit too much before the first showdown with Ultros, it can get tricky without Banon's healing powers.

On the floating continent cutscene, I feel the new cutscene involving Leo feels slightly less powerful than the original one involving Celes.

The new secret character, Kappa, is kinda meh. The reasoning behind her inclusion is that an imp was rumored to be a secret unlockable character back in the day. It's usually the kind of philosophy I love. But this time I can't help but feel this last slot could have been put to better use. Banon, or even a repentant Gestahl having survived the apocalypse (why not), would have been more interesting choices to me. Or even Rachel or Arvis. Banon would have been able to use those very sudden and short-lived paladin powers. The reasoning behind adding a goofier character is that FF VI has its fair share of goofy moments and characters, so Kappa fits perfectly. I can respect that, but I would say that it's precisely because FF VI has its fair share of goofiness that another mascot was not needed. We already have Mog, Umaro & Gogo as goofy/bonus/kinda irrelevant characters, which is very fine by me, but yet another character of this type wasn't needed to me. But since Kappa is just a bonus character anyway she certainly doesn't detract anything from the game, you can just ignore her. I did use her for the novelty aspect though. I can also understand that Kappa was much easier to implement because the sprites & portraits were already there.

The one blunder that, while remaining minor, kinda prevents this hack from truly being an ultimate version, is making Edgar's weapons breakable. It basically renders Edgar useless. The weapons seem to break randomly as far as I could tell so there's no way to predict when it's gonna happen. The only solution is to hoard dozens of copies of the weapons if you wanna use them reliably. I thought it was not worth the hassle and ended up having Edgar warm the bench. In general breakable weapons are very, very rarely a good idea in video games anyway.

Another minor gripe is that the new NPC sprites are not always great. Mid for instance is especially creepy with his blanked face...

On a technical note, I encountered a few graphical bugs, most notably in cutscenes, when characters were supposed to be "behind" the dialog box, they were visible with garbled sprites. I got a glitch once in battle where I was to give Relm her next command but I couldn't so the game was basically locked, I had to restart. Nothing major, I'm just mentioning them for reference.

All in all this hack is absolutely great, try it you won't be disappointed ! 100% recommended !

This was a really fun mod. It's the same story, but with some tweaks that make a little more sense in context. The gameplay is a lot smoother, with less grinding.

Divergent Paths is the best way to play FFVI in 2022. You won't really notice the impact of the hack until the party splits up after the fight on the raft, but every change from here on is a stroke of genius.

The pacing in this portion of the game is vastly improved, making for a more logical narrative than what was presented in the original game itself. I especially like how Shadow joins the party in this section; it also gives Terra's section something for meaningful to do, which felt rather short in the base game.

Another subtle but welcome change was having the extra members of your party wait for you at Figaro Castle instead of Narshe when you search for Terra; as was making the scene between Sabin and Edgar non-missable.

There's a very powerful scene in Vector that is completely original, but feels solid in its presentation without overstaying its welcome. Some other changes I liked was the remix of Cyan's dream in the World of Ruin; the pacing and order of this segment are much better here.

There's also NPCs you can recruit for the Falcon that gives closure to many other characters who just disappeared from the original story. Banon also gets a fitting end in this hack.

The most powerful additional scene comes during the Ancient Castle; it was completely unexpected but most definitely appreciated. Don't miss it!

In the end, I could write a book about how great this hack is, but I think it's greatest strength is it's restraint. It never delves into fan fiction territory, while giving you things that are well thought and better than what was originally offered, all the while staying true to the spirit of the source material.

Divergent Paths is just a flat out better version of FFVI. It's definitely worth your time and may very well end up replacing the original for you, as it did me. Enjoy!

= = = = FFVI: DIVERGENT PATHS SPOILERS AHEAD! = = = =

[WHY I PLAYED THIS MOD] I have played through FFVI in some form many times now, having played it initially in 1994 or 1995. Spending report card money to get it was, for me, obvious. FFVI also provided me with the first difficult decision that I recall: Should I continue playing it (and I was in the MagiTek Research Facility), or should I go with my family to Chuck-E-Cheese? I realized I could return to playing this after Chuck-E-Cheese, which was a rare treat for me.

I played this mod because of the story. I was already well familiar with its vanilla story, and experiencing the new dialog and story beats was a pleasant upgrade from the original game. I also liked being able to play this on a PC with fast forward and rewind capabilities. (Fast forwarding was especially useful when grinding.)

|OTHER NOTES| My preferred FFVI mod has been Brave New World since it greatly overhauls the mechanics, retranslates the dialog script, and fixes a bunch of low points and inconveniences from vanilla. Divergent Paths has included some of these convenience tweaks (like faster Bushido), but still hasn't gone far enough in my opinion.

• - NEGATIVE - -
• THERE'S STILL NO CONVENIENT WAY TO MASS TRAIN MY ARMY! THIS IS MY BIGGEST GRIPE ABOUT VANILLA TOO! At least vanilla let me use Game Genie codes to skip hours of AP grinding for my party of a dozen people (or 3 parties of 4) who can learn spells. Divergent Paths keeps vanilla Intangirs as-is for easy Vanish/Doom kills for 10 AP each, but even then, it's -still- tens or hundreds of wins to teach ALL characters in the World of Balance who can benefit from this grind spot all spells available at this point. A simple fix would be to make all vanilla WoB espers again available in the WoB and increase the spell learning rates of ALL spells to at least x10. The game has contradictory design goals of giving the player such a large army for such a short game with the expectation that players will grind for a -long- time to make up the difference. As a child I LOVED FFVI, but I also used Game Genie codes to quickly learn all relevant esper spells because mandatory or strongly encouraged grinding for me has always been and will likely always be BORING!

Brave New World solves this AP grinding problem by only allowing each character to learn from a small number of espers, and the entire esper system is overhauled. This forces specialization and goes against the spirit of FFVI where every character who can learn spells can learn every spell.

• Strago's Lores aren't alphabetized. Brave New World fixed this, and maybe other assembly patches do too.

• What the mod author calls "restraint," I call not going far enough. I'm adjusted to Brave New World's new, rebalanced fights, new enemy formations, and other improvements over vanilla. This may be personal taste, but I can better understand why people call FFVI an easy Final Fantasy game, though this leads me to my next point.

• The game felt awkwardly balanced. Maybe this is a vanilla thing too, but after grinding for hours in the World of Balance, our party was super powerful for the Floating Continent, then we faced a significant difficulty spike around the start of the World of Ruin! Things became easy again after we got more party members, espers, and got into a pleasant groove with our VIPs (Terra, Locke, Strago, Gogo, and whoever was necessary for the next area).

• World of Ruin locations that require 2+ party members should be very clear as to their triggering conditions. This Old Castle bugged me until I watched PowerPanda's YT video on it. Before then, I brought Terra to the castle, but was told it was esper-sealed. If none of the required characters are in the party for the event, text should tell or strongly hint which character(s) should be there. If one of the required characters is in the party, that character should mention wanting the other character (like Leo wanting Terra or Terra wanting Leo) to proceed.

• This mod didn't include the overhauled Fanatics' Tower command patch which allowed characters to use all their normal commands in the tower, though foes were immune to the Fight command due to super high physical evasion - just like they were Cactrots. This patch would have made Leo's Runic ability wonderful!

• There was so little new story. I was expecting some sort of 3-way divergence at the start of the World of Ruin just like with the LEET RIVER party split.

• No Dragoon Boots? I missed those. I know Palidor can make anyone !Jump, but this is different.

• Banon lost his Health/Prayer command. This hurt early-game, but also helped ensure we didn't just auto-farm our way to level 90+ early. sigh

• Tools are breakable! This demoted Edgar from one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite because the point of The King's tools is that THEY DO NOT BREAK! Edgar is meant as an easy, reliable way to win random encounters and expedite grinding! I heard some people liked this change, but I didn't. I also haven't liked the Throw command in FF games much either because that means transforming reusable items into one-use consumables.

• Gogo's command menu still has a line. One of the Brave New World patches fixes this.

• The success rates for Steal and Sketch and Dance are still too low! My thought process: Steal and Sketch and Dance should simply automatically work every time unless the target is immune. Spells and certain other abilities don't have this failure chance.

• Due to technical limitations, all limit breaks are the same and there's no way to learn spells from items.

• The Falcon doesn't automatically come with a shop, an item manager, and a healer! This was approximately my third-strongest gripe. At first I thought the game was bugged, but learned that ARVIS whom I'd totally forgotten about until I found him in Narshe was. These characters should be continually on the TOP DECK of the Falcon for player convenience. (Omit them from cutscenes as prudent. They're vending machines.)

• There's no Doom Gaze GPS! Brave New World has a dialog option when using the Falcon to find Doom Gaze. When I finally found him in Divergent Paths, I just used Vanish/Doom so I could kill him and get back to playing the game. I didn't want to have to hunt for him annoyingly.

• The auction house was less useful than I remembered. I got the Auction House espers, one set of Marvel Shoes, a Hero Ring, and a bunch of items that only NPCs could buy. (How many 1/200ths of a Blackjack ARE THERE?) I'd rather the auctioneer just offer more Marvel Shoes and Hero Rings instead of joke items the party can never buy because it wastes time.

• Setzer's Slots weren't as useful in this edition compared to Brave New World where he can be specced for healing with Mugu Mugu.

• There's STILL no way to control party members in the Colosseum. Some FFVI hack whose name I don't recall allowed for player control here.

• Using the Phoenix esper in battle still doesn't give mass Life3 like I expected, nor even mass Life2!

• Still no place outside of Serpent Trench (at least to my knowledge) to learn Water Rondo.

• The author of this mod (PowerPanda) seemed to overvalue Gauntlets. I only found these late in the World of Ruin, and Bracers/Genji Gloves and the Offering were far superior due to getting more attacks. Sometimes, attacks missed, but, more importantly, each attack gives a chance to Mug (Locke/Gogo) and proc weapon abilities (Ragnarok/Flare, etc.)

• I missed the Brave New World relic overhaul. It may be preference, but I liked the notion of all relics potentially being useful.

• I also missed Brave New World's more detailed item and esper and spell descriptions.

• Leo's musical theme just felt weak compared to other music in the game. Contrast Edgar's theme or Cyan's theme or Shadow's theme and Leo's theme just felt uninspired and quiet.

• For characters with multiple statuses, not all of them are shown like in Brave New World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByhsPVQj...ainStryder

• No gold star or other indicator on the esper screen to show who has mastered what espers.

+ + POSITIVE + + +New story beats! I also could tell where the new story text was. For example, I could tell that when Edgar suggested the party visit Doma it was a new line. I also liked seeing Celes and Leo working together to save Vector during the esper assault on the city which acted as a Leo tutorial.

+I got to play far longer as Leo and Banon!

+Terra can use Morph every fight! I saved it for bosses, but she's still the best boss killer, even more than 20 years after release!

+Some espers were improved. There was no vanilla Raiden/Odin split. Weak esper level bonuses were improved. Certain espers teach additional spells.

+Quake (and seemingly also Molten/Metron) won't hurt the party too!

+Many bosses can still be killed with Vanish/Doom, or if they're Undead, Holy Water/Phoenix Down/Life spells. Sometimes I wasn't in the mood to fight the intended way.

+Players are given Ragnarok AND Ragnarok instead of Ragnarok OR Ragnarok. And Terra rejoiced!

+Gau is more convenient, being able to learn Rages outside the Veldt just by winning fights against Rage-enabled enemies!

+I like the notion of having new spells (like Purify), but didn't use them.

+Color-coded HP & MP gain & drain.

+Early-game Moogle Charm equippable by all! A total of 3 Moogle Charms in the game for multi-party sequences! Simply being able to toggle encounters in the options menu (replacing the STereo/Mono sound option) would have been better, but this was a pleasant backup!

+Sabin's scenario felt faster. I very approve of this, as normally Sabin's scenario felt very slow compared to the other 2 scenarios (Terra/Banon & Locke)!

NEUTRAL = = =We have a secret character. Impa as I called her was amusing, but was simply one more teammate who needed lots of grinding to be useful in an already army-sized cast! She also required I rely on Google and databases to get the 4 pieces of Imp gear (equip-imp) for her to join and be useful. I really thought this secret character would be, well, a secret. Maybe it was Gestahl. Maybe it was Piette who had somehow healed and survived the end of the world. Maybe it was Banon back from the dead. Maybe it was Vargas or Duncan. These other characters would have had a stronger story connection and reason for their inclusion, but this gimmick character was included because the art was already done. I get it.

(FINAL VERDICT) Better than vanilla, and worthwhile for the new story beats. I just wish experiencing them was more convenient and that there were far more of them!

• *CRITICAL BUG!**

Kefka's Tower: If I activate the chest shown on the east side of this picture then leave Kefka's Tower, it can't be used again and which means I can't get past the rubble to reach Kefka! I learned about this because going through the tower thrice with my MVP party would have been faster than training 3 parties to go through it once.

Ever since I first played this I was always bothered by the fact that some characters were just gone and left a lot of loose ends. Felt incomplete.

Divergent paths gets to the part that bothers many and gets some closure and changes things that frankly make a lot of sense and other situations you may have wondered about. The new added scenes are a breath of fresh air with excellent dialog. New situations work perfectly. Best is what happens in Thamasa is quite gripping and tense.

All Espers give some level gains, even a speed up one comes in much earlier. New spells are nice.

This is a great hack that makes this a more worthwhile game. I only would have one request is to merge this new awesome content with a slick original translation as to remove the often bad vanilla dialog that is present here to have a full excellent experience.

Still, this is the best version of Final Fantasy 6 to date.

The changes in Divergent Paths are surprisingly refrained and though it might sound like heresy, almost every change made either sets something up better than the original game did (like Terra ending up in Mobliz) or shines light on a parallel between characters that you didn't even consider in the original. Though in the latter case, there was often one line that would pop up and unfortunately hit you over the head with the parallel that's being presented (the most aggressive case being a reworked scene between Cyan and Gau in the WoR) but thankfully it's often one line.

There was only one change that was made that I personally thought was unnecessary and instead hurt a character's introduction. Setzer gets introduced before the opera scene in Jidoor's auction house and it takes away from his original bombastic and out of the blue introduction since you already know who he is. In Setzer's case, him appearing out of nowhere wasn't a flaw. But for every questionable change, there's a good one like tech-savvy Edgar understandably diving in to save his own brother and being able to pair with the technologically incompetent Cyan.

There's also an honestly bad ass new scene in Vector where Celes and Leo fight off the attacking Espers. On Celes though, the one change I didn't like was that Celes was made a dragoon and the now sole user of the Jump command, while Leo gained Runic instead of his originally OP Shock. It's a change I understand, but it left Celes' Jump being underwhelming for much of the game since the line of spears wasn't changed. There's also the fact that every character now has Sabin's Pummel blitz skill that now acts as a generic "Limit" that appears much more frequently than the original desperation attack which is all cool up until you have someone with 24 HP equipped with the Blood Sword and instead of attacking and healing themselves up, they use their Limit and die.

From a technical standpoint, the game is perfectible playable but there are some bugs like swapping out your equipment during battle can make you lose what was originally equipped, the menus (and Mog for some reason lol) are prone to glitching out but a save and reload can fix those occasional annoyances. After the final boss disintegrates, the game can also freeze on a black screen but I redid the fight and the game ended normally. Even with those bugs in mind, I still recommend you give this a try.

I used to get up in the middle of the night and sneak downstairs to play FF3 on my Super Nintendo while my family was asleep. Like...multiple times a week. FF3 is without a doubt one of my favorite games of all time, and over 25 years later, it still means a lot to me.

When I first read about this romhack while it was in progress, I assumed it would end up a kludgy pile of nonsense with some self-insert fanfiction-but I gave it a shot anyway. I was absolutely blown away. Every single story change made me go "Oh! That fits way better!" and gameplay changes were equally fitting. While it's certainly no HardType hack, there are minor changes made to make some parts of the system feel more coherent, as well as all the typical bugfixes.

This replaces the original for me. This *is* FF6, the way it was meant to be.

This is not a project I heard anything about until it was released. After doing a little research it sounded like a pretty fun project.

Having played the hack I've got to say... this isn't just a "what if" rom hack. This feels like an improvement over the base game. Side stories are explored, minor characters are further developed, combat is improved and the flow of the game is more logical.

For example, Edgar jumping in after Sabin makes a lot of sense; Edgar's proficiency with machines makes Cyan's ineptitude more significant. Terra and Banon ending up on the Veldt also makes a lot of sense insofar as it gives her world of ruin storyline relevance. Shadow being in South Figaro during Locke's quest also makes a lot of sense.

The only real criticism I have is we're playing version 1.0. There are a few bugs here and there (I had an issue with Edgar's debilitator disappearing from my inventory when a bio blaster broke during the dadaluma fight...) but once these bugs are corrected this is the DEFINITIVE version of Final Fantasy 6.

I mean it. This is not a slight improvement hack, this is a straight up better version of Final Fantasy 6. All of the changes improve on the base game and flush out many (if not all) the broken or unfinished sidequests/sidestories.

It may take a little getting used to some of the gameplay differences (Celes as a dragoon, sabin's altered blitz commands, Edgar's breakable tools etc.) but all of the changes I've seen have not only made sense but felt like genuine improvements.

I had a blast playing this! There are many quality of life changes over vanilla that make the game much more accessible, like getting to manipulate the encounter rate from the start, Gau learning Rages anywhere just by winning battles, and even a point where your leftover party members are relocated to Figaro instead of Narshe for less backtracking. The script and balance are vanilla, with some modest insertions for the new interactions and spells; very little adjustment is needed for novice players. You can even still Vanish-Doom if you want to, but thankfully the Sketch bug was patched and there's auto-run.

The new spells feel like powerful natural continuations of existing spells, like a Water and a Wind version of Quake (which no longer hits your party), or Bio 3 which is a single target series that ignores Reflect. Espers now teach more spells at once, which reduces grinding time, and some are in new locations now.

The script additions have some surprisingly funny moments; I definitely laughed out loud a few times. There's also satisfying new character development, like Edgar and Sabin spending more time together, or Celes and Leo ...doing a thing. I plan on releasing a highlights video outlining the larger scenes, because some of these scenes were just classic.

The only glaring oddity is a bizarre bug affecting Mog, which gives him glitchy feet and forces him to face down. It doesn't affect gameplay, just looks weird outside of battle.

All in all, this is one of my favorite FF6 mods and I definitely recommend playing it!

Final Fantasy VI was always my favorite when I was a child. Only when I grew up I discovered that it was plagued with bugs and inconsistencies in gameplay that prevented it from being a real masterpiece in game design as much as it was in graphics, music and world building. Now, 31 years after its release, the romhacking community is thriving, and we have lots of revised and fixed ways to enjoy this classic.

Final Fantasy 6: Divergent Worlds takes what made this game special and makes it more so, without reinventing the wheel. The gameplay stays mostly the same, but every bug in the original game (and there are loads of them) is fixed.

What makes this hack special is that it takes time to make little variations to the story that close most character arcs in a more satisfying way. It takes inspiration from real interviews and development notes for its changes and it really feels coherent with the overarching plot. Some characters that were underdeveloped, abandoned halfway or whose arc was cut short in the original game really shine here, with most secondary characters being at least able to join your airship crew in the late game.

If its your first time playing Final Fantasy VI, maybe try the original plot instead, if just to appreciate the changes made in this mod. Otherwise this feels like the definitive expansion to and already great game.