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This "Maxim Story Mode" hack is a really interesting take on a "What If" scenario which Juste is the one injured by Dracula's Phantom instead of Maxim. The dialogue, of course, is carefully rewritten to fit such scenario as well as several weapon descriptions. I especially liked what's described in the Normal Ending as how drastic the plot would be twisted and how worse the situation would've turn into afterwards in Castlevania universe. Combining Maxim's gameplay with story mode enhancements is super satisfying, It's so awesome to somersault flip through high walls at earlier game, get the mirage summon spell and storm through all enemies and obstacles. Also for challengers, a nerfed Juste mode is is still playable as an extra character in the same way Maxim was in the unedited game.

And here's bug reports for the bugs and issues I encountered so far. 1. The Fire Book + Shuriken combination spell may cause graphic bugs against large enemies (Minotaur boss, Pike Master, etc..) 2. In Juste mode Juste's Grand Cross will override high jumps if MP is enough for one or more casts of Grand Cross, and Juste is on the ground. I don't know if it's intended to map the Grand Cross move on [downward, upward, jump] command, but it's, hell, super annoying and you may waste your precious MP if you're not too careful. I have a suggestion: Maybe if it can be ruled out by mapping Grand Cross on [upward + L] combination, in line with the initial version of "Revenge of Findesiecle" hack? 3. Maxim's mirage summon spell startup voice is not Maxim's own voice in the unedited game, but Juste's summon spell voice comes out instead. Similar issues happens in Juste mode for Hydro Storm spell and healing spell.

In conclusion, if you're a fan of Maxim Kischine's high speed gameplay and do not care about post game contents and misplaced summon spell voices, this is an excellent hack even if it doesn't change anything progression-wise. I appreciate that the Maxim pause menu got applied in Revenge of Findesiecle Deluxe+ hack, the enormous amounts of work on it deserves respect.

Anyone remember the old Resident Evil 2 for the ps1? The one where you could play Leon's story or Claire's, and the story was both the same yet very SLIGHTLY different based on who you played? This reminds me a LOT of that and does amazingly at it.

GAMEPLAY: If you've played Maxim Mode before in the original game, then this should be familiar as it wasn't changed too much. Some of Maxim's abilities are locked behind relics just like Juste's were, but once you collect them, you'll have all the abilities Maxim had in his original bonus mode. The game has been tweaked slightly to allow you to play as him normally, however. You can find either the Knife or Axe in addition to his regular Shuriken sub-weapon, though the Shuriken seems to utilize the Sacred Fist combos with the spellbooks. Maxim can also find equipment just like Juste can, and a couple items were redone to be new things since there's otherwise a few redundant items (such as the now useless rings for the Bible, Holy Water, Sacred Fist, and Cross power-ups). I kinda like to think though that the stones are inserted into either Stellar Sword's pommel or its crossguard instead of being used as tips for the sword, but meh. Beyond that, the game plays like an improved Maxim Mode, just more fast paced and with its own story.

STORY: The story essentially stays the same as far as the ultimate goal being for Maxim to aid Juste in finding Lydie Erlanger within the castle. As we're now playing from Maxim's perspective, there have been minor tweaks and clean-ups to the dialogue, changing it to make sense within the new story perspective as well as making it cleaner to read instead of occasionally looking like it was translated to the bare bones basic English possible. All in all, this is a GREAT work and the biggest meat of the hack as this kind of work had to have been quite the undertaking. There's nods to other works (even one to the Netflix series, I noticed!), and several places has it not take itself too seriously. All in all, I love this aspect and I greatly applaud the author for it.

FUN: Maxim was fun to play as....but his mode was nothing more than a watered down "beat the castle again, no story". This GIVES Maxim Mode a real story and one that I truly feel could have fit within the timeline had it happened instead of Juste's story. I compared this to RE2's Leon/Claire scenario system and this feels much like that. This is a new experience of the same story but from another perspective, and I loved it. I found myself looking forward to cutscenes to see what awaited.

MY RATING: 9/10 A GREAT undertaking. This was a lot of fun to play, and while a lot of work clearly went into this, not much of anything was really changed about the game otherwise. It does have a few downsides in that, as the other reviewer put it, there's certain things in the environment that can ONLY be affected by the somersault and not Stellar Sword. Some of the animation changes were...a little wonky. Apparently instead of Juste shaking his fist, we get Maxim...dashing forward repeatedly in place? Likely the limitation of the available animations, but it still looked silly. Maxim also turns and looks at the back wall when idle, so some conversations looks like he's ignoring any other speaker to check out what's on the back wall and looks kinda funny. Those nitpicks aside, this is a great time. Well done to the author :)

This is a good hack for the people who sort of a "fresh" experience with Harmony of Dissonance, Maxim's speedy movements make it a breeze to traverse through the castle, and you can find some very good items early on if you know where to search that'll serve you for pretty much a grand majority of your playthrough.

Didn't bother too much with Juste Mode since it's a more barebones version of regular Harmony of Dissonance.

Also another thing to note, sometimes during Maxim Mode there'll some objects that the Stellar Sword can't interact with, you'll have to use the somersault move for those, this is important since there's potentially two situations where the player would think they're stuck and can't do anything to progress.

Overall, it's a pretty good hack and would recommend it to people that haven't played regular Maxim Mode.