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I've been a fan of FF1 since it came out for the NES.

Grond's FF1 is an excellent hack. It looks and plays the way I would have wanted the game to always be. The bugs (i.e. intelligence, weapon effectiveness, etc) are fixed, the classes are tweaked for better balance, and there are new areas to explore and some super bosses to boot. Equipment has changed and there is new stuff to find in chests and shops. Chests that would have had a stupid potion or antidote in them now will often contain small permanent stat boosters instead. There are graphical tweaks and different fonts and such that make the game look better too.

I found the difficulty to be slightly lower than vanilla, but certainly harder than the GBA or mobile remakes. It was a good challenge but beatable without having to get too high leveled. I ran a party of RM/BB/TH/BM (no fighter or white mage) and everything felt well balanced.

I have to disagree with the reviewer who complained of the Chaos battle. I mean, Chaos would cast CUR4 in vanilla for one thing; that's not new. But in my playthrough he didn't cast it once and if you do the optional dungeons and get most of the treasures the game gives you, he is basically a victory lap.

Overall this is a great version of FF1 and if you haven't played Grond's, you really should. It's a refreshing experience that will hold your interest even if you've played FF1 more times than you can count.

Thanks to Grond and everyone else who contributed to making this hack :)

I would love to recommend this. I played FF1 all the way through for the first time using this and my friend whose been playing FF since the NES helped me with guidance, tips and tricks, etc. We were having a great time. She got to see all the changes and compare them to the original while I get to experience a cleaned up version of the original, before the Pixel Remaster was announced. But at the tail end of the journey, literally the final fight with Chaos, I had to give up. I don't know what compelled someone to do this but Chaos loves to spam Curaja when at low health. It's not just once or twice either. It'd be 5 times or more per attempt so there's literally no way to beat him without an absurd amount of grinding. I understand that level grinding is going to be part of the experience but this was beyond absurd. I grinded up about 5 levels after a few attempts and still couldn't make a dent in Chaos because if his health got low, boom, Curaja. Completely ruined the experience and at the literal final moment, arguably the worst place to screw up. It's my understanding that Chaos does normally have Curaja but doesn't spam it nearly as much so it's not much of an issue. There's no way I could recommend this to anyone trying FF1 on NES, just play the Pixel Remaster or maybe there's another mod/hack that's cleaner than this one. A great time overall but gets completely ruined at the end.

I've sworn by Final Fantasy Restored for the last couple of years. At times, I've glanced over the GFF mod and was turned off by little things like altered color palettes. My assumption was that it was going to make a lot of changes for the sake of changes alone as we frequently see. After going back over the change log and hearing positive feedback from the community I recently decided to give it a go.

And guess what-I'm in love. While Restored fixes all the bugs, there are still lots of awkward little design choices with the original. Because this was the game that made me fall in love with RPGs, I've always tolerated those annoyances, but this version has addressed every single one of them while never making the game feel like a departure or overly easy.

My fav changes:

1. The Ninja is finally worthy. Adding the dual equip gives him just the needed boost to accuracy and damage that makes him the late game DPS guy we always wanted him to be. Reducing his armor to light is completely fine. He's a ninja after all.

2. The fighter got nerfed, just like he needed to be. Lowering his accuracy growth rate pre-class change makes perfect sense. We shouldn't have a character who is both the defender and the best damage dealer the entire game (with the exception of the late game monk)

3. The black mage has finally been fixed. The int impact on spell damage applied in Restored was too modest. This one nails it with the larger impact. Along with the multi targeting added to level 1 elemental spells, this is a great character the entire game now.

4. Spell items were nerfed. This probably should be number one on this list. Spell items literally broke the game, giving you infinite resources and area damage potential. This was another reason you hardly needed mages before. Now, you are going to rely on them for the northern continents, as you always should have.

There are lots of other little changes like to item locations that really do make sense. I haven't played the red mage or monk yet and I'm hoping that the changes to the monk will make him more viable early game and less broken late game. This is a great package overall. There is only one issue: playing on NestopiaUE, I am encountering glitches with the color of certain tiles in every town and dungeon. I may experiment with other emulators but I'm hoping that someone patches the rom or the emulator at some point to resolve this.

I came here looking for tools to do some basic bug fixes on the game myself, and instead I found this. My worry was that it would break the difficulty level of the game like the various re-releases have. While there are some significant difficulty changes, I've found them to be positive on the whole.

I'm playing a Fighter/RM/WM/BM party, which is obscenely expensive to play in the unaltered version. I played about a quarter of the way through the unaltered version with this party, and the game was a grind purely for money for spells. With the mod, I still have to save for spells through the first half of the game, though I pretty much had enough cash to buy whatever I needed by the time I got to Crescent Lake. The original was far too expensive in the beginning, but was just right by this point.

Some general notes:

• The interface and player/monster/item name length changes are wonderful to have, and make the game a better match for the original Japanese release.
• Making the basic elemental spells effect all enemies made the early game much easier, but that was partly because I have such a magic heavy party.
• The new white mage spells are nice, but not overpowering. I thought the new 'float' spell would make the Volcano too easy, but you run out of castings pretty quickly.
• As mentioned, the difficulty is still challenging. The early game was easier, but all of the dungeons have required multiple runs to get all the items and get to and defeat the boss. I've yet to have any TPK's, but I've come close multiple times.

This patch is awesome!

When I was looking for a patch, I was just looking for a patch to fix some spells and other noticeable glitches. But I found this...

I see a lot of changes that I couldn't imagine the reason of this, then, when I started to play, I noticed that the game was acquired a new visual, not just a patch to fix this or that, but a "Downgrade" or "Demake" of Final Fantasy 1 remakes for this old console.

Then I saw that I chose the perfect team to combine with this patch: Warrior, Thief, Monk and Black Mage. A focused team to damage (without repeated jobs)

When I fight against Garland and the boss music began to play.. the same music when I played the PSP version, but now in 8 bits... I thought "the composer of this had an amazing job", I thought this again and again with the fiends and Chaos, but the Chaos are really, but really enjoyable, my fight with my warriors against he was never so exciting, I really enjoy as much as the original music!

But the fun not end there! The new improved and balanced fights makes the combat against all monsters and single bosses more hardy than the original NES set, making the game more challengeable and in the same time more fair, thanks for the new items, spells and your little alterations that make the whole difference. Due the difficult, I really suffer to beat the game, but each second was cool.

The new and animated graphics, more darkest now, plus the new layout of everything are better now, and now are so good much Final Fantasy II or III Nes graphics.

I will not tell spoilers of this game, but I have sure that if you, like me, played the original and a random remake, you will really to like this game and admire the job of these guys that did this patch. Get ready for a few surprises that you REALLY will not expect!

The Final Fantasy Restored hack will be good for you practice, you need to face this Grond's hack with more severity.

I recommend this hack for:

• Final Fantasy One Fans.
• General Final Fantasy Fans.
• People that admire good and hard-working patches.
• People that search for a new Final Fantasy challenge.
• People that never played the NES version of Final Fantasy.
• And.. for you that are reading this text, of course! :)

All my thanks for Grond and All involved with this hack, all you did an awesome work and make me happy. =)

I wish good luck for you that will get in this adventure.

May the light be with you. May the crystals shyne forever.

(Sorry any problem with my English, it's not my native language)

Grond's Final Fantasy is a ROM hack that has been constantly updated since a very long time, the list of changed and altered stuff gets longer and longer.

Originally this hack was meant to simply makes the original FF1 slightly better by removing some grinding and improving the graphics.

Now it seems Grond decided that he just wanted to alter as many things of the original game as possible, without asking if this is appropriate or not.

I won't deny it, on the technological point of view, this hack is absolutely awesome. The graphics are way improved over the original FF1, in fact they look better than FF3's graphics. The menu layouts are better than in the original game and more pleasing to look at.

Unfortunately this hack has gone way too far and changes a lot of things it should have kept intact for a "bugfix balancing hack". In fact you can see the authors just wanted to make as many changes as possible, no matter if this was relevant or not.

The game is unfortunately not less grindy than the original. Garland is very likely to "knock you all down" if you aren't well prepared, while he was very easy in the original. As soon as you cross the north bridge, you can encounter Gr.Ogres, which normally you won't met before the Dungeon of the Earth, much later in the game. Those will one-hit KO your best warrior with best equipment. No, I do not want to grind SOONER than in the original FF1 where you could at least go as far as the elf village before starting grinding.

The music pitch is horribly off it makes my ears bleed.

So overall, nice hack but I don't really recommend it. It does not fix the major issues I had with FF1 that is :

• It is too grindy
• The horrible round-based battle system and ineffective attacks
• Items are too expensive
• Can't know if a weapon/armor can be equipped by your character before buying it
• Can't know if a weapon/armor is more powerful than another one before buying it

Instead it "fixes" things that didn't need to be fixed in the first place.

This hack stay faithful to the original game for the most part. But there are so enhances, fixes, and little enhancements that truly make it feel different and refreshing. For the most part it has inculcated many of the modern conveniences that later games in the series employ.

GAMEPLAY:

The classes remain the same but are rebalanced. The Ninja becomes quite a good attacker later on due to his ability to dual wield. The Red Wizard's weaknesses do become apparent by end game but he remains very usable all throughout. The White Wizard becomes quite a useful character for the end game since Dia spells affect evil creatures like Chaos himself. The black mage (and red mage) do make early game play easier due to the fact that 1st level spells are now hit alls. The Paladin still has accessibility to numerous types of of armor that render him almost invincible to physical attacks.

Spells have been tweaked. Most of the unused spells have been dropped and you can conveniently select spells that you want due to the sort and drop feature.

The game itself has become more fluid as promised. The early level grind seems to vanished in my experience (so long as you don't run from the battles). The difficulty curve is just right as end game dungeons and bosses do scale accordingly. The Final Boss is still a bugger to beat due to the potential use of CUR4 although I haven't tried using Monks at any time.

You can now use Phoenix Down as a regular item thus decreasing the need to utilize Rise and Arise as spells. Useless treasure has now been replaced by more useful stat boosting items. Items are no longer as redundant so there is some practicality in buying items from shops.

One of the best features for me personally is the fact that a dead or stoned party member still gains experience regardless of his state. All of these features might seem to to make the game easier overall but the difficulty scales appropriately. These features merely make the game more convenient and accessible.

The two new dungeons are a nice feature and at the very least you can listen to more of the new selection of music that has been put in game.

GRAPHICS:

I was amazed at the hack in the way that it made dungeons really feel alive. Gurgu Volcano really brightens up and settles. Waters have movement, and stars twinkle in the sky. These environments have even been incorporated into the final dungeon.

Aside from these, there are really nice triggers in game that you don't normally expect from the standard nes emulation. The Elven Prince really wakes up and vampires can transform among other things.

Overall, this is a great excellent and enjoyable hack. Thanks to the author and contributors for all their hard work.