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Let me start by saying I was excited to try this hack because I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy Ultra Champion Edition, which this is based on. I've beaten FFUCE multiple times with a wide variety of parties, so I came into this with a good idea of what to expect, and I really wanted to like it. So, what are the problems? It comes down to uneven difficulty, some strange glitches and errors, as well as a number of bizarre and unnecessary changes to the story.

The creator of the hack says you shouldn't need to grind "if you know what you're doing" and this may be true if you have developer-level knowledge of the game, but new players will definitely need to grind a lot. Levels don't help the way they do in the original, and gear often isn't a game-changer as much as spells. While you can raid dungeons for items and gold, this often gets repetitive if you're not strong enough already. The result is that it turns into a slog where you're just grinding gold to save up for those new spells, then finding which of those spells will actually make a difference.

It only gets worse when you hit the northern continent. Most enemy groups aren't too bad, but there are a few that will wipe you out quickly if you don't run. Have fun dealing with spellcasters who will grant their entire group protection from everything with the WALL spell, thus making virtually all your offensive magic useless. You'd better be quick with high-level damage spells before they hit you with status effects and then buff themselves enough to nullify your physical attacks while one-shotting your party members. You get killed by RNG quite a lot, which makes it more difficult than the original or FFUCE, but not in an interesting way. The late-game enemies and bosses are huge damage sponges with HP totals in the 4-5 digit range, which seems like a massive over-correction from the original.

This all culminates in the final battle with Chaos. He can cast HEX, which inflicts your entire party with poison, paralyze, blind, and mute. It works on 3-4 party members most of the time, even if you're over-leveled. Did your party get muted before you could cast enough buff spells? Might as well reset because you'll never make it through his 32000+ HP total. I had a well-rounded party (Paladin, Viking, Monk, Sage) and was level 32, but it still took me four tries to beat Chaos. Even then, I only succeeded because he randomly decided not to cast HEX until much later in the battle.

If you're thinking about grinding a lot to power through the endgame, too bad. Once you hit level 32, you never gain any more levels after that. It still shows a counter for the next level, but when you reach it the counter just resets without you gaining a level. The documentation does say that level 32 is the highest possible level, but it's not clear why those levels were taken away from the player when there still seems to be room for them to exist.

There's also a strange oversight in one of the bonus dungeons where there are characters who tell you about special treasures in certain rooms, but then there's only gold at the end. Also, the battles that you need to win to get the gold are so difficult that you probably don't have much to buy by the time you can beat them. These issues aren't a big deal, but make the hack feel very unpolished and unfinished.

The last issue is the script changes. The story that you are used to in FF1 is almost completely gone, and in its place is a weird mess of political slogans, toilet humor, and random nonsense. Very rarely do any of these things serve to build any kind of cohesive narrative. You'll be looking at a sword, and suddenly get shown a political screed about how capitalists are all secret fascists or whatever. It really takes you out of the moment. Did you ever think that Garland's speech at the end of the game needed more references to The Human Centipede? Then this might be the hack for you.

In conclusion, while I appreciate the attempt to improve FFUCE and turn it into a new experience, there are just too many design issues for me to recommend FF Elements.

It's great to see how Final Fantasy hacks are evolving into their own thing, piggybacking off of previous creations, both in code and design. This one take the Final Fantasy Negative One - Final Fantasy Ultra: Champion Edition legacy and makes it more challenging. In a good way! There's also a bunch of quirky stuff to discover. Attention to the game's mechanics, enemies, and NPCs will be rewarded! The first half of the game is fairly familiar, making it easy to get used to the slight changes in economy and classes. By the end, this beast is totally its own thing. Thrilling!

Oh, and there's a lot of brainy humor, half of which flew by me. But it all makes sense when you think about it!