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This is a tedious exercise in grinding, endlessly spamming healing items, and banging your head against brick walls. The difficulty curve is a straight line, and the game's idea of difficulty is "figure out the only viable strategy for this encounter that the developer intended for, and then pray to RNJesus until the game decides to randomly be nice enough to let it actually work. Otherwise, grind mooks for six hours." This is not what "difficulty" should look like in an RPG. This is the most unenjoyable experience I have ever had playing a video game, and the hack's creator should be ashamed. For the love of god, please play Platinum instead of this garbage.

Signed up just to do this mod justice, because it deserves it.

Makes the gameplay come full circle by making common mobs and bosses somewhat more testing, fixing bugs and exploits, nerfing specific OP materia or equipment, increasing item prices, as well as a few nuances that make the game better such as more meaningful steal materia, and less straightforward strategies.

Often, people are apprehensive about certain aspects, and that is understandable. Fear not, I shall go into plenty detail on these topics.

Difficulty level: Hard, but not insane overall. Equivalent to what an official hard mode would be, or maybe very slightly above that. Playing the game optimally is a must, but there is still plenty room for error and freedom to build you characters the way you want, as long as said way is smart and efficient. Looking up guides and strategies was never once necessary for me, though I do know the game relatively well. The mod sells itself as "needing every inch of the fury bar" etc as if there is no room for error. This was not quite my experience, thankfully.

Grinding Required: perhaps a little, but tame for the series. Still FAR less than say Final Fantasy X or 12 late game content expects of you (battle arena, super bosses, dark aeons etc). It does not cross any unreasonable line, just do a few extra battles per area while gaining enemy skills, grabbing all the items, managing your materia for optimal growth, and optimizing your limit break learning. This is a fun experience, as the battles themselves are more interesting than in the base game. When I get to the northern crater my party level is in its late 40s, for reference.

Save States required: Dyne is the only forced boss I recall relying on them for. Dyne needs a nerf. It's probably best to keep Barret as a primary member of your party to ensure he has at least lvl2 limit break and decent level.

Late game side content recommended: Yes, everything possible except Ruby weapon so as to not bother with choco racing nonsense. I'd recommend the same for vanilla too.

Downsides: none except for making Ultima Weapon side content require many more collisions/encounters in the highwind, and the Dyne boss battle in corel prison perhaps needs a slight nerf.

Upsides: the best way to play FF7 for returning players with a brain. Battles are more strategic and engaging, managing your party it's the same, and every little choice outside of that (e.g shopping, hidden items & side content) also has more relevance.

This is my favorite way to play ff7. I'm on my second play-through now and it makes the game challenging but not impossible. You pretty much have to grind between bosses even if you use the same 3 characters. If it's too hard or you think it's still easy you can adjust the atb settings. One day I'd like to go on active mode at a quick speed and also try a Cloud only run. I've played the other psx hack Platinum but I prefer this one. Getting into minor spoilers... there's a noticeable difficulty curve at the wall monster boss which requires a lot of grinding. There's another spike on Jenova Death which is the hardest boss in the game at that time. Its red light attack now causes instant death. The only technical issue I've faced so far is after yuffie stole my materia, I still had fire and lightning materia remaining. I'm not sure exactly why. Great hack and I recommend it. It's on beta 16 but it might as well be completed.