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Where to start?

For anyone considering this hack, I will say up front that I believe the Airship is not configured correctly. After searching for five to six hours, I gave up. Out of curiosity, I downloaded FFHackster and found the Airship in an area I already explored. I right-clicked on it and the Raise Airship option was NOT selected. After checking this off, I could access the Airship. Until this is fixed by the author, the hack cannot be finished.

I wish that were all though. I could not find where to use the Lute or find the Oasis. I did not bother checking with Hackster. It's possible these these weren't configured properly either.. not sure.

There are also many other glitches and bugs that plague this hack. In several areas, after exiting a battle, the menu or the formation menu, the game kind of "hangs" for literally 15-20 seconds until you see your character and can move again. Imagine how annoying this is in a dungeon when you're getting poisoned, needing to heal and doing battles.

The list goes on. There are other strange things like an enemy encounter on the west coast with.. nothing.. and when you select it in combat, the game locks up. On top of everything, the dialogue contains so many spelling and grammar errors that it's painful.

I did have some fun playing though and there is much to like about this hack. I read pianophile's review and was intrigued, since I like a good challenge.

I agree that the overworld is sweet, I like the Dragon Warrior tiles and the progression of the game is cool. You have to run back and forth across the land to explore. The North castle indeed is bugged with the exit. Not sure if it's intentional or not. You can also access a dungeon by exiting and entering the top two tiles of the castle. There IS an Inn in the castle, so you can save and reset the game in order to appear outside again.

I don't mind the price of the shops at all. And truly, some enemies seem a little overpowered at the beginning though. You might have to restart until you get a couple Gloks, Zombies if you have Dia and eventually you can snipe Bio Worms for a fat stack of cash. Once you level up a bit, things are much easier. There is also a "hidden" weapon for the mage which helps out quite a bit early on.

The story seems cool and there is some humorous dialogue also. Save state is definitely unneeded, but you have to be patient in the beginning and make smart use of Tents. The difficulty and prices I had no problems with. In fact, I like that it is this way. The beginning is tough, but oh well. It's an RPG.. you have to slowly make progress.

Anyway, this is longer than expected.

I had a lot of fun with 7th King, but it needs a bit of work. Check the Airship, and possibly the Oasis and Lute mountain. For goodness sake, have someone proofread and test the hack too.

I agree with pianophile's review: it's really a shame, because it looks like a lot of work into it. I'd be interested in starting a new quest for 7th King if the author creates an updated release.

Thanks for the fun game, all things considered.

• Update:

I spoke to the author through youtube and he mentioned that this 1.0 is, of course, the original version and that he created a completely revamped new 7th King hack. His channel is Heroes of Xanadu - Sloth, if anyone is interested in the newest edition. Seems he just left this version on RHDN to collect dust.

From the moment I started playing the rom my first impression was that it wasn't changed as much graphically. Despite different names for the classes, Assassin would still be Red Mage, etc.

I picked out a team that I usually chose to test the relative difficulty curve of most FF hacks which was Assassin, Thief, White Mage, and Warlock. As the title screen faded and the world map was shown on screen I was genuinely surprised and excited about the changes on screen. The Town was different and all the surroundings were different as well.

The landscape was more similar to Dragon Warrior with all the impassable mountains. The location of the temple of the fiends also reminded me of the Dragonlord's castle in that very same game.

I proceeded to town and noticed that most of the gear were highly priced. I wouldn't be able to afford everything but at the very least I could be fully equipped. With a little grinding I suppose that it would be okay and that I would be able to purchase spells from the shops later.

The town was actually reminiscent of the set-up of Leifen and it there was a mash up of different NPCs in it with new messages who couldn't really convey to me what I needed to do at that point.

I went out to grind and check out the battle scenes. This is where I felt the hack had gone downhill. I:ve played with a lot of FF hacks before. I've played with difficult hacks and bore with it, but the level of difficulty in this hack is more appropriately impossible.

Imagine the typical first battle where I might face 9 zombies; 2 worms; 2 knightmares and 2 evil, etc. At first I thought it was just an intimidation factor but it wasn't. Some of these enemies can hit for over 120 dmg to your what? 35HP characters. Some of these enemies have hit-alls that deal 85 damage per character.

I even tried a starter team composed of 2 fighters and 2 assassins to no avail. I was persistent and tried different combinations and settled to forego all initial equipment and settle for spells.

Now this route worked a bit since enemies could die with a single casting of FLAR. However this was still primarily dependent on luck because the enemies should be relatively few and not the set-up with 9 zombies.

One character managed to reach level 5-6 in this way. I explored the map a bit and came across the castle north. I proceeded to talk with the Dragon King was tasked me with killing Cyrus. Who Cyrus was I have no idea. A game breaking bug manifested itself when I tried to leave the castle. Apparently the exit grass is probably set to warp one level and not exit. Therefore If I had previously gone to the 2nd floor of the castle and tried to exit I would always go back to the second floor. I know that this might be fixed via hackster, but it's really a terrible start for the hack.

I loaded from an earlier save state and ran all the way to the dragon castle where I encountered Cyrus who used "Anvil" on my party. Anvil produced an average of 800 damage to my party.

I reloaded and ran as far I could to the other side of the map. I couldn't see any other towns and ended up dying to higher level enemies.

More or less this left a really bad impression on me. This hack combines some really bad elements of traditional RPGs: endless grinding AT the VERY START; Inability to explore anywhere else unless you grind; And imbalanced - dependent on black magic users (Assassin and Warlock) to ensure that you have a viable party. It truly felt ridiculous at some point because my level 5 character only had access to level one spells despite being able to cast level two. Not that it mattered because there was no cash to be spared.

If you want to make a difficulty hack please make it less dependent on save state abuse. The cost of the inn should not be 100. The cost of reviving should also be cheaper.

It's a shame really because I did fell that there was a trememdous load of effort poured into this hack.

My suggestions for a possible patch which I hope the author would take into consideration:

1. Make starting characters HP higher. I think from 150-200HP and compensate for higher HP base by decreasing definitive HP gains in their level ups. I think this would address the imbalance of magic and might users in the early game.

2. Make the INN and Clinic cost less.

3. There are still several script booboos in the rom (wrong grammar, etc.)