FF6 ROTDS 1.3.1 review

Yeah, I've actually been thinking for a while that 1.0 Zuriel is pretty great superboss material, and the fight is better suited to being attempted more easily without going through three tiers first, in order to figure it out. The battle is difficult, but beating him requires a lot of strategy and really no luck.

I don't dislike playing battles where I need to figure out the right combination of party members or setup to win. To me it's like playing a puzzle game more than an RPG though, as puzzle games have one (although occasionally several) solutions that you have to think hard to figure out whereas most good RPGs are generally expected to allow players to play through with their own playstyle. I can understand why it would turn many people off when they're playing an FF6 hack and expecting an RPG. But I happen to enjoy both.

From what I can understand Zuriel 1.0 difficulty could fit an optional superboss, a bit like FFXII Yiamzat (dunno if I spell this right) or FF7 Ruby Weapon. I don't especially like difficulty hacks, but an important thing to keep in mind is that if a boss is so hard that you absolutely need a special combinaison of equipment (not saying one or two mandatory pieces but a special full set for each char) and characters (a mandatory party of 4 defined char when in fact you have the choice of 14) then there is a problem. Even a difficulty hack should allow flexibility to beat most mandatory bosses with different parties and equipment sets with no abusive grinding. If those criteria are met, I can't complain.

Here i believe a golden rule of many RPG was broken: final boss must never be the strongest, there should always exist an optional superboss instead... i must say that it would be cool to put that fight as an optional one.

I'd almost be interested in seeing how Nattak himself would play, if you gave him your save before Zuriel's Tower (presumably with everybody unequipped and everything), and he were to record/livestream (not sure if his livestreams have been working, but I have gotten e-mail notifications about him streaming from Twitch) himself attempting to beat the tower without grinding excessively or watching what you did (excluding AlphaOmega, skip him ). Obviously he doesn't have to take me up on that, it's just an idle thought.

my save is still there... if he wants it, not such a great save, anyway...

The issue with Quicksilvers against 1.0 Zuriel is that the fight lasts maybe an hour. That's a lot of spread for maybe 6 Quicksilvers, assuming that you spent two on AlphaOmega and two elsewhere. It also doesn't help with the issue about needing Arc/Flammie. He does Nuke + Meteor back to back (spread across two turns though) at one point, and even if you are using Reraise, his Nuke hits everybody for 9999, killing them. Even the animation for the Reraise activating takes enough time for him to get another turn, meaning he will use a 9999 Meteor before you can even act, and your team is dead. Quicksilver does nothing to prevent this (admittedly, I'm not sure if that's what you were implying). I'm not sure how feasible it is to kill him before he does that, even with Quicksilvers.

First of all i'd need to know how much HP he has(i assumed he had something like 600K HP but that assumption is really based on nothing) if they were 600K then 6 x 2 omnislash V5 x 40K damage(i don't know if 8x attack is better after a certain point) would be 480K + all what you did meanwhile assuming Oboro tanks properly.
I doubt that it would happen before he does the deadly combo at least once(unless killing an HP bar resets his AI routine)
Clearly i wasn't saying that Cloud can replace Eiko or Arc, but i'm saying that a nerf closer to 1.0 than 1.3 would still had supported quite well from the fact you can use Quicksilvers if you have some trouble, one example of nerf closer to 1.0 was removing one of the 3 moves from his deadly combo, lowering his speed of some(not too much) point and magic in order to not do AoE 9999 unblockable damage, but 6000-8000 instead.

"Harder than the original FF6, but not so hard that it makes you want to quit"

the classic statement so vague to mean nothing(no offence, Gi Nattak) since from vanilla to make you rage quit is the same distance between the Earth and the Moon

Anyway that defeats the whole purpose of a review like that, since the game is hard but it was intended to be less hard, it's difficult to figure that out if it's not clearly stated from the creator (especially if the game tells another story)

While that does mean they shouldn't listen to every noob who comes along, as you said, it also means they shouldn't listen to every hardcore challenge seeker who wants a difficult game.

Since the game started with an hard release(and it was appearently intended to be in that way), while noobs asked for a radical change, i was trying to protect the origins of the hack, that's all.

i was trying to protect the origins of the hack, that's all.

Oh mighty Crusader of hardtypes hacks, may the army you lead never let an hard hack fall into the category of "medium difficulty" and please protect our non-stopping-veterans players from the noobs hordes, that only seek to lower hardtype mods difficulty. My prayers go with your, the journey will be long but I'm sure good will ein over evil.

may the army you lead

kinda like a one man army

The best i can do for that is finishing my hack, which, beyond all expectations, won't be the ultra hard game you already painted in your mind(i don't really know how to define "that")

Stop! Epic time!

It's not about noobs wanting a change. It's about normal players, having played every console ff to date I would hardly call myself a noob. Also needing quicksilver's to win that battle at all is stupid, sorry it is! They are rare and hard to come by I believe I had just one in that final battle 1.3, trying to protect origins of something you never played yourself is stupid 2.

Speaking as some1 who spoke to gi several times on difficulty and such he was never satisfied with it balance wise and as lockirby says often played with god mode, which i dunno if you realise this gives you higher stats then you are able achieve via normal playthrough. While i agree with you this isn't ideal, mike had many things to regarding new events and such where if one line of script/code/whatever is fucked the game crashes. so i can understand why he would do this, after all he had playtesters to report on this however many just played the game and gave no constructive feedback

you say that this version is 2 easy but on several pms and such from external sites iv had people asking me what to do how to win etc and i'm sure mike gets flooded with many each week. you are one person! things got changed because the majority (ie more than one person) said it was too hard.

You did raise some valid points and i'm not denying that zuriel could probably stand to be a TOUCH harder but no more.. you say this hack was marketed as harder well i would also count having to find new npc locations, fighting new bosses/enemies with different skills as harder or in his own words increased GAME difficulty.. notice how it dosnt say harder bosses but GAME.

The point you raised about raditz is a fair one and i agree, but in my opinion you can't think raditz doesn't fit and adventure time does at least some explanation (albeit crappy) is given for raditz belive me im on your sidefor this i went through each esper and tried to make them more relevant to ff as a whole for instance.

I find it really unfair that you judge this hack purely on how hard it is in all honesty, everything else you barely touched upon, i know bnw had no new graphics so that missed that section altogether on your review for that. Surely that should have got a 0 for that.. just sayian . Don't worry about protecting the origins of something you had nothing to do with (ie the old version) i know you fixed many bugs in the new and I and many other praise you for it! but you have to understand that you are not an average player and FYI a good reviewer goes into detail about both the negatives and positives of a hack and gives in detail a list of ways it can be improved, it seems to me you just give your opinion and if it's not what you like its wrong.. i think we had a similar thing from you in regards to the portrait changes, of which you just stated you didn't like (no reason given). Thanks for your input tho theres my 2 cents on the matter

and if i was mike what i would do is send you an editable version and let you modify it in regards to difficulty and see how many people could beat your version.. i bet it would be just you and a select few others.
sorry if you find me condescending here it's not my intention i have a habit of pissing people off cause i don't pull my punches in regards to ignorance. If lockirby says its too hard its too damn hard lol, i wouldnt call a few nerfs and it is just a few a radical change.

@James This pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. Although I tried to give constructive feedback while beta testing, back then most of my feedback had the same issue that Tenka's feedback does now; I wasn't looking at it from the average player's perspective, and I was praising bosses like Zuriel for that reason instead of suggesting improvements. So although I was attempting to give constructive feedback it wasn't helping much.

As for the testing, I agree that God mode has its uses, especially in such a long hack to test, when many bugs have nothing to do with the battles. But no tests without God mode from 1.0 through 1.2 seems a little too far.

agreed. balls have been dropped in many regions in regards to that but you see my point at least in regards to small f**k ups that need to be run through to be detected , i dont think he played it till 1.3 so maybe there's your explanation of intended difficulty right there. yeah you are both definitely what i would call advanced players id like to think i'm above average and i really struggled on previous versions. You are one of those that gave good useful feedback dude! being an advanced player who knows the battle system inside and out is very helpful as is having one that plays blind imo so dont say its your fault you know there were plenty of testers with a variety of skill that played it the prob was the people that found it too hard either gave up or didn't make their voices heard until much later on.. i think the true balance would be between the difficulty of players like yourself and players like me and madsiur. balancing is a very hard thing to get right even official games in ff get it wrong sometimes, i think the true spirit of final fantasy is it takes you to a world in which your fantasy becomes reality this includes however the player themselves chooses to play! be it like tenaka a glutton for punishment type player, the normal playthrough on the weekends guy or a guy like me that loves to grind up levels and turn shit to dust, things can be hard, maybe giving out less of those quick items could be a good start and switching up some of the moves he uses but making shit impossible only caters to one type of player and makes the audience for such a thing smaller.

But no tests without God mode from 1.0 through 1.2 seems a little too far.

He probably have beaten bosses with a "regular" set up, but it's easy to tell yourself "I'll tweak a bit these two spell, the monsters stats and tweak a bit his AI". Next thing you know, things can get a lot more difficult and I'm sure he wasn't beating the boss everytime he did a little tweak.

What Mike mentionned me is that he had not done a complete normal playthough up to 1.2/1.3, and it's during a full playthrough that you can see if items drops are too low on some portion of game or if a said part is too long without any healing option (inn, cure npc, shop). God mode only gives you the illusion everything is going smoothly.

Yours:

It's not about noobs wanting a change. It's about normal players, having played every console ff to date I would hardly call myself a noob

My OP:

...listen literally all what newbies/average player want

It was Lockirby2 to say that i said he heard only noobs... i dunno what stopped me from correct his sentence.

Also needing quicksilver's to win that battle at all is stupid, sorry it is!

Never said that making their use necessary for victory, then difficulty is justified... i say that when someone is trouble, then Quicksilver might be the trump card he's searching for(like it might be a Megalixir in another situation) despite good player might not even have need of them, what i wanna underline is that you find item to use them! If you have to stop from using Quicksilvers even in endgame because it's cheap and everything then why do they exist? reasoning in that way they are the same of 10 empty chests/loots

trying to protect origins of something you never played yourself is stupid 2

that might potentially be my greatest regret, my bro won't stop taunting me for having played worse versions than ROTDS 1.0 (please don't judge him, he cares a lot more about gameplay than music and graphics and i can understand him somehow, he beat Zuriel 1.0 with avg level 60-65 and had to change equips just one time before figuring out how to beat him)
Said that i think i'm gonna do an extra segment beyond the end in which i'll challenge Zuriel 1.1(i asked Gi Nattak for 1.0 but appearently he gave me something that i'm not able to describe... was that a demo perhaps?) with my 1.3.1 endgame save to atonish my sins of not having played 1.0... if i can beat him that should be enough to prove i could do the whole game without too much troubles... it's just that i don't have enough time to do another whole ROTDS run, sorry.

you say that this version is 2 easy but on several pms and such from external sites iv had people asking me what to do how to win etc and i'm sure mike gets flooded with many each week.

I'm not saying that this version is too easy: i'm saying that Zuriel IS too easy! except few bosses like Proton, anyone remembers to having heard from me saying that the whole game is easy??? i apreciated most of the bosses of the game, i even congratulated myself with Gi Nattak about Souleater boss fight(the one in Avalon's dream) for being the battle which i hated the most...
Theorically 3 Statues are nerfed a lot but i let it slide somehow, it's the endgame battle that is really easy(1-3 tiers in particular) and Zuriel that is more or less at the same level of the statues(in terms of difficulty curve that's wrong both in an hard and an average hack)

you are one person! things got changed because the majority (ie more then one person) said it was too hard.

And i really must say that the sentence of the quote above represents a lot why once upon a time we had our good oldschool games and now we have AAA mainstream games with outstanding graphic, "accessible" to everybody and everything.
NOTE: that doesn't mean that ROTDS sucks like AAA games! i'm saying that the sentence you used is the one that have been abused most from software houses in those last 10 years and brought in videogames worldwide scenario horrible games "accessible" to everybody, i suggest you to not use it because it's a really dangerous one...

but in my opinion you can't think raditz fits and adventure time doesn't

wait, what are you talking about? is said Raditz DOESN'T fit, not the opposite! Adventure Time is enjoyable because they are just there and don't forcefully try to insert themselves inside the main plot, Raditz does that but in a wrong way, so it's somehow unpleasant his presence... i mean if you don't do it it's ok; if you do it and you fit inside the main plot is even more ok; if you do that but you don't fit then it's not ok.

i find it really unfair that you judge this hack purely on how hard it is in all honesty

Huh?!?

1) Sprites: 9.5/10
2) Songs: 9.9/10
3) Innovation factor: 8/10
4) Balancement: 7/10

OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10
The game is not ruined...

No, seriously, what are you talking about??? the lack of difficulty in the endgame and few others impacted for merely 2 points on one of the 4 scores(0.9 was what was necessary to nerf properly in 1.0 in order to score a perfect value... please notice that most of the times the max will be 9.9 instead of 10) those 2 points are divided by 4 so the lack of difficulty in certain battles impacted no more that 0.5 points of the final score: since i gave 8.5 vote to version 1.3, then in 1.0 would mean 9.0 vote... but that's not true because there's a significant gap both in terms of "Sound" and "Sprites"(maybe even "Innovation factor") compared to the current updates, which means that actually if i'd make a separate review for v1.0 you might be surprised in seeing that the "OVERALL SCORE" of v1.0 would be something like 8.0/10 which means that 1.3 version is overall better than version 1.0
Guys, don't misunderstand me: you all made an excellent work and version 1.3 is better than version 1.0 in general.
The only field in which 1.0 beats 1.3 is balancement(the review is based on the assumption it should be hard, please don't reiterate this point) nothing else...

PS. assuming that with current updates(until 1.3) you'd used 1.0 monsters instead and correct them with what i defined "proper nerf", then "balancement" score would have become 9.9 and the "OVERALL SCORE" would have become 9.2/10 FYI.

I mainly focus on the difficulty basically because i don't want to make another thread to discuss about it, i don't focus on the rest because there's not really much to explain: you made a great job in the other fields and that's all.

- In graphics there might be room for further improvement(after all in 1.4 you made some new sprite, right?) but how to do that it's vague, depends on you;
- Sound is almost perfect... there's no room for improvement, even if you add extra songs that won't increase the score, it will still be nice for the player, anyway;
- Innovation Factor is about the changes you made in general compared to vanilla and how they fit in the game, most of the gap is due to the fact you actually didn't added a total new feature(except guest allies and their item, which i already mentioned)... something that might improve this score could be extra new maps after Madsiur will release the ultimate expand tool... or a new feature which i can't imagine right now(for example BNW implemented that new Esper CP(not sure if it was CP) points assignment system... i believe i understood what is it, still i have to see that with my eyes, but it wont happen until 2.0 ... about BC, well it's not a innovation: it's a revolution! no surprise he has 9.9 to that score... rather than having innovations his game itself IS an innovation )

i know bnw had no new graphics so that missed that section altogether on your review for that. Surely that should have got a 0 for that

here it fits perfectly a sentence i like a lot:

If you pay attention to all the reviews i made around the site you'll notice that not all the 4 scores match among different reviews(some of the scores will be the same but not all 4 scores at the same time) you can't judge BNW for music and graphics so i'd place something instead, mostly some aspect that have been touched in that game in particular(which i don't wanna define right now and probably not even later) btw i actually never made a review for BNW it's not like there was something i wanted to discuss about to be honest, it's just good, not impressive, but good... end.
Anyway just to let it know, BNW statues and final battle are WAY more difficult than ROTDS 1.3 and that was one of the things that annoyed me a bit(my party was more or less in the same situation of ROTDS one, so no excuse) they say all the time and everywhere that the game is harder than vanilla, but just challenging and so i'd evaluate balancement from that point of view since the beginning, to be honest balancement is their best work, damage formulas in particular, hence i'd give them 9.9/10 on that score or maybe 9.5/10 because i actually feel like they don't even realize that maybe the difficult of the hack is more than challenging(maybe in 1.0 was just challenging, that would explain why my bro hates BNW) when i played 1.5.2 my impression was that the game after a certain point got a sudden boost and became quite hard, more that what can be defined just "challenging", but that's another story.
PS. they did with players's complaints the exactly opposite than what Gi Nattak did: bounce them(it shouldn't be me to say that... but even too much, to the point of totally ignore them) despite that it's the most notorius FF6 hack in the web... maybe you should get(just a little) a slice of that attitude toward complaint floods!

i think we had a similar thing from you in regards to the portrait changes, of which you just stated you didn't like (no reason given)

Actually that was my bro reaction; after paying a better attention i must say that Tifa wasn't that bad, the only one which was lame was Aurora's portrait which had a really dark neck and that wasn't good(i don't remember which version was)
On a side note even my bro changed mind later(sorry if i didn't update that statement, but according to how good they are in 1.3 version i might assume that i pushed you to do a even better work, so it's fine in this way )

and if i was mike what i would do is send you an editable version and let you modify it in regards to difficulty and see how many people could beat your version.. i bet it would be just you and a select few others.

There's no need of that: i know how to manually unlock the game on my own
i'd love to do that(ROTT: Return Of The Tenkarider ) maybe one day... if only i'd even have time to do my CotG hack at least... i have problems in making progress with it...

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EDIT:

despite that it's the most notorius hack in the web

-> it's the most notorious FF6 hack in the web... rofl XD

still have to read posts after the one of JamesWhite, i posted it while you were adding other posts and then i went to have dinner

I knew that you said noobs/average players, I left it at noobs in my own statement to be concise because I felt it didn't affect the point of my comment.

Yes, Quicksilvers may be a trump card, but no boss fight should be made to be difficult with the expectation that the player can use Quicksilvers to offset the difficulty, because it's entirely possible that the player has no Quicksilvers left for the fight.

Easy games can be enjoyable as well, you know. Half my name is taken from Kirby, and if we exclude certain modes like The True Arena Kirby games are all pretty darn easy.

The score that you gave the hack wasn't something that made it feel like you were only judging the hack on its difficulty. It was the amount of time the review spent focusing on it. It doesn't matter why the focus is spent on it; if 3/4 of the stuff you write is about the difficulty, it gives the impression that was most of what you rated the hack on, regardless of the scores. Even if that impression is false, you can't expect people to see it that way.