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RotDS Review Thread - Gi Nattak - 05-19-2016
Please leave any reviews here about this hack, thanks!
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Gi Nattak - 05-19-2016
Tenkarider's review:
Now that i finished ROTDS it's time to review the hack:
FF6 ROTDS version 1.3/1.3.1:
Pros:
- A whole swap of stunning new songs;
- A whole swap of well made sprites, both for map and battle;
- Improved difficulty, now it's challenging, yet not at the point to be annoying;
- Added new quests/events and effects, etc.
- Latest versions inproved some of the aspects above.
______________________________
Cons:
- it was intended to be a difficult hack... but some stuff have been nerfed way more than necessary in the latest releases;
________________________
Now let's write some number, here's the subjects of score:
- Sprites (how much they have been changed and how much good they are)
- Songs (how much they have been changed and how much good they are)
- Innovation factor (new features, is it a new kind of product, all over the FF6 scenario?)
- Balancement (the game was intended to be an hard hack, unlike BNW, so it will be judged on that...)
[progress=95] 1) Sprites: 9.5/10 [/progress]
Excellent job from JamesWhite, Poco Loco, Lockirby2(world map design) and all the others involved, i saw version 1.0 and stuff completely changed since the first release, now it's definitely better;
[progress=99] 2) Songs: 9.9/10 [/progress]
After all it's Gi Nattak's speciality, isn't it? After fixing the problem about nasty sounds now no one should be able to complain, not to forget Jackimus's help which shows how much he's talented as well, i dunno if someone else helped there but thanks to them too!
[progress=80] 3) Innovation factor: 8/10 [/progress]
well, saying it's a completely new game it's quite an overrated statement, rather than new stuff i'd talk about improved stuff(on a sharp sight it's easy to notice that most of times stuff have been just edited, like formation and item drops/positions rather than implemented new ones).
I liked some plot twist and how events have been moved like the big intro before Narshe(Fraust) assault; Guests and their summon items are a nice touch.
This and many other extra stuff together definitely brings new life to FF6 game, no doubt.
[progress=70]4) Balancement: 7/10 [/progress]
back to version 1.0 i'd said 9/10 instead, while it was necessary to remove some fight in the Lava Demon event(actually i still not get why you have to fight 5 flames after the second battle against the boss: it's just a waste of time and the fact that if a Self-Destruction connects, you risk gameover after all those progresses) and maybe make SLIGHTLY less agressive Zuriel, for example removing one of the 3 deadly spells casted in a row when "the end comes... " speech is triggered: stuff like this was worth to be done.
But your error was to hear too much complaints from newbies/average players and so after 1.1 i don't know what happened but this is what i've seen: (the most relevant examples)
- Staryu & Starmie battle after the minions were dead it became a piece o' cake,
Metal Gear wasn't even a match for me, and so we discussed about that in the
forum on possible ways to make a good solution for everybody, there might be
other battles like this that i don't remember, but those 2 were the most relevant;
- Appearently statues were way more stronger before, now... well, Ark pwns
Zeromus; evade tank pwns ExDeath; Dark Cloud is just weak;
- The final fight, the infamous nerf... starting from tiers 1-3:
1) in 1.0 he can Seize with arms, Stone, Zombie, deal more significant melee
damage, earth stuff(as far you have float everything is ok)
now he can do... more or less the same stuff but damage is quite low now and
speed as well, i believe that even Seize is done much less frequently.
2) not too much different from 1.0, maybe just parameters? They ask for more
speed, anyway;
3) in 1.0 Sephiroth tosses you any Limit and Omnislash V5 is deadly, Meteor is
deadly, the special is istant kill(this one even in vanilla) Jenova mainly heals;
now? nothing... the most relevant thing he did was meteor and guess the
damage? 1100, about Sephiroth only its name is left, nothing else. even
special attack doesn't istant kill. The few limits i saw were used rarely.
The problem is that even his vanilla version is stronger than ROTDS 1.3
version, i'm not joking here, trust me.
And then Zuriel... i started playing with the memory of people complaining in
all forums about Zuriel's leggendary strenght which kicked ass to all FF6
community, and that was awesome, like urban legends and shit... checking
how he fights in 1.0 i can confirm it as well, he's quite the final boss.
Now in 1.3 he barely stands a match with last bosses, actually Atma IS
definitely stronger than him, and is a slowpoke since i was able to cure from
his most powerful spells without even have to worry about a second
action, i'm not hesitating in saying that Kefka in Brave New World(version
1.5.2) was way more dangerous, i don't have any doubt about it, there's no
comparison actually... the cases are 2:
a) all what they say about BNW with time is became a bullshit, as far as
we're talking about version 1.5.2, they keep to say that it's not hard, it's
just challenging and harder than vanilla... maybe it started in
this way(my bro complained about the lack of challenge back to that
time) but then he became really strong and even if i'm not a newbie i
had troubles with him, despite i won at the first attempt...
And so ROTDS with nerf is became less hard than BNW, which is quite
fun because in this case they swapped their position, talking about
difficulty; (and BNW claimed to not be hard)
b) BNW is still a challenging hack, but after nerf ROTDS is became easier
than BNW, that would mean that ROTDS failed to be an hard hack...
Only one of those 2 options is true, or maybe both... which one do you like most?
Anyway that doesn't apply everywhere and both in WoB and WoR there are
hard battles, even if dragons and similars can be easily beaten with melee tank
+ guard their element(i don't know if you're fine with that)
PS. the game provides the player ~10 Quicksilver that you might want to
spend right here... maybe 2 for making sure to beat AlphaOmega in the
bossrush, then with 2 other Quicksilver you can easily avoid(in version 1.0) the
risk of being defeated from Sephiroth and finally you have 6-10 Quicksilver to
use against Zuriel if you really don't want to rely only on Eiko and Ark power to
win...
[progress=85] OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10 [/progress]
The game is not ruined, but you made the most terrible error: listen literally all what newbies/average player want, everybody will always complain about everything, no matter how much perfect is your work, so the only thing you can
do is doing what YOU want, not what the others want... it's your game and the greatest success is making the game that YOU always desired to play, almost 1 entire point was ruined from breaking the difficulty balance toward an
easier one(which is different from adjust the flaws of the original balance);
Aside that, all what you need to get closer to 10 score is improving the game, maybe when Madsiur will be able to allow rom hackers to expand the map and monsters you'll be able to add new stuff... it's quite obvious that your ideas were
tied up from game's limits... Shenron Castle almost shouted something like: "sorry guys, i'd really want to let you explore even inside the castle, but unused room inside the game are ended and so i can only allow you to go outside the
castle..."
Obviusly bugs don't impact at all on the score: you fixed them in the past and you'll do it in the future, so what's the matter?
You and all the guys who helped in this hack made a great job, congratulations! World has need of games like this, not AAA shit(perhaps in another world AAA games would mean THIS, not "that")
I don't know how difficulty have been balanced in 1.4 but i hope you'll balance better the difficulty in 1.4 or later versions, because the last battle in particular loses the "hard game" title and i just used a party formed mostly with
characters with level under 50 and the 4 guys who fought Zuriel weren't even the planned party.
In any case this game is definitely designed for all RPG gamers(or who still have to discover their beauty) which means that you, i mean right you who are reading this line in this instant, if you're reading this it can only mean that you're inside game's ideal target, so go and play it!
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Kugawattan - 05-19-2016
Alright, I got past through the World of Balance, and since this thing is way harder than I can phantom and may not possibly end the hack because a roadblock is likely, but also because I'm in the mood, I want to review this thing. I'm no expert reviewer or anything, so this will be more like a "honest thoughts". I'm going to divide my review in different sections. By the way, *SPOILERS* like, no duh, you're in a review thread.
Graphics:
With the great work of jameswhite89 and several other great spriters it's no wonder this hack excels in the graphic department. The background changes were also pretty neat, like the squared table and the new grandfather clocks here and there, the new treasure chests etc. The Reel's new icons were also pretty great.
As far as new 'graphics' for the spells, there are only about one or two spells which I think could be improved. Volcano comes to mind. Seems excessively long, specially compared with fellow Blizzard and specially Nova. The transition from the fireballs to the flare wave is somewhat sloppy as well. Also, I think the bolt scroll animation is reused a slight bit too much. Nova, Ultima, Havoc, Bolt Scroll itself... it is a good animation so I can understand, but...yeah xD
Everything is superb on the sprite department, so I think I'm gonna go to the things I didn't like to fasten it up:
Professor Oak's sprite. There's...something about it that it gets my eye. I think it's the squared shoulder in the view side. Or maybe the straight lines in the jacket. Or maybe the hair. It's not bad by any means but I think it could be improved. The redrawn original sprites (Guard, Soldier etc), now those aren't even slightly bad, but since the originals exist and those where made by professionals (getting paid to boot), the new sprites feel uh... strange.
That's about it, which goes to show how great this hack is in the graphics department. We spriters just are amazing.
Sound:
I'm amazed that this could be achieved in a SNES game. The whole new soundtrack is bliss to my ears and it gets even more awesome when I recognize a theme (Proto Man's whistle anyone?) I think I say everything when I stood three minutes with my jaw open, listening to an awesome rendition of Future Fuckballs 2010. Great job.
Story/Character changes:
Hoo boy. I accidentally went back to that godawful gbatemp website once more. Don't f**k**g listen to these hobos, the changes here are great.
Now if you remember my QnA post where I was being overwhelmingly heartless...I still KIND of stand on my word. A few of the characters do indeed still seem like and sometimes utter the same exact lines a previous character says. Aurora was saved later with the Leo romance, (though she seemed rather...inactive when Leo dies), Ronan, well, "you'd think just a minor thing like the Apocalypse was gonna kill me off?". Cloud is still talkative somewhat, but I think the worst offender is Serin. The others are passable but I think Serin is basically a reskinned Edgar. Uses the equivalent of tools as well as a similar equip repertoire. He is a king, he is a ladies' man, how he wins over the Glow City maid? EXACT same like Edgar.
FuSoYa and Golbez are great. They behave like you'd expect from FFIV (except that one "You know how to use Meteor right?" joke) and definitely don't feel like Strago or Gogo at all. Eiko too, though the small shades of Relm leftover are circumvented due to the obvious resemblance between Relm and Eiko on their respective games.
About NPC characters and bosses, Oak is...really out of place. I know you have addressed this, but it's so strange. For starters, he's working with the bad guys. Seriously? Oak a bad guy? He doesn't even act like a bad guy. And I know Cid isn't a bad guy either, but...he's not, um, happily announcing his experiments to obviously evil Kefka and stuff, you know what I mean?
Raditz was okay, but he also felt weird, mostly because everything else (well, there's the Dragon Ball item, also Galick Gun) is devoid of Dragon Ball. Majin Buu is also there. Surprisingly, he looked less of a threat than SSJ Raditz an hour later. Dunno, I guess it isn't really that bad, but...yeh.
As far as the story goes, it is pretty much FFVI. You are made aware of a Dark Sorcerer...in the intro. You get more backstory regarding Biggs and Wedge, Aurora and etc. but only when you get to FuSoYa does the game START feeling like there's something different going on. Then the wham line "Kefka is Zuriel reincarnate!" and I'm already feeling it. So pumped to play through the WoR. However, the gap between the intro and FuSoYa is big. Quite big. I must have questioned myself "where the hell is this Dark Sorcerer guy anyway?" many times during my playthrough.
The whole ordeal before the end of the world is confusing, to me at least. How does Zemus appear if the Zeromus' statue is behind him, making both existing in the same plane of existence? Zeromus is the "spirit and hatred of Zemus, reborn after his death.". Is this a paradox? (And I know we talked it over Discord, but I wanted others to know :P).
A simple stab was all it took for Zuriel to overcome Kefka's body? There isn't...even a transition. What I mean is that he falls down, gets back up and Kefka is long gone and it's all about Zuriel. Somewhat abrupt, to me at least Even with just a few <D> on his first dialogue box could have made the scene a bit more potent, I think. What about the Emperor? He gets killed easily as well in the home game, but there was a buildup for that. The new Emperor kinda insults Zuriel to no end for no reason, and I thought that would trigger the battle event, but instead Golbez comes out of nowhere and slays him. In one hit btw. He is still there laying down but he never gets up. The main villain for 1/3 of the game is gone like a breeze. I found it a bit out of place too.
Overall however, I 100% approve of these kind of changes made in the hack and, as my hack is called Crossover Crisis I'm glad they work well. Probably means my hack won't be a letdown.
Gameplay changes:
Alright, time for the cream of the crop!
First of all, my very first impression after having a taste of the first boss was...the early game enemies have a FOUNTAIN of HP. In vanilla, most small enemies could be taken out in one hit. Easy, yes, but here they almost take 3 to 4 hits. Usually two or more Blitz/SwdTech were required to slay even the tiniest of the bad guys. The early bosses went on forever! Later it's not as bad because you have raise, cura, more variety of attacks and elements so it doesn't get boring, but doing twenty or thirty times Ice Beam Ice Beam Revitalizer Ice Beam Ice Beam ad infinitum got old really quick. Nevertheless, I pushed on.
Inverse and Miracle were really great. It was just fun to look at these even if they didn't turn out that powerful. Cloud's Limits were really faithful to FFVII and the animations were amazing too, so was Tifa's Reels. I kept calling Ronan's Galick Gun "Garlick Gun" so it got me laughing for the early game. Now, Havoc is awesome. It forced me a new style of gameplay of timing Avalon's healing and using it, causing devastating damage. The early game gets covered by the status effects and later the ability to pierce an enemy's defenses. (Fack u Kefka battle at the sealed bridge!!). Nice animation and satisfying sound effect to boot. Summon is faithful, but I noticed that if you select it, there's no second cursor that appears whose enemies is it going to hit, or if you want to cancel it. I found that to be a little annoying but nothing big enough. You did a great job at giving the player new toys to play with. I salute you!
I have played many Final Fantasy games. I (strongest Chronodia defeated), II (Deumion defeated...it was really easy anyway), III, IV (Zeromus EG, Branchoraidos), IV After Years (Omega and Shinryu defeated. Not Giant of Babil thing because I didn't have the patience to train three teams of five), V (Enuo, Neo Shinryu and company defeated), VI (Kaiser and Omega Weapon), X, XII.
I think I can consider myself GOOD at Final Fantasy...yet RotDS kicked my ass. A lot. The first few bosses were endurance battles. Ultros (Opera) and Ifrit/Shiva were a nightmare (I had to overlevel to stand a chance). The random encounters, specially at Mt. Kolts, the Phantom Train and the Floating Continent were way too strong and inflicted too many status effects. The latter bosses were either a great experience, annoying (Lava Demon cough), or they'd suddenly do anything to kill you and make you waste your time (Omega Wep used Quake! Omega Wep used Revenge! Omega Wep used Revenge!).
Now, I'm not saying they're badly designed, at all. I think they just have too much health which gives them ample opportunity to be annoying and throw their attacks at you before you're given a chance to kill them first.
Unlike a platformer, which ramping up the difficulty is understandable as it's basically up to the player's skills, making a hard RPG (specially without being advertised as a "DUDE REALLY HARD HACK ONLY FOR PROS!") can be off putting to people who is looking for a new experience with FFVI. Well, let me not generalize. It was almost off putting for me.
This hack gets a 9/10 from me. About 70% of that 1 point less is the hard difficulty. The other 30%? Outside of a few sprites I didn't like, characters looking too much like the originals but being advertised as different and other minor things, I will have to say the overabundance of "Cutscene Battles."
They somehow don't feel right to me. You can't control anything that happens, so there doesn't seem too much of a point on those. However, once in a while isn't bad, but then you get Aeris battling a group of grunts THREE times (I think, my memory is a bit rusty though), Zuriel battling the THREE statues with no breaks in-between (Zeromus in my battle killed Zuriel five times, making it even longer, enduring the Auto-Life animation and all), The intro fight against Kefka and his cohorts (wasn't auto, but I don't think the outcome would have changed anything)... why so many? What's the point of them? Couldn't it just be done in overworld cutscenes?
And then there are the battles that SHOULD be cutscene battles and are real. Like the pitifully easy Golbez + FuSoYa vs Zuriel part 1, or the one in the FuSoYa flashback.
Again, it's nothing TERRIBLE or off-putting, but I felt like it could do without and make the action faster and more fluent.
EDIT: Something else I wanted to point out of the game that I didn't like. There seems to be a small dissonance between how powerful enemies look like and how powerful they actually are. My best example is the Tiamat near Jericho in the WoB. What does she look like? A big frickin' multi-headed dragon. She's called Tiamat, let's talk about her. Tiamat on almost every game is the queen of dragons, the most powerful of the four fiends and almost always a late-game boss. Yet she is...a random encounter in the first half of the game where Roundworms and Devilkins possess way more of a threat as she does. I'll also mention she's the fiend of wind, but she's weak to her own element apparently. Another one I adressed and was corrected was Morphed Gilgamesh as a surprise encounter in the first FIFTH of the game! Damn! He at least is now in regular form, which is much more reasonable for early game. Not many more examples come to mind which suggest it is not a continous problem, but I'd probably try to do something about it.
DAMN I talked a lot didn't I? 11000+ words! Jesus, I'm gonna go get a good night's sleep. Thanks for reading, have a good f**k**g night.
Feel free to call me an as*h**e for missing every point of the game :D
RE: RotDS Review Thread - JWhiteLXXXIX - 05-19-2016
A stark contrast to tenkas view, probably more in line with my own experience and view. thanks for taking the time.
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Kugawattan - 06-04-2016
Alright! Despite all odds, I managed to pull through and finish this wonderful hack. I'll give my thoughts on the world of ruin as well as my final thoughts.
My Tifa was underleveled, and I expected the worst of the early WoR. Fortunately, I managed to pull through just enough to get my overleveled Ronan. You gotta be a little creative with the way you kill off the enemies in the collapsing house (I summoned Leviathan).
I was a little disappointed with the lack of "new things" of the WoR. What I mean is that with the exception of Fusoya and Arc, you do the same thing to save the respective characters. I'm not sure what could be done to make you look for new things (that aren't bosses), but I'm sure you can come up with something ;) The added dungeons and sidequests like the Spellbound castle for example were however a nice touch, though.
Seems like the early WoR was a hair easier than the rest of the hack: this isn't a bad thing mind you, I really liked the difficulty I was getting into, but it quickly changes with Dullahan, which hits like a truck and uses Doom almost every turn, which can quickly result in a total party kill. At this point you don't have access to arise or reraise.
This brings me to another point...Curaga is actually easier to get than Arise, strangely, and you can only get Curaga until you either get Cloud (which you would need eight characters to have a chance) or beat JCE3000GT, which is somewhat ahead of you when you get the Falcon. My first instinct upon getting the Falcon was find Fusoya for no other reason than the fact he had Curaga. Bosses are so brutal you're pretty much begging for curaga the whole time.
Then you go to the dinosaur forest to train, and that Jabberwocky as*h**e shows up more often and can cast Meteor, Ultima, and Beam Out, on top of having stupid defenses. Grinding is a must for most people and this guy will make grinding even more of a chore than it actually is.
What really makes me pull my hair are the bosses that spam Zombie. It is such a rare stat you won't likely use the relics that give protection to zombie (which are few and in-between) and instead the other cool stuff, so when a zombie guy arrives, you're fucked! Zombie is probably the worst stat, since it's an instant kill that you can't restore to full life with arise, and you have to go to the effort to use a karma jolt to heal the patient, almost always followed by arise because nobody survives for more than one turn with 2 hp lol, it also means you have to waste your Dualcaster's turn or wait for another teammate's turn. Ugh!
All three Zombie spam bosses are annoying. Kraid's Metroids almost always use Amoeba. If you try to blast all of them quickly, Kraid uses Shadow Flare and annihilates your party. If you survived, his next turn makes him cast quake. Uh oh.
That zombie piece of shit in the spellbound castle, oh god. Counters with zombie (that does damage, so even with zombie protection you have to watch out) and casts Cloudy Heaven, more than once too.
Doomkaiser was the worst offender, because you gotta kill him by depleting the MP, with him periodically using his osmose attack to make things even worse. Counters Rasp with Flood which does way more damage than it should.
Some spells I feel like they cost such a brutal amount of mp that only with a Void Stone or Celestriad are they worth using. Most of the time you can achieve the power of Ultima without having to cast it (Otis lord and savior, Beat Rush, Omnislash/V5, Ninja Star, Attacking with the Zodiac Sword, Guillotine Flash, etc) and I can understand Ultima because it's almost always a total enemy kill, but things like Meteor and Flare which are around 100 mp? Whoa m8!
The 1/4 Celestriad works, but as I mentioned earlier the highly costing spells still will make you use an elixir/osmose for long fights. I guess this was the intended effect, but I dunno. Considering it was nerfed it could at least have been multiple, easily accessible copies.
The Divine Gift was nerfed to the point of being useless though. The chance of three or four attacks is so low that you can achieve a higher dps with a slayer glove or a dwarf bracer. The divine gift doesn't make attacks always hit either, which is also a reason against it.
Meteo is WAYYyyy to OP. When it's cast against your party, due to the ignore split damage you'll have to be lucky to at least have one party member left alive. Thankfully, only strong bosses use it so you're already prepared with Reraise, but alas. It's sufficiently good when used on your part if only used against one guy, due enemies having godzilla-sized magic evade, though it can destroy multi-target battles (Basically everyone in the Statue of the Gods). Making it a hair stronger then not ignoring split damage would make this perfect imo.
Another thing I want to mention. It seems that a good deal of monsters have weird elemental immunities. For example, the Ironclad was immune against lightning. Why? Another whole lot of monsters have auto reflect, making tier 3 spells be even more useless than they are. I feel like the only offensive magic worth using late game is Ultima. Maybe Flare too, but since so many enemies have so many immunities, you tend to ignore about these.
And on the topic of spells, I'm not a fan about them not being 100% accurate against most enemies. I can perfectly understand with most abilities, but magic requires mp, and it's not fun at all to see it miss so often. It is not annoying to the point of making you lose a battle, but it could cost you more damage per battle.
And lastly, the ending. Not much was changed, but the added bits that fit the character were fun to watch (Reaper :D). Guile's theme does go with anything after all. I noticed that it still says things like "Avalon as Cyan Garamonde". Was this intentional, as if to say "this character replaced x" or...?
Overall, the hack was really good, even if the story felt slightly like vanilla. Some bosses were brutal, others not so much (probably because of Otis MVP), I had a lot of fun seeing the new events, the new spell animations, the new magicite, etc. A few things were annoying, but it pisses players just enough to make them want to continue. It showcases nicely what can you do with a hack, and it has been despite all factors a really enjoyable experience I won't forget.
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Lockirby2 - 06-05-2016
I don't think the zombie bosses are too big a deal. Even if Zombie Relics are not something that you'd normally have on because the Zombie status is scarce, I think that it's fair to expect you to re-equip your characters appropriately for boss fight once you know they have Zombie. The only downside is that you don't have any warning beforehand that these bosses will have Zombie inflicting attacks, but I don't feel like "boss fights should be winnable on the first try" is one of ROTDS's design philosophies anyhow.
I think the Divine Gift shouldn't cut damage in half anymore, so it should always be better than the other Relics, unless you don't like the loss of targeting. IIRC, the Divine Gift allows you to attack twice at worst, so you will do 100% extra damage at worst. The Slayer Glove is a flat 25% increase in damage. The Dwarf Bracer boosts the lousy Vigour stat, and is generally worse than the Slayer Glove (it might be better for really high values of Vigour though). If you actively tested the Relics side-by-side and noticed the Divine Gift being the weaker option, maybe the damage with the Divine Gift is being cut in half again? Which would mean there's a bug, or Nattak decided to change it back and I didn't notice.
Congrats on beating the hack!
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Kugawattan - 06-05-2016
Maybe you're right, I just felt that you should lose a fight not because you forgot (more like you had no chance to know) a relic, but rather genuine difficulty. I don't think backtracking is fun here or in any game though. And I know you can still win against zombie spam with a good strategy I presume, but to the average Joe like me those things might be a bit out of reach.
Ha, loss of targeting, well there's another flaw just to have a very small chance of x1.5 or x2, nevermind that stuff like added effects (something that casts Flare for example) are lost, not without Slayer Glove (which you can use two weapons that increase stats to get, I dunno, 14 extra vigor for example), or the Dwarf Bracer which also increases defense and I believe it also increases the damage of the added magic? I'd need to check on that one. For a relic that you can only get once and it's after an optional boss fight (wasn't too hard though) I kinda expected it to be better.
Heh, thanks.
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Tenkarider - 06-05-2016
The only one zombie spammer that i really hated was Golgotha, which REALLY spammed too much bad statuses! ;[
RE: RotDS Review Thread - Lockirby2 - 06-05-2016
Well, my thoughts are that most fights in the game will be lost on the first attempt because you haven't worked out what else the boss has or a decent strategy anyways, so in most cases it doesn't seem like you will lose *just* because of Zombie, but the "genuine difficulty" as well. It's debatable whether you think that's a good way to design the game or not, though. It will appeal to some and not to others. The upside is that the player will likely make equipment choices that relate specifically to the battle they are fighting, while you can't really make great equipment choices for a boss fight if you are flying blind. With that in mind, the genuine difficulty here comes from having to decide what other Relics to sacrifice for the Zombie protection, and who can get away without it. That being said, I prefer this style of boss when it is right next to a save point anyways, so that retrying is easy and the backtracking part can be avoided.
RE: RotDS Review Thread - retrogamer87 - 07-03-2024
Final Fantasy 6 Return of the Dark Sorceror Mod Review
FF6 ROTDS is an incredibly in-depth and expansive FF6 mod that is over a decade in the making and is an absolute must play for any fan of FF6. For those concerned about the game being too different from the original, the story of ROTDS remains very true to the original but with a list of 14 new characters, some of whom you may recognize from other FF titles, some unique to this journey, that join you on your quest to defeat Zuriel the Dark Sorcerer. There is so much to talk about with regards to this mod it is easier to break it down into sections to discuss.
Events / Cutscenes:
The event work accomplished in this mod is beyond anything I have ever seen in any mod I have ever played ever...period. You will be treated right at the start of the game with a skippable opening cinematic that will introduce the iconic Kefka and several characters you will meet on your journey and set the tone of this maniacal mod right from the get-go. It's a truly awe-inspiring work and it will give you just a taste of the amazing event work this game offers.
Events will show off much more backstory for the main character Aurora (Terra's analog in this game) that delve much deeper and give more history to her control under General Gesthahl then you'll get in the original, as well as her relationship with General Leo which was only hinted at in the original FF6. Once you get to "Sabin's Sidequest" part of the journey, you know with the Phanton Train? Yes...get ready, this section of the game is filled with so much more lore, backstory and beauty than I could describe in words, and I don't wish to spoil it for you. You will be in absolute awe at the work done for this section, sit back and enjoy it and dont skip a thing!
Music
You will notice an assortment of rearranged songs many classic games and other rpgs springled through this mod and you can also listen to them through an NPC later if you like. The song selection is astounding.
Characters, Spells and Abilities:
As I may have hinted at earlier, most of the new characters are closely linked to their FF6 counterpart, but several of the new ones (especially those introduced in "Sabin's sidequest" ) have unique backstories, and Oboro, the stand in for Shadow is a deeper and more complex narrative to the original. As for new spells and skills, Cloud's Limit skill remains very faithful to Cyan's original Bushido, but much improved with different and more powerful abilities and remaining equally faithful to Cloud's limits in Final Fantasy 6. Avalon, a brand-new character to this mod employs a unique skilled called Havoc which is one of the more creative, well balanced and fun to use skills added to a FF6 I have seen yet. Mr. Grimm actually a 15th secret character who can join your team, he is most colorful new addition to this mod and is bursting with personality and has some really interesting abilities.
Spells are awesome in this game, with new animations and spell times and now there is evena spell that RIVALs Ultima!
Secrets, Unlockables and new content:
There are many fun and exciting easter eggs and cool secrets in this game, some are easy to figure out, others can be a little cryptic. To make sure you don't miss anything I can recommend at least loosely following the strategy guide here https://www.rotds.com/guide.html
The Colloiseum is now available in the WOB, and there are entirely new dungeons in the WOR and even new towns that were not present in the original with new equipment, relics, weapons and upgrades to enjoy.
Spritework
Characters have all custom portraits and sprite work, and everything in battle looks smooth and seemless with the new monster and character sprites. Most new enemy sprites look rather excellent, and the new Boss sprites are absolutely gorgeous
Miscellaneous:
Explore every nook and granny of town for hidden items and surprise characters from other lore and media. Even Angry Video Game Nerd makes an appearance in this Mod!
Also, included with this mod are a TON of additional and optional patches you can apply. I'd recommend the Experience / Gold mod which will double experience and gold and half encounter rate to make for less grindy and for most, a more enjoyable experience as well the Automatic Run and hold A to advance dialogue. You can even remove the ESPER RESTRICTION on characters if you want your characters to learn all spells and espers, though I find that the restriction helps make characters unique. You can even Unrig Tifa's slots if you'd like to try to use her SLot abilities with more consistency.
The game comes in 4 difficulty levels and a New Game Plus+. I played the game on the Easiest difficulty, which was Harder than Vanilla, but completely fair and doable for a FF6 fan, it wasn't frustrating especially once your equipment is fully decked out by the end game. On New Game +, You will retain all your Spells, abilities and items, but Levels will be reset. I highly recommend doing the Hardest Difficulty (Insane) on New Game Plus to retain a fun challenge on a second playthrough and experimenting with other cosmetic mods to see alternate sprites on your characters!
Overall, ROTDS is an astounding mod with an incredible amount of new content, filled with love not just for FF6 but video games in general, and is fun and wild adventure and a novel way to enjoy FF6 another time. You do not want to pass up playing this glorious achievement