FAQs

I had some questions;

How often do you play your own hack since you released it?
What was the most unexpected challenge you had while creating your hack?
Do you find that some bosses or scripted enemies too easy because you innately know the strategy intended to defeat them?
What, if any, are the more surprising complaints about your hack?
Is there any Easter Eggs people have left unnoticed? Like a secret boss or item.
What's your favorite team compilation for your hack?

Yay, questions!

1) Since releasing the initial version over a year ago, I have been playing it quite a lot still mainly due to the fact that I've never stopped working on it, so constant testing and playing is being done on my part. With the release of 1.4.3 a while back, I played through pretty much the whole thing legit, with no max-stats and items like I usually do for testing, and I created save states along the way for accurate play. I fire up the ROM quite often and just to touch up and polish various things I notice, bug hunting or just to go through certain parts or whatever if I'm feeling it. But I don't play it start to finish since that 1.4.3.

2) Good question! Let's see, an unexpected challenge... Well, I'd have to jokingly say when Angelo stopped working on the hack due to real life stuff like work, because there was a bunch of loose event work left to work on and fix up, and I wasn't all that good with events at all back then, as he was anyway. So this forced me to pick it up and learn how to event edit on his level.

3) As the creator of the hack and having inside knowledge about how they work? Yes, certainly to some extent. Some of the bosses I've heard that are really difficult for some, having such intel on when and what to look out for or use can make short work of them without much trouble. Like the Lava Demon boss, or the flying Skulls after the Magitek Factory, the Soul Eater, and many more. Although, I'd like to think they are challenging even with prior knowledge coming in with a strategy, especially after the last and next release where more work was thrown into most boss scripts.

4) Haha. Well one is always that it's too hard in an unfair cheap way with some of the tougher bosses. I'd say another is that the regular maps remain unchanged while the overworlds are different, which I can understand more as wishful thinking. Some of the characters still seem like their old counterparts at times... I think I'll stop there! Those aren't exactly very surprising, though... I'll say a surprising one that I've heard, is that the "stolen" music isn't as fitting or good as the original soundtrack, which is surprising to me because of course it's not as good as the original but who the hell cares since it's a hack and my intent was to change it all. I'm sure there's something better but that's all that's coming to mind.

5) No, I think there isn't anything too cryptic or secretly hid in an attempt to keep it hidden that hasn't been found or known of. I thought about doing something like that though before.

6) My favorite team once everyone of them are obtainable, would be: Arc, Avalon, Otis, FuSoYa. Although it's very hard to choose. Eiko is great to have, as is Aurora, or Golbez. I usually just choose my favorite characters instead of the strongest possible team in RPGs. So I'd probably have Oboro there a lot too. I like to change up my party a lot and spread the love out.

7) OK so I just realized that 'team compilation' means something totally different that what I momentarily thought it to be, before answering, so I'll let that stay and answer here now that my favorite team effort done to this hack...it's tough, I really liked working along with Lockirby to get his overworld maps up and running and doing the mini-map to match it, that was a lot of fun and felt great to get that mammoth endeavor completed. I also enjoyed of course thinking out in great detail some of the events, working on them with Angelo. Brainstorming tons of ideas with Poco Loco lol...talking over the phone with him and Lord Envoy planning out some custom bosses that we all had a hand in creating. Then semi-recently planning out map objects and monster sprites & espers with James, although that was all him spriting them up of course, but still a fun team effort nonetheless for sure. A possible future favorite team effort would be working with Jackimus to create a whole new Opera Scene, where he would be doing an original piece (with lyrics) of epic proportions and I going to town on a matching event.

So to sum up that, I'd have to consider all these favorites and it's impossible to choose... So I'll say it was working with Edrin and William Kage briefly to get William Kage's songs into Children of Vector! That was pretty epic.