RotDS Review Thread

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.