Final Fantasy VI: Hope Eternal and Love Everlasting

[Marketa Lazarova]

Hello! I've posted here a few times over the many many years, mostly seeking help for a long gestating project of mine - and that project is very close to being complete! This is a labor of love, on my part but also on the part of a few personal friends, that began with the ROM hack known as Final Fantasy VI: Once Again, my very first project, released 14 years ago. It didn't take long after completion of that, that I realized I was deeply unsatisfied with the thing I put out, so I tweaked it, and tweaked it, and tweaked it until I realized that this was no mere "version 1.1" of Once Again I was working on – it was something else. It kept getting more and more ambitious, as I considered what could be done, what I could do, and what I should do, until very recently, when I realized that whatever I had been making all these years,I had completed it.

So, what is Hope Eternal and Love Everlasting? Well...it's a lot.

• A challenge! Though it starts off relatively 'normal', as more and more options open up to you through the course of the game, new difficulties arise to be overcome, until the final stages where you'll find no mercy. You may find yourself using spells and skills you had never thought of before, just to find a way to overcome your enemy - and if you're crafty enough, you can thrive and make sport of foes who ravaged you before. There are even three new monster-in-a-box enemies, and one re-located.
  
• A whole mess of surprises! Though the game retains the same basic shape of Final Fantasy VI - there's little if any change to the maps, for instance – almost everything else is a little different, or even a lot different. The enemy roster is changed up, with new enemies replacing old enemies (and sometimes, just new enemies), new items in treasure chests (never again do you have to worry about not opening chests, in hopes of them being refilled later with new items – they refill no matter what!), new and refurbished weapons and armor, a retooled magic system, and other surprises await. This, I think, is the true heart of Hope Eternal and Love Everlasting: everything is familiar but nothing is the same.
  
• A visual feast! Final Fantasy VI has always been a beautiful game, with some of the best pixel art of its era, or any other. In this hack, however, the colors (and sometimes the pixels themselves) are thoroughly tweaked, given a far more vivid and saturated color palette, inspired by Final Fantasy IV and (especially) V – sometimes you'll find a Kefka in red, or a Gau with green hair, or a yellow chocobo, or a truly blazingly red fire. At the very least, your eyeballs will constantly find new things to experience.
  
• Completely rewritten! HoaLE contains a brand new script, nearly 50% larger than the original Super Nintendo translation from Ted Woolsey. Notes on the translation from Clyde Mandelin/Tomato and Kwhazit served as a great inspiration for this reimagination of every character, playable or no, and the story itself, which remains nevertheless faithful to the meat and spirit of Final Fantasy VI – it was always, in all its incarnations, a game with both a serious story and a ton of humor. Gags, witticisms, shenanigans, Scottish accents and more await...without (I hope!) ever betraying the high drama and stakes of the game as originally beloved.
  
• Convenient! A lot of issues that were bothersome or underwhelming in the original, are addressed here. Shadow no longer leaves the party after battles. Chests that require you to wait to open them, in order to unlock new goodies, are no longer a thing – they'll always refill with new goodies, so open away! Evasion and M. Block (now called Spirit) are no longer confused, and function as intended. Odin and Raiden are now separate Espers. Learning magic spells, while still requiring a little effort, don't require too much grinding and Espers, enemies and items are designed to ease (if not eliminate) the need to grind. Damage and healing exceeds 9,999 HP. Almost every item or magic spell in the game has some use. Umaro, Dance, Slot, Gil Toss and Rage are beefed up and tweaked to be more useful. The auction has rare items, and the treasures buried in the Cave to the Sealed Gate are VERY worth seeking out. Vigor is now factored in to various attacks such as the Bum Rush. The game gives you five minutes, not four, to talk to the soldiers in the Imperial capitol (handy if you actually want to read what people are saying!).
  

A few things, however, that it is not.

• A complete remake or radical transformation of the game. This is still Final Fantasy VI! Maps are relatively untouched, magic and the battle system remains largely familiar despite the many changes, there is very little editting of the events in the game (anything cinematic remains the same, no new cut scenes), the story progresses as it was before with the same characters, motivations, narrative beats, etc. The goal is to be familiar, even nostalgic, but also a breath of fresh air.
  
• A kaizo hack. While this is a romhack that stresses difficulty and challenge, and can be fairly mean, it is not meant to one-up any other hack in the challenge department or test the limits of human capability. It's perfectly feasible to beat the game around level 50, for instance – in fact, EXP requirements for level ups get increasingly greater after level 50. By that point, you should have every tool you need to win – although you can put in the effort and make it a little easier on yourself. And at any point before, the difference between struggling with an enemy and running rings around them might just be a matter of the right gear or skill.
  
• Loaded with bonus dungeons, post-game content and super bosses. The point of this game is to defeat the final boss - Kefka is the ultimate challenge. There are no new dungeons, no secret ultimate final fights, no Dragon's Den. Just 400,000 or so HP of purple, winged muscle, sitting atop that tower.
  

On the morning of September 30, 2025, I will have signed off on the completed product (barring any unforeseen disasters) and will submit it to ROMhacking.net for final release. The remaining two weeks will be spent testing and fine tuning the game to ensure completion, compiling a readme, and even a mini-guide. Until then, I'll sprinkle about bits and bobs of info, and of course answer questions.

A little sample image collage...