Note: This review is based on RotDS 1.3
By Tenkarider, Noverber 13th, 2015 Source

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…)

1) Sprites: 9.5/10

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;

2) Songs: 9.9/10

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!

3) Innovation factor: 8/10

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.

4) Balancement: 7/10

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:

• 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:
  • 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.
  • not too much different from 1.0, maybe just parameters? They ask for morespeed, anyway;
  • 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:

• 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)
• 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 tospend right here… maybe 2 for making sure to beat Alpha Omega 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…

OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10

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!