Brandon cops to this but uh . . . pretty underwhelming answers about ROM hacks.
I’ve mentioned it before but as my avatar change attests I’m doing another run of Final Fantasy 6 T-Edition lately. Here are just some of its features:
- Altered character sprites to better match Amano’s concept art. Due to SFC palette limitations and the 20~ party members this is more complex for this game than it seems, especially because . . .
- Brand new achievement system, which unlocks four additional costumes for each character. Costumes change their stats and/or play-styles: turning a physical attacker into a magic oriented character, for example.
- Every character and ability is rebalanced, necessitating not just changing values but reprogramming much of the game. For example, Gau learns just by being in battle, no Leap, anywhere in the world, and the dozens of useless or redundant Rages were changed to be worthwhile. Little-used abilities like Runic / Morph / Dance / Sketch have optional brand new replacements to bring those characters to par.
- While it’s not primarily a difficulty hack, every monster (and hundreds of new ones) has been redone to a level of challenge where you have to think about what you’re doing; even most random encounters pose a threat if you only hold down Attack. Bosses are tricky and ask you to actually use the wide array of tools the game gives you.
- But if you reach end-game and you want the hard mode bragging rights, you can take your powerhouse party into a long brand new gauntlet of ultra hard, puzzle-like fan-service bosses paying homage to Final Fantasy / Square Soft’s entire ouevre.
- Speaking of, 170+ new music tracks from other Square games (or unreleased Uematsu compositions), even ones post-dating SFC, lovingly recreated, with hacked support for playback that exceeds the SFC’s audio RAM limitations.
- Modern-like QoL features such as being able to set favorite items in the hundred-page lists of equipment, toggle dashing (without Sprint Shoes) on / off freely, expands damage limits past 9999, etc..
- Fixes all the original game’s bugs.
- 50+ brand new side quests, the majority (and the complex ones) in the World of Ruin, really fleshing out that half of the game as an open world-like JRPG.
- Recreates and expands on the GBA added content, and adds several brand new whole dungeons / areas on top of it.
And way more.
This hack is— right now, today— feature complete and fully playable in English. The only caveat is the translation is lua-based and so initial setup is complicated and it only runs in one specific emulator. Clyde Mandelin is working on a pure .SFC hack he hopes to release this year— however, other than being able to play it on hardware, the lua setup will remain in some ways the best, even surpassing the Japanese original, because:
- You can do text overlays in high-res fonts simply not possible on the SFC, enabling things like detailed in-game descriptions of what abilities do, full-length names, and so on.
- MSU-1 support
This is not even the only total overhaul of FF6. And T-Edition came out around five years ago. Don’t be mislead to think that stuff like Bloody Sonic is . . . especially indicative of where the scene is at, today