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In terms of non-gameplay content, this game makes three significant changes. It adds a unique sprite for every enemy, it adds loads of new battle music, and it adds General Leo to the story. All of these things were executed pretty well IMO.

Although I don't mind palette swaps, I think the new sprites add some new flavour to the game. There's a bit of art clash, but that's to be expected from a hack IMO; drawing hundreds of monsters from scratch is a big ask. New battle music is always appreciated since you spend so much time fighting battles that having a single track can get a bit repetitive. The changes that incorporate Leo into the party are well-written by my standards. The story changes are little more than the minimum to make Leo work, but that's all the hack really needs IMO.

The main gameplay difference is that the cast is divided into mages and fighters, with Strago and Gau being somewhere in the middle. While damage-dealers have lost their magical options, the mages have lost some of their offensive potential to balance it out. The mages have to worry about MP more in the midgame, and can't hit the numbers that the fighters do in the endgame, but they have access to most of the healing and support options. The decisions you make with your mages tend to be the ones that swing fights in your favour, while the fighters typically don't have much going on other than holding A.

Overall, it has a lot of the flavour of playing vanilla with a Natural Magic ruleset, but is a little more challenging. Enemies hit a bit harder, and you need to get a bit creative with your healing options.

Early in the game, the bosses feel mostly unchanged, except for their physical attacks being slightly stronger. If you've played a Natural Magic game before and know the vanilla bosses well, you'll probably find yourself retreading old ground here. But if you haven't, you're in for a fun experience. The random encounters have been changed significantly, and they'll keep you on your toes until about the mid-WoR. You need to do some experimenting to figure the randoms out, but once you do, you're not likely to die deep into the dungeon. For randoms, I think this strikes an ideal balance. As you move further into the game, this actually flips on its head a bit. Bosses are changed up a bit more, but you have the tools to mow through the randoms more easily.

The difficulty curve is excellent until the mid-WoR, and then I feel like things go off the rails a bit:

• The difficulty craters in the mid-WoR once you have access to reliable healing from Cure 3
• On average, the difficulty returns to form in Kefka's Tower, but there are random difficulty spikes all over the place. Red Giants are much stronger than the surrounding randoms, and arguably stronger than some of the bosses (unless I missed a status vulnerability). The Skull Dragon's replacement is much stronger than the other regular bosses, and Atlas is much stronger that the other Elusive Beasts on the same tier.
• If you've been leveling organically until this point, the difficulty craters again for the Level 70+ Elusive Beasts.

In terms of character balance, it looks like this game aims to make every character useful at some point rather than trying to make every character equally useful at every point. For example, Sabin is great when Aurabolt is useful, right after you learn Bum Rush, and during the early parts of the WoR when Mantra is one of your only healing options. Generally speaking, I think the mages get better as the game goes on and they gain access to more of their toolkit... at least until you gain powerful postgame equipment that already has the buffs that you'd use the mages to apply. I don't think this approach makes the game very replayable since you don't really want to switch up your approach to any given dungeon with too much, but it works well for a single playthrough.

I want to give a shout-out to how this hack implements Gau. Gau is designed both so that rarer and more powerful monsters give better Rages, and so that Gau constantly gets better Rages as the game goes on. IMO, this combination makes Gau feel very intuitive to play while also giving constant dopamine as you get cool new Rages to play with. On top of that, you don't need to worry about missing Rages (they'd usually get outdated eventually) and only need to keep a few Rages in mind at any time, so it doesn't get overwhelming to keep track of them all. There also aren't as many complete duds as in most hacks. This might be my favourite implementation of Gau in any hack, which is saying something since I normally give Brave New World the top marks in basically everything (BNW's Gau is fun too though :P ).

I should also talk about Leo. Shock is a helpful button to click in randoms, but it (wisely) isn't made spammable. Instead, Leo is intended to be used primarily with the Fight command, and given some unique tools to make this work. He isn't particularly reliable damage-wise for most of the game since some enemies will no-sell him with high defense, so I often prefer using somebody else for raw offense. He's also a useful tank, but he's a bit passive when using a tank setup. His healing isn't great, but healing is scarce in general in this hack, so you take what you can get here. Leo does take off in the postgame when Fight becomes useful. All this is to say that Leo isn't one of the best characters (until the postgame), but having all these different modes makes him fun to play and gives him some unique niches. This was a welcome surprise to me; I was expecting the exact opposite if I'm being honest. :P

I can't say I entirely enjoyed how the Elusive Beasts were implemented, though some of my issues are definitely personal preference rather than a "problem". First off, I prefer to be able to easily challenge bosses over and over again rather than having to reset over and over to track them down again. I also don't really like needing to fight them over and over to pray for the rare drops if I want to use the cool new gear. That said, I can understand others enjoying this aspect, so I can look past it.

However, I don't really like being forced to grind to a minimum level to take the bosses on. The issue is that if players were under your expected level, the difficulty of the level 70+ beasts drops dramatically, but if player were over that level, the difficulty spikes. It's also just really tedious to grind this many levels. I wish there was an alternate trigger to spawn the higher level beasts, like fighting a difficult "gateway" boss to prove that you're strong enough to fight the stronger beasts. Though I understand that would be more difficult from a technical perspective than your current approach.

My other issue with the 70+ beasts is that it feels like there isn't quite enough variety with the fights. In terms of theming and gimmicks, they're okay, but they don't really play differently from a gameplay perspective. If you have a way to heal the party to full HP in a single turn and you don't queue attacks recklessly whenever somebody's ATB is full, they'll never do anything that throws a wrench into your plans. I think part of the issue is that the player's equipment leaves them wanting for nothing in the postgame. Since the player isn't making any meaningful choices there (except maybe whether to use Pugs or not), one of the only levers you have to control the difficulty is making mutli-target non-elemental piercing damage more frequent or more powerful. But if the player can reliably heal regardless of the damage dealt, this is ultimately just theatre.

To summarize, here are some indicators you might want to try this hack:

• You want to experience the new content with Leo
• You want to see all the cool new monster sprites and music
• You've always been interested in playing a Natural Magic game, but don't enjoy enforcing restrictions on yourself
• You enjoy the thrill of finding rare bosses and items
• You love becoming unstoppable and crushing even the strongest monsters.
• You want to play a version of vanilla that is a step up in terms of difficulty, but not unfair or insurmountable
• You want to play a better balanced version of vanilla, but still want it to feel like vanilla and not stray too far outside that comfort zone

Here are some indicators that you may be less interested in this hack:

• You don't like content like music or sprites being pulled from a variety of other games
• You're mostly interested in the superbosses, but don't want to do the grinding to fight them
• You're looking for a difficulty hack
• You've already played a Natural Magic game and aren't interested in repeating the experience

Final Fantasy 6 is one of the first games I played seriously and actually finished. I remember fondly sharing my save with a friend and we'd pass it back and forth as we progressed together. The sounds, the visuals, the world, everything was wonderful.

However, as time passes, things tend to lose their sheen, and things I thought were cool and funny about the game decades before now appear to me as gigantic flaws as they rear their ugly heads. Chiefly, the Esper System. I believe its mission statement in the minds of the developers was giving the player the power to create the characters they wanted to create, but the fact of the matter is that everything devolved into a magic heavy party that could literally do anything and had stats all over the place without rhyme or reason because besides magic Espers gave stat boosts.

A Soldier's Contingency (ASC, henceforth) turns these misguided mechanics on their heads by leaving magic where it belongs: with natural mages. Stats are gained naturally by everyone now, shaping them into their defined roles and emphasizing smart use of unique commands by non-mages (much like Final Fantasy 4), while removing some of the most damning aspects of vanilla FF6, Esper micromanagement, and the need to keep levels low to get the most out of Esper given stat boosts later.

Other irritating aspects of the game like Gau's Rages and Mog's Dances were strongly streamlined in such a way that these characters are actually worth using instead of simply agonizing over (Gau can learn Rages by winning battles, no need to leap into monster groups, and Rages are alphabetically sorted and tracked, and Mog's Dances can't fail).

Sprites and portraits were redone for the most part and look superior to the originals, in my opinion, and other FF tunes make an appearance for that sprinkle for fan service.

While not strictly a difficulty hack, there is a noticeable increase in difficulty that I don't necessarily enjoy, as monsters do quite a bit of damage and have expanded combat scripts. This difficulty nudge is especially apparent during sequences with a reduced party count, creating a tangible sense of unfairness.

While I hope the author will tone down the difficulty curve more in future versions of the patch, or at least substantially modify specific segments to be less tedious, the pros for outweigh the cons, and I truly believe this is how the game should have been released.

I gave up on this one about halfway through the World of Ruin. I just couldn't justify the grind anymore. Enemies are stingy with gil and exp so you're leveling slowly, buying items slowly, getting gear slowly. You're learning magic slowly because you only have a few people using magic and you have to keep Fenrir equipped so much just to survive routine battles. Vanilla FF6 was not a very difficult game so a difficulty patch is a good idea in theory, and should open up new strategies. But how do you strategize for one-hit KOs that bypass Safety Bit, enemies that routinely hit for more than 50% of your max HP and move faster than your team does, enemies that are dishing out statuses but are immune to most of them, every single flying enemy hitting your party with Cyclonic to reduce you to 5% HP, but the best healing items/magic you have access to until late are Potions and Cure1? The new strategies we're using are "just keep grinding more levels" or "use Fenrir and Golem in every battle", or "grind gil so you can pay 12000 for a Ninja Star to throw at enemies". No, thank you.

I will end by saying a couple things that I did like about this hack, as far as I made it: All the new enemies and enemy sprites were great. The music variety was nice and helped things not get repetitive or boring. Leo was integrated into the story quite well and was nicely-written, and I liked Gogo's replacement. Several bits of dialog were improved as well, and I appreciated the effect that had on the story.

There were some very interesting ideas here, but overall I feel like this hack just isn't for me.

Final Fantasy VI: A Soldier's Contingency is the perfect gift for those willing to put in the time. It has a stunning amount of battle music variety, countless beautifully illustrated new enemies, beautiful new playable character sprites, great new endgame equipment (for EVERYONE), as well as many QoL improvements and other fun new surprises.

Gameplay is rebalanced to make every character unique but also viable. While only a very select few playable characters can equip magicite and learn magic, those who cannot are still able to match their strength in their own unique ways.

Those who play straight through to the end will find the game challenging but not overly frustrating. Those who are willing to put in the time will also be rewarded with amazing new weapons and armor, and many will have a hard time putting it down.

As far as Final Fantasy VI hacks go, this is at the top of my list and I've played a lot of them. This hack also has the distinct honor of being the RPG I've put the most hours into of any RPG I've played in my entire life, way more than even T-Edition. Please feel encouraged to explore the included guide to learn about enemy drops, Colosseum rewards, and rare encounters.

If you love FFVI and can't get enough, A Soldier's Contingency simply cannot be missed.

I've played a number of FF6 hacks and this one does the best job of making each character unique and useful in combat.

Since not everyone can just learn every magic spell and cheese level up stats from Espers (thankfully), things like Tools, Blitz, Rages, Throw, and Blue magic are emphasized. And, fortunately, those abilities are much improved!

The game is a bit more difficult than vanilla, which was notoriously easy, but not a "difficulty hack" like some others are. Mostly the challenge stems from having to use your parties more narrowly defined roles to overcome challenges rather than simply spamming Ultima or "holding A" with everyone. There are many optional challenges, but they are just that - optional. If you are a completionist and love to side quest, there is plenty of new and interesting stuff to do in the game.

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer who claimed the WoR was "unbalanced" or that you have to "race for the moogle charm." Maybe they were playing a different hack. That's simply not true. There are rare enemies in the WoR who are difficult, but are more like FF12 Hunting Marks to be sought out for rewards. So, yeah. You might be hunting dinosaurs in the forest and stumble across a difficult rare (like, 1/64 chance to encounter) monster. But if you beat it, you will get a unique reward that is worth the trouble.

The documentation/guide that comes with the game is also very helpful, especially since the game has added a lot to the coliseum, and you don't want to miss some of the stuff in there.

This was a really fun hack to play. Easy recommend.

Pros:

• Leo is a mainstay in the story. He's written in well and acts paladin-like, which is what I felt he embodied in the original game.
• Redone sprite models and portraits for each character that are beautifully done.
• Spells are expanded to include some extremely powerful and valuable spells, such as Regenx (regen to the whole party), image, protectega and shellega (even if they're given different names ingame)

Cons:

• World of Ruin Balancing is a massive issue; Random encounters may include enemies with 10,000 HP or around there. Some random encounters are non-escapable. Random encounters on the world map shouldn't cost valuable, rare resources because you got unlucky with two random battles.
• - Further piggybacking on balancing; magic is so broken in the original game that I see the attempt to solve the issue by breaking up party members into mage/melee classifications, but by doing so, all mage-type characters are now the most valuable character in the party while making Melee fighters feel insignificant in their ability to support the party in anyway.
• In the author's write-up, there was an attempt to define each character's class, but it doesn't feel that way especially with level growths. Non-mage class characters can easily have as much MP or Magic stat as the mages, while the mage-class characters all have roughly the same HP as the melee fighters. To solve this, an option is to make Stamina a more valuable core attribute. Melee fighters can have higher stam, are more resistant to damage, and gain more HP.

• With mage-type characters getting exclusive access to Espers, party healing is an extremely difficult problem to solve. Healing spells in general have been nerfed, as a lvl 25 Celes with boosted Magic can only heal a full party for about 400 when random enemies and bosses can outclass that in a round, which circles back to balancing. I often would find myself in a low HP loop with some WoR bosses because they would inflict too much damage to even squeeze an attack in because there wasn't enough healing to survive the next round.

World of Balance? Fun, interesting, and a nice twist. World of Ruin? The game became a race to get the moogle charm to get equipment that made the party hardy enough to just survive fights, but even in those cases, you're still not fairly rewarded for the astronomically more difficult fights.

This is hands down the best hack of FFVI I've ever played. The sprites, the music, the QoL, story changes, pretty much everything about it makes it a new and refreshing experience. Rather than a hack, this feels more like FFVI reimagined.

One of ASC's best points to me is the difficulty. It's harder, but not overly so. Unlike most hard type hacks, at no point will this game ever grief you. As much as it can occasionally punish poor decision making, it rewards good decision making and out of the box thinking without ever feeling unfair or hard to the point of frustration. The difficulty of the AI and enemies scales with level so even if you over level, the enemies never get to the point of being face roll easy and even if at some point they do, they don't stay that way for long.

All characters have been tweaked to be viable and most abilities scale all the way to 99. Even if you set aside a character early on, when you come back to them later at a higher level you'll often be surprised at just how good they are now. The gearing options combined with the diversity of viable party options makes every decision feel impactful. Risk taking is often rewarded.

ASC also boasts a variety of extra bosses that can be challenged and re-challenged at different levels and with different comps which gives the game a longevity I've never seen in FFVI before. You might be surprised to somehow find yourself putting in 100 hours to get everything you can get and do everything that there is to do, the experience is that well put together.

Gameplay aside, what makes this hack truly shine for me is the music, the monsters and the attention to detail when it comes to setting the tone of the experience. It's hard to describe the feeling of recapturing the magic of the very first time but for me at least, this hack did just that.

"A Soldier's Contingency" (ASC) is the newest title among a long list of excellent hacks for VI and does a phenomenal job of continuing the trend of greatness.

ASC uses "General Leo Edition" (GLE) as its base foundation and for those unfamiliar with GLE, this edition keeps most of Vanilla intact, adds a few additions to the story and gameplay but above all, replaces Shadow with General Leo. ASC expands on this edition by adding a host of new features such as new soundtracks from some of your favorite titles; a "natural magic" run (where most characters cannot equip Espers or learn magic); monsters and bosses that scale with your character's levels; loads of new items, equipment, and abilities; some new and fun tweaks that make the hack stand out; and some of the best sprite work ever added to a Final Fantasy VI title.

The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect to see in a hack of this caliber, including some of QoL updates most players of VI expect to see: a faster Bushido charge, Gau being able to leap outside of the Veldt, etc... but make no mistake, this edition ups the challenge to make even the most hardened veterans come up with strategies to win fights where they could previously hold the "A" button. Monsters scaling in power also does a great job of keeping the game challenging, even for those who choose to grind early and/or heavy so at no time you'll feel the game simply is "too easy". For those who love to max levels, ASC will add some fantastic surprises, if you choose to seek them out. ASC also includes many optional bosses and much like "Tsushiy (T) Edition", these fights are not for the faint of heart (though ASC ensures they're more manageable than those found in the later parts of T).

The natural magic component allows for only Terra, Celes, and Relm to learn magic through Espers so no longer can you spam Ultima party-wide for easy wins, and the change to spells (Espers that teach them, MP costs, etc.) make you leverage spells most players never would have previously touched. Because of this, your party design(s) will be far different from any edition you've played in the past. Each character was well balanced so while you'll find yourself using characters that normally would sit on the bench, none of the characters feel underwhelming.

The sprite work is absolutely phenomenal and really adds a depth to the game never before seen – you truly have to see it to believe it. The updated OST is always a fun change and the hope is that an in-game jukebox will be available in future releases.

ASC is the perfect title for anyone who is looking to keep much of VI's core intact, while enjoying aspects of both "Divergent Paths" and "T-Edition" but also play a hack that differs enough from all 3. For anyone who wants to experience VI once more, ASC is the perfect way to revisit this beloved title while getting to fully experience all the new features this hack has to offer.

I feel bad giving this hack a 'no' recommendation. This is one of those instances where I wish that this website had a bit more of a nuanced recommendation feature. The word "no" can be stated in many ways, from outright screaming to something a lot more hesitant and unsure. In this case, my "no" falls into the latter category.

Let's begin with what's good:

1) Battle music. The battle music is varied depending upon where you happen to be when fighting. If you're in a forest, it's one song and if you're on the plains, it's another. Deserts have a different theme as do caves. This is extremely welcome. I had always wondered why video game composers couldn't be bothered to make a few more tracks for battles so that they aren't always the same thing ever single time.

2) Balanced difficulty. This one truly surprised me. You see, for some reason, FF6 appears to be a very difficult game to balance. I say this because despite the numerous mods for this game, it either turns into a hard-type hack or does little to nothing to the difficulty at all. This hack certainly felt more difficult than vanilla, but it wasn't anything substantial. Overall, it was a welcome change.

3) Portrait/sprite changes. The portraits of the characters, as well as their overworld sprites, were altered. For the most part, these alterations were very well done. I think some of them could be debatable as to whether the original was superior, but I felt that they were generally much better. They were clearer in terms of what they were trying to represent and provided more personality.

4) Cyan's bushido. It builds much faster which is so much better than the vanilla. This is exactly the way it should've been to begin with.

Now onto the more mixed/neutral stuff:

5) Dialogue. Much of the dialogue is improved and provided with more clarity, but that only makes the mistakes stand out that much more from the vanilla. For example, Cyan's dialogue has been changed from "thee" and "thou" - which is fine - but when Gau is met for the first time, he begins saying "thou" a bunch from out of nowhere. Up until this point, "thou" is not even said a single time. It doesn't make sense. Shadow's somehow become nicer and more congenial (a change I vehemently disagree with and don't think aligns with the original intent). And things that should've been fixed, like Cyan not really caring that much that his wife and kid and everyone he has ever known are all dead or that Setzer appears out of nowhere and joins with the Returners for no good reason at all, are left intact.

And now the things that bothered me enough that I gave up on playing to the end (hence the "no" recommendation):

6) "Class" gameplay balancing. One of the things that the author of this hack claimed in the readme was that "classes" were "more defined", offering the idea that there were mages, warriors and a mix of both. This was certainly not my experience at all. Instead, I was given characters who could cast spells and characters who could not. Otherwise, they were only differentiated by their unique ability (such as Cyan's Bushido or Celes' Runic), something that is already present in the vanilla version.

This bothered me in particular because I was very hopeful that despite not being able to cast spells anymore, my non-spellcasters would shine. Instead, they just couldn't cast spells. It felt like a nerf rather than any kind of balancing. The equipment could've been used to offer some kind of differentiation but it really wasn't either. My "fighters" - i.e., those without spellcasting - had no bonus stats to offset their deficit. They were just characters who at one time could've cast spells and now they couldn't. It made any grinding or leveling very boring and meaningless, which actually brings me to the next negative point.

7) Leveling. Leveling felt like it didn't matter at all. Barely any changes took place between levels. I expected that the "fighters" would've gained more HP or something over their counterparts, but they didn't. Sabin felt the only exception to this rule (he had a bit more HP, though still nothing that substantial), but if that's the case, was Sabin supposed to be the only "fighter" in the game?

8) Stealing. Locke's ability to steal is pretty cool. Unfortunately, in this hack, it almost never works and thus has no point to being used; that is, until you start getting items that help it along (Thief's Gloves, etc.). This effectively means that to steal properly, you must have Locke equipped with "steal-only" items. I think a better solution would've been to allow Locke to steal worse items without gear and better items with gear, not make him unable to ever use steal properly unless he's geared that way.

I will end with the nitpicks (things that were bothersome but not overly so):

9) Back row. Back row reduces damage by 25%. Why? What was wrong with 50%? The back row feels almost exactly the same as the front now.

10) The phantom train sequence suddenly drops the XP gained dramatically for no reason whatsoever.

11) Throwing. Throwing is much too expensive for a greater part of the game. To balance this, I would suggest that either the cost of what is to be thrown be reduced OR that there be an expensive item that allows infinite throws (like a boomerang).

12) The Veldt. This was very confusing. In the vanilla game, it was very clear: Gau learns rages on the Veldt by leaping at enemies. The end. In this one, it appears that Gau learns rages anywhere at all. What's the Veldt for? To just have a place where all the enemies you've fought before reappear? Sounds okay, but why no XP gains then? In the vanilla game, there was no XP given on the Veldt and in this hack, it's the same. Why? I believe that not providing XP on the Veldt in the vanilla game was a poor choice to begin with. If the Veldt is going to be changed, why not change that too?

13) Monsters. This may seem to contradict my "balanced difficulty" advantage at the top of this review, so let me explain. It's true that the monsters provide more of a challenge, but it's really only in the damage that they do. It gets to a point in the game where all that's taking place is a damage game. I would've loved to see more variation in the monsters, especially given that relics can protect characters from all sorts of negative effects. This would encourage strategizing certain relics over others.

Conclusion: It was the lack of differentiation in the "classes" and the underwhelming advantage to leveling that ultimately led me to quitting early. One might argue that I needed to keep playing to really see the benefits later on, but I'll simply counter that a game should be good from start to finish. If a game is excellent during its last half but poor in its first half, then I would suggest that its first half should be worked on.

A game is not absolved of its problems because it's an overall enjoyable experience. The problems still exist. And for some, they are not worth suffering through.

This hack had an enormous amount of potential and I still think it does. What it really needs help with is balancing. The "classes" should be much more clearly defined and obvious, right from the outset, especially since many of the characters endure a colossal nerf (no spellcasting). It should be painfully obvious who my "fighters" are and who my "mages" are. The back row should be a safe place for my squishy characters. Every single level should feel substantial. And if everyone's leveling too fast and thus making the levels too powerful, then just change the threshold necessary to acquire a level.

If those things were achieved, I would gladly offer a "yes" recommendation.

The new sprits, quality of life updates, buffs, changes etc are all welcome and did make the game feel unique and good.

Locke doesn't know magic? No problem, Atma and Purifier and some awesome tank gear and he's ready to face roll anything even without magic (man I do love Locke and some equips make him in my opinion one of the best characters, just behind Terra).

Of course there are some "flaws" in my opinion. The ending Tower is a grindfest and every encounter is a boss fight, and some bosses are harder than 99Kefka (just spam megaelixir and it's an easy win).

Overall great hack, 9/10.

Final fantasy VI has a multitude of enjoyable hacks made for it from a plethora of talented creators. ASC is no different. The offerings it has to the already successful final fantasy VI formula are both well thought out and a pleasure to experience. ASC works off the General Leo edition, so some changes made from that romhack are also in it. I have not played Leo edition yet, so my review is based purely on ASC.

Upon starting the game, players will first notice the overall visuals have somewhat changed. The default text boxes are a different color, the portraits are new and updated, and the character sprites have all received changes both to color tone and overall outfits. One of my most favorite features about ASC is the spritework. This hack includes original FF6 sprites that have been touched up as well as sprites that have been imported from other games. A lot of love and care went into this aspect of the game. Ported sprites are touched up with shading and color so that they look like they belong in final fantasy VI even if they are not native to FF6. Final fantasy veterans will recognize both old final fantasy monsters and creatures from entries even as high as FFX that are present with high-quality sprites. Truly some top-notch work.

ASC provides several new battle themes from other RPGs. Almost every area of the game has a new battle theme, and the songs have been carefully chosen from other classic RPG titles. No emulator adjustments were required to avoid sound glitching, they all sounded flawless right off the bat. Everyone knows a good battle theme can be iconic and make a boss so much more thrilling, and it really works for many of ASC's encounters both new and old.

The combat has changed substantially. There are no esper stats anymore, so gone is the need to run lower levels or monitor levels to optimize stats. Only three characters can use espers to learn magic, and the rest must rely on their unique skills and commands. This might seem odd, but several characters have been buffed or changed so that their skills remain useful throughout the game. Gau learns rages simply by encountering enemies anywhere, and Strago has more useful blue magic. Umaro is revamped and fully controllable with new abilities. This encourages the player to form a party with characters that complement each other. Sabin's blitz mantra is a much more enticing option when healing magic is limited, for example. Everyone is viable. I had a lot of fun experimenting with different party configurations and trying out the new aspects of characters. Solid work.

The game's overall pacing is great, with the combat being more difficult than vanilla but not to the point of frustration. The player will need to work a little in encounters to not party wipe, using status effects and various abilities. Some of them can be tough, but they feel rewarding and random encounters never become a "Hold A to win or spam one spell" slog. From Narshe all the way to the endgame, the encounters remain challenging and enjoyable throughout.

Perhaps the most notable unique new feature found in ASC is the addition of hunts. In the second world, there are uncommon spawns of several new enemies that provide a greater challenge with powerful rewards. These scale from lower levels all the way to higher levels, with higher level beasts presenting a greater challenge but also having some of the game's strongest gear. Some of these fights are akin to endgame superbosses with the appropriate level of difficulty.

These encounters and others cannot simply be outleveled because ASC has a unique scaling difficulty system where enemy AI can change and improve with an increased player level. This isn't perfectly linear, and is usually at certain levels (50, 70, etc). The player's party tends to scale faster than enemies, so the game does get easier with higher levels just not overly so to the point of trivialization. Doubly so with the rare hunt beasts, which will give even better rewards if defeated at a higher level in some cases.

Whether you happen to be a completionist or just someone looking for a fresh take on the world of final fantasy VI, ASC is likely to entice you in some way or another. There's a lot to enjoy, from the visuals to the gameplay itself. This romhack was enjoyable from start to finish. I highly recommend this romhack, and place it up with the likes of Divergent Paths and T-Edition as "must play at least once" if you are an enthusiast of final fantasy VI. Fabulous work, Lightning!

I wish that there were some kind of middle-ground on whether you would recommend a hack to others, as I would recommend this to specific types of people. But if you've been playing FF6 hacks for any measure of time, this isn't likely to dazzle you.

If you've never played a hack of FF6, this would likely be an amazing introduction to the potential that romhacks have to improve what the original developers couldn't. All of the standard bugfixes are nice, and the script adjustments to include new characters and justify their reason for being there are extremely competent and feel natural.

Initially, I was really enjoying the hack. The new battle tunes were great and I recognize some solid classics from the past, and some cool 16-bit remixes of games that are newer than FF6. Giving all enemies a unique sprite was interesting for a while, but began to become hit-or-miss as the game went on, with the art style being all over the place; some of the sprite art was high-quality and looked great, while other sprites looked messy and low-resolution. And at first, I was enjoying the changes to how Espers are handled: not everyone can use them, so this promotes a more unique identity per character. The problem is that characters eventually just become a different type of one-trick pony; in the original everyone became an Ultima-spamming factory, but in this hack, they just do the best thing that their job offers.

For instance, once you get the chainsaw for Edgar, you'll just be using that since he won't be able to use magic. Why attempt to confuse enemies with Noiseblaster that may miss when you can just do a ton of damage instead? Gau gets a ton of new Rages and doesn't have Leap anymore since all he has to do is be present when an enemy dies to learn their Rage? Initially that sounds great, except you're just going to use the most powerful Rage that's available to you every time anyway.

And then there are the changes to magic in general, with some odd choices being made. The hack author states that they'd like it to make sense that a character would be able to use magic, so only certain characters can equip Espers. But at the time of this writing, only Terra, Celes, Relm, and Gogo can use Espers. Relm, but not Strago? I tried to reason it out by assuming that the hack author thought that it was good enough that Strago had access to blue magic with his Lore skill, and they even added some new Lores, but if you're going to restrict characters according to a philosophy, not giving *the* mage of the cast who comes from a long line of battlemages access to Espers, but allowing his inexperienced grandchild to use them, is silly. The main story arc in the first half of the game is all about the idea that Espers can grant magical powers to those who aren't magically-attuned, so telling the majority of the cast "too bad" and only making 4 characters well-rounded with multiple options in combat feels awful.

All of this combined with the fact that so much World of Ruin content is geared to your characters being level 70+, with most of the interesting stuff being available once you hit level 99, is silly. You could finish the game well before that point, so it turns into grinding experience just to get over the wall to see a majority of the new content, all of which is to just get unnecessary powerful equipment just for what, bragging rights?

Ultimately, it's a decent hack that will wow people who haven't played many, if any hacks of the game, but the design philosophies are nonsensical and the game tilts into confusion once you get to the World of Ruin and realize that you're just going to be walking in circles getting into endless fights just to see a few new extra sprites.

Although development has ceased on Brave New World, I'd recommend that hack to anyone looking to have a substantial new experience with Final Fantasy VI.

A Soldier's Contingency is a must-play for all FFVI fans! This comprehensive gameplay and expansion hack offers a fresh and exciting experience from start to finish while staying faithful to the original game. With new monster sprites, optional end-game Beast hunting, dozens of new equipment, spells and abilities, and a host of other features, battles will be more challenging and exciting, while not being at all too easy. The inclusion of Leo as a recruitable character, a surprise twist for Gogo, and a completely overhauled Colosseum make this hack a true gem. The rebalancing of characters, rages, and the limited use of Espers to mages only, make this game both more challenging and strategic. The numerous user-made hacks, patches, and improvements included make this game a true masterpiece. Don't miss out on the opportunity to experience FFVI like never before with A Soldier's Contingency!

Not all is perfect though... I tried to suplex the ghost train twice and failed both times and so its not perfect and needs to be updated address this concern... I would also like to be able to see the rewards for each colosseum battle before having to go into the battle, which is a nice quality of life feature that the Worlds Collide randomizer has that was really missed.

It is well known that vanilla FF VI is a game that lacks difficulty once you reach a certain level or get certain items, the final boss being the most infamous, since it can be killed in a single turn with the correct equipment.

Worst of all, once you got Ultima and the Dualcast, the game turned into "Spam Ultima and use Osmose or an ether (only if you don't have an economizer) until enemies fall."

It's also well known that many hacks that try to make it more difficult are prone to going overboard and making the game almost impossible if you're not in level 99.

On the other hand, this hack knew how to balance the difficulty so that it is not too easy or too difficult.

The bosses are really epic without being frustrating, even the first ones will give you a challenge if you're not prepared.

Another big improvement is that now there's a reason to use each character, even the ones that seemed useless in vanilla (Like Gau and Umaro)

The Final Boss it's the best part of the Hack, specially on level 99.

The difficulty improvement along with a ton of QOL improvements make this hack perfect for anyone looking for a balanced version of Final Fantasy VI.