Final Fantasy Ultra

Hack description

Check out the improved Final Fantasy Ultra: Champion Edition!

A Final Fantasy hack, five years in the making. The philosophy is to add and change as much as possible for the better, while still staying true to the spirit of the game.

Here is a list of improvements.
- 12 classes at the start instead of 6
- Each class is especially good at one thing and average to bad at everything else.
- Except the Fool class, who is bad at everything.
- Battle animations sped up.
- Spells are divided into direct (the top two spells in a store) and indirect (the bottom half).
- Many spells added and altered.
- Spell names changed to be clearer as to what they do (SHLD instead of FOG, CLNS instead of PURE, etc.)
- Every level of magic has a single target damage spell and all enemies spell.
- FIRE only hits one enemy, making the HARM spell better against armies of undead.
- Generally less spells that kill or stone in one hit.
- More spells can be cast, especially for dedicated casters.
- Intellect influences the power of spells.
- Healing is much stronger
- Spell damage is also stronger, but since hitpoints have also increased, damage spells are only relatively stronger for casters with high intelligence.
- Enemies use more abilities, and do so in more interesting ways
- More interesting battle formations
- More interesting enemy properties, such as regeneration and elemental properties.
- TMPR spell works properly.
- Everything has more hit points, making fights more tactical.
- Enemies drop less gold, making chests much more attractive, and forcing the player to choose between which items they want to buy the most.
- Only two types of armor (Body and Shield) so there's more room to store magical items.
- Only the 10 magical items can cast spells.
- Poison and regeneration is now at 10%.
- Any combination of classes (without twins or Fools) can properly beat the game.
- No combination of classes is remarkably better at beating the game than another.

Dungeons:
- Added escape teleports in most of the dungeons, making it more attractive to level up where the action and gear is.
- Balanced game to make full trip through whole dungeon on first try very hard, but rewarding to go in, get some loot, restock and go in again to get further. Most dungeons take around three trips to complete.
- Most fights can be run away from, except on 'tiled' squares. Dragons, Mindflayers, Eyes and Bosses are not runnable.
- Getting the Ship, Papyrus, Oxyale and Crown requires doing a dungeon.
- Four extra dungeons to do after Tiamat.
- All sorts of new paths and new tricks.
- Dungeons feature items found in nearby towns, giving incentive to try to get the items there instead of just buying them in shop.
- End dungeons feature special end-game weapons for each class.
- Boss battles made much more interesting.

Overworld
- Dash button added.
- Player can immediately go to Dwarf Cave, which is a tough trip but grants extra gold.
- Player doesn't need Ship to get to Elves.
- Player doesn't need Airship beat the game, as ports have been removed.
- Three places where player can fight against tougher enemies for experience boost if they're into that kind of thing (like the original PoP).
- You now save a prince instead of a princess. Corneria has two queens. For gender diversity.
- Secret overpowered enemies for bragging rights.
- Mystic Key only unlocks items in Dwarf Cave, Elf Castle and Human Castle.
- No poison inducing enemies until the Elf area (by then the player should have some CLNS potions.)

Other:
- Hundreds of tweaks not worth mentioning.
- Years of polish thanks to dozens of playthroughs and feedback from playtesters.

Credit is due to PinkPuff for letting me build upon their hack, Final Fantasy Negative One.

There are two complete 'Let's Plays' here:
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5IZvVrtWs
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r1-bIEqmRs

Discuss the game here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/522595-final-fantasy/72712637
And since I'm always keen on feedback, you can email me at:
robertaugustdemeijer@gmail.com

Reviews

Great hack!	Pesmergia	2016-02-07	Version 1.0
The beginning pace feels perfect, as the start levels were made to come by faster. This will quite quickly level off and you will be required to do a bit of grinding, mainly for cash. The hack focuses more on nerfed gold from enemies to promote progression due to the heavily increased gold you get from chests. With a caster party, it will be impossible to keep up with spell costs unless you progress, unless you do a LOT of grinding. Equipment cost and spell cost is very high with the nerf to gold, especially if you have a heavy caster party. Exp doesn't truly ramp up until you get to the water dungeon, and even then it doesn't ramp up much there, and even in the desert tower. You can get more gold fighting 4x giant fights at the PoP before you go in the water dungeon than you can in a large portion of the desert tower and even in some bonus dungeons designed for the end game. So I feel gold progression is a bit whacky. Once you grab the TNT in the Marsh Cave, you can immediately open the canal, then sail around to Crescent Lake to level if you wish. A nice addition, although it will be very hard, but you will level fast, and having a Warlock makes this a lot easier, they are REALLY powerful in this hack. Everything else is basically like it was with some minor changes. Bonus dungeons are pretty sweet. I only feel that these are way too short. The dark dungeon is a bit of a needless headache because without knowing exactly where to go, you may be hung up in there for a long time beating your head against an invisible wall. I'd advise to watch the hack creators' walkthroughs on youtube to help yourself with brick walls such as this and the Oxyale placement being random. As for the enemies, lots of changes for the better. The difficulty feels right, with some difficulty spikes thrown in at certain places. Excellent work on the enemies. And there's new super enemies, and they hurt. Replayability is fantastic with the 12 classes. You could play this hack 20 times over and still have room for new combinations of parties. I enjoy it so much I plan on trying out every class at least once. Status magic was buffed like mad, as was black magic damage. It makes these classes that can use it very helpful. Overall great hack, highly recommended. Also big thumbs up to the hack creator being very helpful on the forums and a truly nice guy to me.

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