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It feels familiar but very different. It is a very well constructed, has a solid script and good difficulty. My only disappointment was that I didn't have access to part 2 yet.

Have to say, I enjoyed this hack very much. There's a lot going on in the background, from mechanical changes to combat tweaks, that contribute to some very nice quality of life updates. The biggest I noticed was the scaling of enemy levels in relation to your party; the difficulty stays consistent throughout, so you aren't ever steam rolling over the top of every enemy formation.

The main character and constant in the party is Furio: son of Edge and a Ninja of Eblan. He plays very similarly to Edge from the original. He has some Ninjutsu, can steal from enemies, and can throw items. The latter happens to be his strongest skill that I could see. If you can keep his ammunition well-stocked, you'll deal with most random encounters without much issue.

The party includes some established characters from the original and The After Years, but I won't spoil that here. That said, one of the key features of the hack are mercenaries. You can hire these units from the main towns: who you can recruit ties directly into the area. You can have a single mercanary at any given time, and should you dismiss one, you recruit them at that level you dismissed them. Furthermore, you also keep any equipment you bought them.

• Ninja - recruited in Eblan. You'll have this one from the start, and they play the exact same as Furio. Solid in the beginning, though I dropped mine rather quickly in favour of others.

• W. Mage - recruited in Mysidia. I described the White Mage as the "safe" option, largely because of their supporting abilities. Furio does enough damage that devoting your mercenary slot to healing and support was a valid path. There's also a specific weapon - again, not spoiling it or its location - that allows them to dish out some fantastic damage, too, which was great when I ran out of ammo for Furio's throw.

• B. Mage - recruited in Mysidia. This is your all-around damage-dealing unit. If there's an elemental weakness to exploit, this unit is the one to do it. The way rods work, they actually boost the respective element; fire boosts fire, ice boosts ice etc. They also cast whatever spell they empower when used with the Fight command, helping to preserve MP.

• Dragoon - recruited in Baron. Overall, I found the Dragoon to be the most useful. There's a specific dungeon where having one along helps tremendously, but even outside that, their speed and damage allow them to inflict some very nice damage without having to worry about expending resources. They can equip Spears, Swords and Knives, so they've got weaponry for a lot of situations, and with their Heavy spear, can damage Flan-type enemies without having to expend MP or use valuable throwing items with Furio.

• Bard - recruited in Damcyan. Very useful, if a tab unpredictable. They can Sing just like Edward could, and can pull out some very useful effects. From slow to Bio, they slot into the party well. I found them to be the squishiest of the mercenaries, though, and they happen to come quite late.

Another thing I enjoyed was the story. I play games as much for the story as the fun-factor, and there was enough going on in this hack to keep me interested. The epic choice system allows for some branching in the story, and it also effects Furio's character a little and how others react to him, so seeing that first-hand was nice.

Overall, I was very happy with this hack. Played it through to completion twice, and honestly can't wait for Part 2! I highly recommend you give this a try yourself.

I happened to come across this after joining the discord, and it looked interesting enough to give a try! I do not regret the fact that I did, because it was an enjoyable, if brief experience!

ATFW takes the familiar FF2/4 gameplay and adds a few new features to keep it fresh on top of of a brand-new story. You play as Furio, the son of FF2's Edge, who takes on various missions around the world. Familiar locations are nice to see again and NPC dialogue within them is humorous, so talking to everyone at least once is totally worth it. Some locations have been revamped and the maps are slightly different in some places. Some new locations have been added.

There are several features not present in vanilla FF2, the one you encounter first and most notably the mercenary system. Mercenaries are story-less party members that you can swap in and out of your party, which gives you some variety. If you feel you want some stronger healing, you can hire a white mage. If you want TWICE the stealing and some physical damage, a ninja is great. The way this was implemented makes this mechanic fun to use, as you can only have one mercenary at a time but if a high leveled mercenary leaves, you don't lose that progress when you hire them again. This encourages experimentation with the system.

Another feature is the limit break system, where you gain the option sometimes to pull off a powerful attack when at critical HP. Generally these are very useful and a few times really turned the tide of an otherwise loss for me. Some are more useful than others, and the gamble of having a low HP character use their limit vs potentially dying before they can use it is worth it in my opinion.

At times, the game will allow you to make choices and these WILL affect important things. Some of them won't be fleshed out until later entries. This adds some replay value, as you might want to create an additional save to see what some choices might have affected.

The main character is a ninja and I think the gameplay supports this rather well, especially early on. An aspect of being a ninja is preparedness, and generally throughout the first part of this hack the player is rewarded if they take the time to, for example, steal from a boss. The item stolen might be useful for the next boss. Having a stock of certain items on hand might make a fight vastly easier. Granted, this stuff helps in a any RPG but it feels more ninja-esque here given the main character's profession. Choosing the right mercenary for a given area or boss really matters. I was very surprised at what my black mage mercenary could do even in fights where magic wasn't the best answer. Status effect use can be very strong against some creatures.

Without spoiling, the story is a definite divergence from the "canon" timeline of The After Years, but it's an interesting one with enough going on and enough intrigue that I would happily take the time to play through another installment. Great work! Definitely the start of something good.

Overall I liked pretty much everything about this hack, so let's break it down piece by piece:

THE GOOD:

Story: Obviously the story is incomplete (being only "part 1") but what is present is a compelling start to an original story. Personally I've never played The After Years so some of the characters were new to me, but that didn't really take away my ability to understand and appreciate the new story. I found the character personalities were developed very well in the cutscenes and you could tell that many of the characters were given "matured" personalities compared to their time in vanilla ff4 [my favorite character was edge].

"Epic choices": As a concept, I found this very fascinating and it's implemented well also. I found it to be a nice parallel to the new story, as making different choices can influence certain scenes without derailing the overall plot.

Gameplay: The gameplay definitely feels authentic to ff4. There are ton of new bosses which are of appropriate difficult (in my opinion). A lot of characters have improved or new skills. Steal sees a GREAT improvement as many enemies were given a custom rare steal, and early on stealing can be a great source of precious healing items like life and cure2. Overall, it definitely felt like I was playing a final fantasy game with a reasonable difficulty curve. My FAVORITE part of the gameplay however was..........

Mercenaries: I LOVED the addition of the mercenaries. I think it is a great way to keep the gameplay fresh. Personally I tried every mercenary that's in the game and I liked all of them. You are not punished for keeping an old mercenary but switching to a new mercenary often ends up being worth it and many times the entire boss strategy can change based on what mercenary you brought with you. I think this is a fantastic system that's implemented very well, possibly my favorite part of the hack.

Custom menu: There a lot of great custom features in the menu. My favorite by far is the GORGEOUS equipment info screen [double clicking a weapon in the main inventory menu], but the main equipment screen is also updated. The new "cache" may be more useful in future parts, but I never really ran out of space in my inventory during my playthrough.

THE...... MEH (for me)

Limit Breaks: This one is a bit in between for me. On the one hand, the limit breaks are pretty much universally really awesome. On the other hand, if I beat a boss because a limit break basically one-shot it, I feel tempted to retry that boss without the limit break just to see if I can. That being said, the limit breaks are fun, powerful, and overall a great addition, but I didn't necessarily go out of my to use them a lot.

Side quest grinding: This one actually doesn't bother me at all, but there are a few sidequests that are veeeeeeery grindy. Obviously they're extremely optional and I would imagine they are intended to be completed over multiple parts as the rest of the parts are released, but for now the only way to get maximum rewards is to go out of your way to grind those specific sidequests for in some cases hours. Normally I would find this more annoying but 1) they are completely optional and 2) they definitely do seem like they'll fit more naturally as development continues to expand.

OVERALL:

Between the new gameplay commands, new bosses, mercenary, and epic choice systems, there's a lot to explore and experience here. For "part 1" there's a surprising amount of polish and there's a VERY solid base to build off here in terms of new story, new dungeons, and new bosses. As I was playing I was consistently thinking things like "next time I play I'll try a different choice or a different mercenary" which is a great sign that I was enjoying myself. Very fun hack!