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This is as close to a definitive version of the original game as one could hope for. No major cosmetic changes were imposed like in other 'restoration' hacks. Instead, the author focuses on fixing non-functional or abnormally functioning spells, applying elemental modifiers to weapons, fixing the notorious run bug, and slightly rebalancing statistical growth to address common concerns with character balance - particularly those related to the thief and black belt characters. Some minor quality-of-life changes are applied as well, including a higher default message speed, disabling automatic party sorting when a character is afflicted with a negative status, and allowing the player to buy up potions in stacks of ten.

The game balance feels more similar to later ports and remakes since status buffs and elemental modifiers now function properly, which makes early fiend battles a lot less deadly to underleveled parties. A few applications of TEMP spells on top of your elemental weapons will make quick work of Lich and Kary. However, I don't think the thief noticeably benefits from any rebalancing at this point in the game, and still remains a liability all the way up to the class-change event.

That said, I strongly recommend this hack over other efforts to rebalance or fix this game. However, it should be noted that the hack introduces a rather critical bug that freezes the game if you try to push a black belt / master to max level. Around level 48, the game will lock up when the BB/Ma is supposed to report his statistical gains. The only theory that comes to mind is the large boost in magic defense this character receives from the patch. It looks like the game can't handle this value reaching or exceeding 200 points, which is right about where the BB/Ma is going to be at level 48+.

Unless the author can address this, the only workaround at the moment is to leave any BB/Ma characters slightly below max level. No other characters are affected by the bug since their magic defense never reaches such absurdly high values.

This patch presents the original game as the designers intended, and adds a few small quality-of-life updates in addition. I absolutely recommend playing Final Fantasy with this patch over the original release. This is how Final Fantasy is meant to be.

A well documented patch with minor interference on the original experience! Seems like it doesn't include the party order sorting bugfix though, but rather just excludes Poison from the party order sorting process?