Brave New World is an essential upgrade to an already fantastic game. I know we all tend to look at FF6 with rose-colored glasses due to nostalgia but, it definitely had its quirks. Many, many bugs and balancing issues. A great story put on top of an Attack-Spammable combat system with characters that are all identical aside from their sprites. The system was capable of depth, but you had to ignore large parts of the game to get it.
Brave New World aims to fix all of those issues and more.. rounding out a great story with some really great strategic character design and scripted fights. The magicite character lock coupled with the varied learned and equipped boosts gives you the ability to highly tune characters to specific rolls. The revamp of skill bugs helps to round that out. I can't think of anything that hasn't been tweaked at some point and improved. Dance, Rage, Runic, Lore, Steal, Throw.. all character specific abilities have been improved and now they all feel useful and not bloated. This isn't so much of a mod as it is a expansion or upgrade.. it feels like it was supposed to be there in the first place and I can guarantee you'll miss its features if you go back to the original or a different mod. It really did ruin vanilla for me.
During my 1.8.4 playthrough I did a run specifically choosing people that were not optimal (too low, not enough esper levels, incompatible abilities, etc) for each fight and it did show a few issues with some characters completely crushing others. Given that the original game had everyone able to fill every role.. I feel like this was an intentional design choice by the developers. My purpose in doing so was to get a feel for characters I never really got to use or didn't know how they'd do in some situations. There are definitely perfect characters for each role, good secondary backups for roles, and rounders to fill whatever you may need in a pinch. This fumbles a bit with a couple characters like Locke always being either one-shot dead, one-cast out of mana, or survivable punching bag. This is in part due to him being underleveled for 90% of the game (if you don't specifically stop to address it) and also because he doesn't really have anything to balance it out like Throw with Shadow or Raw DPS and rando buff-heals like Relm. He's just kind subpar at EVERYTHING and can steal things that have no impact. A bummer (and possibly my misunderstanding of the character) but the rest of the characters are great and keep improving.. like the Gown/Brush update or the Rage updates.
The biggest criticism I can find while digging is that some of the new systems and scripts can be a bit overwhelming for first time players and people that come in thinking the old use-anyone method is going to fly. Not that they should expect that.. it's clearly right on the label. It's just a mindset that I see people fall into every time they come in. Not sure that's the developer's fault really. But, definitely something to keep in the forefront while playing if this is your first time. Second would be the heavy reliance on a lot of fights being turtle-friendly (sap and heal). I see a bit of work to try to mix it up with the latest patch and there are a few bosses that stop it.. just a shame there are all these new abilities and major confrontations result in button mashing again. Most of the current fights have two gears.. turtle-sap or random one-shots you have to clean up. There are definitely more interesting ones here than vanilla though.. at this point I'm just splitting hairs.
That said, it is still the most extensive and improving mod for a game I have ever played.. and I've been through romhacking.net's entire library of full mods (Unsure if the fact I'm not joking is sadder than if I were or not). It was the mod that introduced me to Insane Difficulty and NGPlus and all the great people here. One of the most important, and usually overlooked, parts of a mod is the community surrounding that mod.. they are the ones that give suggestions, bug fixes, and test the mods that get released.. it doesn't matter how good your mod could be if it doesn't have the people to help get there. BNW has that.
I really think it deserves 4.5 Stars but not an option. I can't do 5 Stars because.. that would mean it is perfect the way it is.. but I still want to see more updates! Can't recommend this mod more.. even if you weren't a fan of FF6 before, this would make you one.
P.S. I do apologize if this review jumps around a bit and seems a bit scrambled. My 4yo loves FF6 and won't stop jumping all over me to mention things about BNW that are cool. If that's not an endorsement you can trust.. I don't know what is.
Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World
in Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World
Posted · Edited by Hordequester · Report reply
Brave New World is an essential upgrade to an already fantastic game. I know we all tend to look at FF6 with rose-colored glasses due to nostalgia but, it definitely had its quirks. Many, many bugs and balancing issues. A great story put on top of an Attack-Spammable combat system with characters that are all identical aside from their sprites. The system was capable of depth, but you had to ignore large parts of the game to get it.
Brave New World aims to fix all of those issues and more.. rounding out a great story with some really great strategic character design and scripted fights. The magicite character lock coupled with the varied learned and equipped boosts gives you the ability to highly tune characters to specific rolls. The revamp of skill bugs helps to round that out. I can't think of anything that hasn't been tweaked at some point and improved. Dance, Rage, Runic, Lore, Steal, Throw.. all character specific abilities have been improved and now they all feel useful and not bloated. This isn't so much of a mod as it is a expansion or upgrade.. it feels like it was supposed to be there in the first place and I can guarantee you'll miss its features if you go back to the original or a different mod. It really did ruin vanilla for me.
During my 1.8.4 playthrough I did a run specifically choosing people that were not optimal (too low, not enough esper levels, incompatible abilities, etc) for each fight and it did show a few issues with some characters completely crushing others. Given that the original game had everyone able to fill every role.. I feel like this was an intentional design choice by the developers. My purpose in doing so was to get a feel for characters I never really got to use or didn't know how they'd do in some situations. There are definitely perfect characters for each role, good secondary backups for roles, and rounders to fill whatever you may need in a pinch. This fumbles a bit with a couple characters like Locke always being either one-shot dead, one-cast out of mana, or survivable punching bag. This is in part due to him being underleveled for 90% of the game (if you don't specifically stop to address it) and also because he doesn't really have anything to balance it out like Throw with Shadow or Raw DPS and rando buff-heals like Relm. He's just kind subpar at EVERYTHING and can steal things that have no impact. A bummer (and possibly my misunderstanding of the character) but the rest of the characters are great and keep improving.. like the Gown/Brush update or the Rage updates.
The biggest criticism I can find while digging is that some of the new systems and scripts can be a bit overwhelming for first time players and people that come in thinking the old use-anyone method is going to fly. Not that they should expect that.. it's clearly right on the label. It's just a mindset that I see people fall into every time they come in. Not sure that's the developer's fault really. But, definitely something to keep in the forefront while playing if this is your first time. Second would be the heavy reliance on a lot of fights being turtle-friendly (sap and heal). I see a bit of work to try to mix it up with the latest patch and there are a few bosses that stop it.. just a shame there are all these new abilities and major confrontations result in button mashing again. Most of the current fights have two gears.. turtle-sap or random one-shots you have to clean up. There are definitely more interesting ones here than vanilla though.. at this point I'm just splitting hairs.
That said, it is still the most extensive and improving mod for a game I have ever played.. and I've been through romhacking.net's entire library of full mods (Unsure if the fact I'm not joking is sadder than if I were or not). It was the mod that introduced me to Insane Difficulty and NGPlus and all the great people here. One of the most important, and usually overlooked, parts of a mod is the community surrounding that mod.. they are the ones that give suggestions, bug fixes, and test the mods that get released.. it doesn't matter how good your mod could be if it doesn't have the people to help get there. BNW has that.
I really think it deserves 4.5 Stars but not an option. I can't do 5 Stars because.. that would mean it is perfect the way it is.. but I still want to see more updates! Can't recommend this mod more.. even if you weren't a fan of FF6 before, this would make you one.
P.S. I do apologize if this review jumps around a bit and seems a bit scrambled. My 4yo loves FF6 and won't stop jumping all over me to mention things about BNW that are cool. If that's not an endorsement you can trust.. I don't know what is.