Hack Showcases and RPG Hack Showcases are a series where I show off various game and rpg hacks. I try to stick with hacks that improve gameplay or add quality of life features, completely or partially change the plot and characters, along with additional content, dialogue, graphical and sound improvements. Non-rpgs I try to give a full run to, or at least enough for a solid review. Rpgs I will stick with titles that have enough changes in the beginning to show off, and when I can, show parts later in the games where more differences appear. There may be spoilers in the reviews and videos. Some of these I may stream fully in the future or play on my own. Reviews are open to later revisions due to bug and content updates or me playing them and finding anything new I wish to bring up.
The FF6 Beyond Chaos randomizer is one of the most in-depth randomizers for any game. BC was originally developed by Abyssonym, then maintained by SubtractionSoup, now maintained by DarkSlash88 and available on Github. Nearly everything is randomized, including treasure, enemies, colors, graphics, character abilities, music, sprites, and more. The program will give you a list when you load up the program of different flags to add to your seed. Flags being different changes from graphics, skills, magic, scenarios and more! The main game flags are as follows:
o Shuffle characters’ in-battle commands
w Generate new commands for characters, replacing old commands.
z Always have “Sprint Shoes” effect.
b Make the game more balanced by removing exploits such as Joker Doom, Vanish/Doom, and the Evade/Mblock bug.
m Randomize enemy stats.
c Randomize palettes and names of various things.
i Randomize the stats of equippable items.
q Randomize what equipment each character can wear and character stats.
e Randomize esper spells and levelup bonuses.
t Randomize treasure, including chests, colosseum, shops, and enemy drops.
u Umaro risk. (Random character will be berserk)
l Randomize blitz inputs.
n Randomize window background colors.
f Randomize enemy formations.
s Swap character graphics around.
p Randomize the palettes of spells and weapon animations.
d Randomize final dungeon.
a Organize rages alphabetically (default)
h Organize rages by highest level first
g Randomize dances
k Randomize the clock in Zozo
You can also set BC to different types of games as well along with playing the main game, such as an Ancient Cave type game based off the randomized Ancient Cave in Lufia 2, Only fight the 8 Dragons and more. This randomizer is highly customizable for a tough and possibly fun game!
With most romhacks, strongly suggested to check out the readme files for advice on the changes to hacks and any gameplay tips, especially with rpgs. Readme files for rpg hacks can contain additional gameplay advice, etc, and it’s worth subscribing to hacks you like on RHDN to keep up with updates for bug fixes, additional content, etc.
SO HOW IS IT? There is a lot to unpack with this randomizer! First off it’s not a free world randomizer like Free Enterprise. You play FF6 normally, go through all the story beats, but anything that can be randomized is: character names, sprites, skills, magic, enemies, colors and more! There’s a lot of options to play with for novice BC players and those who have a number of seeds under their belts. Playing with the different options can be fun, changing the sprites and palette colors for npcs and enemies, changing skills like dances, tools, blitz attacks and more. Some options for BC also fix game-breaking or cheating bugs from vanilla like the one to remove the vanish/x-zone trick. Being able to skip most cutscenes up until the Battle of Narshe is great if you want to speed things up.
Also worth noting that when the Espers and magic do come into play, not everyone can and will use magic, natural or learned from Espers, like in vanilla. Your list of skills in battle are changed excluding the normal fight command. You could end up with Edgar being able to learn Mog’s dances or Sabin having Relm’s sketch command. Speaking of magic the spells you learn from Espers will be different as well as the level up bonuses. Everyone can equip Espers and those who don’t have a magic command can still utilize them for the level-up bonuses. Your heroes who can start with magic are changed along with the magic you learn too. This alone can make your seed easier or harder so the difficulty of this randomizer can be a lot tougher than that of vanilla. Your heroes will probably end up with skill commands like R-Gray, R-Beast and more. These are randomized skills based on either summoned animals, type of magic and more. Who or what will happen when selected is completely random from a list and chances, kinda like Setzer’s slots. The seed does generate a file with all the information you’d need to figure out what’s going on.
Of the different game modes you have the traditional one where you go through FF6’s story and everything is randomized. There’s also an Ancient Cave and Speed Cave games, based on the randomized dungeon in Lufia 2. Start with a party of 4-5 heroes and make your way through a completely changed Kefka’s Tower. The Ancient Cave game has over 200+ maps to go through, Speed Cave with around 100. Start at level 1 and see where you end up. Go through a door, you may end up in another cave or town even. Kefka @ Narshe ends the seed at the Battle of Narshe and is mostly for speedruns. Dragon Hunt starts you in the World of Ruin and ends when you defeat all 8 of the dragons.
Do I recommend this, yes! Especially if you want something really different in your FF6 game and enjoy playing detective on figuring out what your new abilities are, finding grind points, and changing your strategies from vanilla in a spot because not everyone can use magic. Difficulty varies and could turn people off, especially how confusing the Ancient Cave games can be.
GAMEPLAY VIDEO:
I GIVE FF6 BEYOND CHAOS 4.5 OUT OF 5 ESPERS!!
Links:
https://github.com/abyssonym/beyondchaos – Beyond Chaos Randomizer
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