A Soldier’s Contingency is a comprehensive Gameplay and expansion hack for FFVI. It has been in the works for 6-years and is based on the wonderful hack by Fauntleroy/Fedorajoe titled the “General Leo Edition”. In addition to being able to recruit Leo, the whole game has a fresh new experience from start to finish while remaining faithful to the original. All the original content is still there, but with a significant overhaul and expansion. Battles should feel exciting rather than tedious. Gameplay is more challenging, but never in an unfair manner. With some good strategy, grinding should NOT be necessary!
List of features:
-Aproximately 200 new monster sprites on top of the original monsters for a total of 350 monsters
-Optional end-game Beast hunting and some new bosses (unlock some of the beasts by defeating other beasts).
-Brand new island in the WoR for beast/monster hunting
-Complete overhaul of equipment, including ultimate endgame gear that is unique to every character
-60+ new battle themes
-20+ new dungeon/overworld/town themes that replace some of the repeat tracks in the game (all the official FF6 tracks are also still in the game).
-Different difficulty modes via patches
-New alternate characters that remain faithful to the originals while adding a degree of freshness. There are two different character packs: “Flavor A” and “Flavor B”.
-The ability to recruit Leo as in the General Leo edition
-New weapons and graphics (some of them thanks to Tomilho).
-Dozens of new spells and abilities and improved animations for existing spells
-Complete gameplay overhaul and rebalancing.
-New equipment menu that combines relics and gear
-In-game music player accessible via the config menu
-A surprise twist to the final Kefka fight if you complete the necessary beast hunting to unlock it
-All new AI scripts for more intelligent monsters:
Monsters will become smarter as your level increases, while other monsters change entirely!
-50+ user-made hacks, patches, improvements, and more included
-A folder of optional patches people may apply to change the default behavior of the hack.
-Some new cutscenes
-Pugs instead of Imps that change color based on the character
-Some new dialog and plot twists
-All major bugs fixed, such as vanish/doom trick, psycho cyan, the infamous Gau sketch bug, and the useless evade stat along with countless others
-Ability to learn rages anywhere and to see which rages you are missing in Gau’s skill menu
-Colosseum completely re-written:
You can now control your characters, and do not lose your items (everyone just resets the game when they lose anyway…)
-Re-written auction house to include more items and to be less annoying
-Functional Umaro, complete with his own set of equipment and a brand new skill!
-New Dash function
-Leo’s Shock overhaul:
Shock is now limited to once per battle and will randomly choose between 3 types of shock attacks.
-New “Miracle” ability for Leo
-Only mages can now use magic/espers, while other characters rely on their special skill sets. Some characters are a combination of both support and attack, while others are for raw damage.
-Esper’s no longer grant status boosts upon leveling. This is so your mages aren’t the only ones getting status boosts.
-Major rebalancing of characters:
All characters should have a purpose for being in your group at one point or another!
-Game-breaking attacks fixed:
There is no more fixed dice with offering for example – but to compensate for this you will find new ultimate weapons that are very fun to use!
-Rebalancing of physical attacking vs. magic:
Both your warriors and mages have a good reason to be in the party and will support each other
-Rages completely redone:
Stray-cat is still the best early rage for example, but quickly becomes obsolete (as it should) as you encounter tougher monsters. Gau has his ultimate endgame rages now.
-No more missable rages; a complete list is doable
-Many skill improvements:
Faster Bushido, A smart chainsaw that knows when to go for an instant kill, Dance that never fails, improved Slots, and more
-New desperate attacks, including brand new desperate attacks for Umaro, Gau, and Leo.
-More frequent desperate attacks
-Countless other features. Far too many to list here, in fact!
If you previously played Version 1.0 of A Soldier’s Contingency, here is a list of highlights for version 2.0:
-Different difficulty modes via optional patches that users may apply (they can be applied at any time during a playthrough without starting the game over).
-Players may now choose “Flavor A” or “Flavor B” of the hack. Both packs have different character sprites, and completely different colors (and in some cases graphics) for the monsters.
-Endgame Beast hunting no longer requires leveling up. Instead, you can unlock higher ranking beasts by merely defeating the lower ranking beasts.
-Likewise, You can also unlock the new forms of Kefka without being on high levels.
-A whole bunch of new optional patches for those that wish to change the gameplay mechanics of ASC. Check the optional patches folder for better descriptions of each patch.
-Shadow is once again a recruitable guest in the World of Balance, thanks to code that was semi-borrowed from fedorajoe’s latest General Leo Edition.
Note: Shadow is NOT permanently recruitable in the WoR (maybe in version 3.0 one day).
-About 20 New music tracks that replace some of the repeat tracks in the game. This includes nearly all the town themes and dungeons in the WoR, among other surprises.
-Some new batte music tracks
-Added an in-game Music Player (thanks to Madsiur), which is accessed through the “Config” menu.
-Brand new island in the WoR for beast/monster hunting
-Brand new weapon graphics/animations (thanks to Tomilho), including Guns, Nunchucks, and bows.
-Lots of new ultimate endgame gear to collect
-New Excalibur side-quest that involves a new easter egg boss
-A few brand new beasts to fight, including a new endgame optional final beast.
-Fine-tuned monster stats, spell learning, and more
-“Informative Miss” by Bropedio now included, which gives you more useful information about a spell you used, such as “miss”, “null”, or “fail”.
-Added SilentEnigma’s “LoreAZ” patch, which places Strago’s Blue magic in alphabetical order
-New Slots system for Setzer for more variety and usefullness
-Complete dance overhaul for Mog
-Added Cure4, now taught by Crusader.
-Some new NPCs on the airship, including Namingway and Cid in the WoR.
-Added “Runic Forever”, which allows runic and Cyan’s Retort to last longer than just one turn
-Dried meat now cancels out Rage, Dance, and Berserk statuses.
-Many exciting new weapon attack effects and improvements to existing attacks
-Lots of modifcations to skills, equipment, and more
-You are now once again allowed to Suplex the Ghost Train (I took backlash for “fixing” it before) 😛
-Thousands of other tweaks with too much to possibly list here (check the readme file ChangeLog for more info).
If you wish to discuss the hack, join the official discord chat here!
Alternatively, if you prefer to discuss this on a forum, head over to the FF6hacking thread!
Final fantasy III (USA) 1.1 CRC32: C0FA0464
Fedorajoe: For the original General Leo edition, which this hack was originally based upon
Gi Nattak: Help with event editing, music, and much more
madsiur: For help with coding, music editing, and more
C-Dude: for a lot of help with coding
Tomilho: for some weapons graphics
James White: for a few sprites I borrowed and edited
And dozens of others. PLEASE see the readme file included with the hack for a FULL list of all patches, hacks, credits, and more!