I figure I might as well break the ice when it comes to posting a review of someone's mod. Of course, I'm part of the Jot5 team, but I didn't come along until some time after Chapter 1 was first released, so I don't feel any shame in speaking about my opinions of it.
Despite how the idea of a crossover mod might make people wary, Jot5 avoids all the stigma of such a concept and actually feels a lot like a true sequel to FFT.
This Game is Complete!
Not Completed
Version: Chapter 1 - 1.97e
Overall | |
Story | |
Originality | |
Difficulty | |
Fun | |
Balance | |
Visuals | |
Replayability | |
Story: 5 What most people might expect in a crossover fan work would be a lot of shallow fanservice, spreading the narrative extremely thin and ultimately resulting in a mediocre experience all around. Instead, the crossover element is properly balanced with the rest of the story: more time in Chapter 1 is actually devoted to the problems caused by Ramza acting against King Delita's wishes, revolving around the lack of trust the two have for each other following FFT's final scene, as well as the plans of Ivalician criminals to attempt to capitalize on the current state of affairs. In fact, two of the four crossover protagonists have yet to see their own story threads tied in by the end of the chapter. The crossover element is indeed a prominent part of the story, but it takes a backseat to the story, rather than the reverse. All in all, it feels almost exactly like I'd expect a true sequel to FFT's story would - the only real difference is that the general tone shifts a bit away from FFT's ever-present despair, and is a bit more uplifting and humorous overall, but this is appropriate for the setting: war no longer looms on the horizon, nor are the peasants being forced to starve while the rich nobility prospers (at least, not nearly as much as before). Ivalice still has its fair share of problems, including many new ones since the end of FFT, but life overall has improved for its people.
Originality: 5 A lot more of the original aspects of FFT are present in Jot5 than I would expect in a real sequel, but considering that Jot5 is a mod and not actually a professionally produced sequel, that's fair. It's got a new story, new sprites for almost every character, reimagined jobs all around (with the sole exception of the Dragoon & Mime IIRC, not that you'd really be using them in Chapter 1 anyway), abilities are rebalanced around the near universal use of MP... it's hard to imagine any other kind of mod that could feature more originality without just being entirely unrelated to FFT.
Difficulty: 4 Jot5 was originally put together around the time that difficult mods were the name of the mod game when it came to FFT, and it shows. However, there was definitely a major push back against a masochistic difficulty, with a lot of effort put in to carefully toe the line between "challenging" and "frustrating". If you're not a fan of uphill battles, you might not enjoy the difficulty too much (unless you tweak the Five in the Patcher), but if you thought FFT felt too easy outside of its standout battles, you'll probably love this. Random battles, unfortunately, aren't so tightly balanced; some slipped through the cracks of QA testing. One battle often features nothing more than a single enemy with a crossbow, while another features a group of extremely tanky enemies that can mass heal each other for free while simultaneously damaging any of your units in the area of effect, making it nearly impossible to win without using strong status effects (none of which you get by default).
Balance: 4 A significant improvement from FFT, which infamously features Archers and Knights all the way through the endgame. Never even mind the Calculator job. All jobs have their own carefully crafted niche right from the start, and none feel useless. Difficulty balance is as mentioned above. There are two reasons I'm giving this a 4 - one, because while magic jobs are hardly bad here, each of the four crossover protagonists' base jobs are definitely better suited for going down the physical tree, and both Dante and Snake have poor Faith. Cloud and Link have the Faith to be capable casters, but Cloud's skillset is big on close combat, as are multiple skills of Link's (either pushing him to keep close to enemies or to allies, and as mentioned, those allies are likely to be in close combat themselves). And two, because as mentioned with the difficulty, some things have slipped through the QA cracks. Quake, for example, does not target as intended, and even unavoidably hits its own caster.
Visuals: 5 The game features new sprites for (almost) all jobs and characters, though little else is changed (because, duh, it's a mod, not a canon sequel on a modern console). One big upgrade, though, is one that grabs people's attention very early on in the game - the far more action-packed scenes. There aren't many scenes like this - after all, most of the time, when there's action to be had, the control is put in the player's hands rather than merely just being a scene to watch. But when there is an action-packed cutscene - hoo, boy.
Replayability: 3 My lowest score in this whole review. The big problem with this is that Chapter 1 is fairly short, and the job system is a slow burn. In all likelihood, the player will have barely tasted a quarter of the game's jobs, if that, by the time the credits roll. And aside from going from a physical job playthrough to a magic job one, there isn't too much you can do to change that, as so many of the jobs are gated by the tiers in their job trees. It hasn't stopped me from having replayed it multiple times, but I mostly just do so in order to reexperience the game after having not played it for a while, rather than to try a different approach.