Decided to try out the demo until Quicksand Pit. And yeah, as expected, QoL, design, difficulty (played in Expert + SC) are exquisite.
As opposed to some other difficulty hacks, it seems dungeons are carefully crafted to provide an intelligent difficulty instead of outright kaizo. It's very enjoyable to find resources on the ground and having to use them creatively to survive. Mindless grind is eradicated from this hack. Those field effects are such a cool addition for bosses, I felt I was playing later games. Got caught off guard by Quicksand Pit's boss after recruiting great supports from the same dungeon, but managed to beat it deathless nonetheless
Random remarks:
- Not sure if it's an Expert-only thing, but it seems nothing in the dungeons prepare to the fixed rooms of Waterfall Cave and Apple Woods. I full cleared previous floors multiple times to be sure, but never found any items that would provide the basis for a strategy there. In my opinion orbs should drop somewhere, at least in Waterfall Cave, to not enter the realms of unfair difficulty at this level. Still passed them thanks to careful Manual mode positioning but yeah.
- Beach Cave (or another resupply dungeon), should have a floor chock-full of Max Elixirs. They definitely are the rarest resource, not having a Wynaut trade recipe. Nectar Forest could be repurposed as a sort of Drunkard Forest for example, with Nectars mixed with Max Elixirs.
- Porygon has a bug where one of the later ranks listing is accessible from the start (but not usable).
Anyways, anyone should play this hack. I think many kids dreamt of having this kind of experience back in the day. I surely did.