Ludmeister's retro video game projects— Feedback, acclaim and testimonies

Nice site Jeff! I was googling video game mods to see what other sites out there and found yours. I'd be honored if you'd join our site and make some posts sharing your mod work! btw the design of your site is bad ass! anyway, I hope to hear from you soon.

— David, Website owner

[re: Wizardry 8 information] Very nicely done maps, charts of Items, Spells, Gadgets, Bards Instruments, etc. with all items' and spells' data visible at a single glance.

— Flamestryke, Venerated Wizardry 8 veteran [ Link » ]

Jeff, I had a lot of fun with this mod to the original game, and I definitely think it made the whole experience better by improving the not so popular or useful characters. I just wanted to thank you for your work on this and drop some notes of interest on what I think of it. Kudos to making more equipment available to Rand, more shaman combinations with useful results across the board, and adjusting Nina so that she's not totally outclassed by Bleu. Jean in my playthrough was honestly about as useful as the Hero, of great surprise and joy to me. I'll definitely look into another one of your projects to play through when I have more free time, I'm looking at the Final Fantasy 5 one in particular!

— Larry

Hey, I'm really interested in playing BoF II with your mod applied since it has always needed a good re-balancing. It seems from your changelog that you've made some excellent changes. This is probably a silly question because I don't know how difficult it is to modify the game, but I was wondering if it would be possible for you to port your changes over to the SNES version. It's a shame that the experience of playing the game with your mod is brought down somewhat by the mangled music and graphics of the GBA version, as well as the inability to make use of the incredible SNES re-translation. In any case, thank you for you work towards making this great game reach its potential!

— Snowsprite

Awesome job. I am simply amazed. Only just started the game, the variety that you've put into the officers' stats, soldier count, and most of all tactics have placed different degrees of worth in previous pissholes like Song Yong.

— Stallion Fury [ Link » ]

Just conquered the game, and it was a fantastic mod overall. Letting officers using their own tactics proved quite useful since it allowed me to use Evade and Thwart at the same time, always gave me the initiative. The Agility Based Multi-attacks and 8 tactics functions were very interesting too, sometimes one of my generals could attack three times in one turn which shocked the enemies.

Hey I like your tactic list page. It has a general view on all of the available tactics, the newcomers will be satisfied with your effort.

— Zhuge Liang, Moderator of the forum [ Link » ]

The Mod of Balance for the Dawn of Souls version (Game Boy Advance remake), which changes things to not only make more sense (no Vox spell for starters) but retains the difficulty from the NES version.

— tvtropes.org editor, Mention [ Link » ]

Wow. Thats all that can be said. I recently broke my back, leaving me with hours upon hours of time to kill. I broke out the old gameboy, and ran through all of the gba remakes i'd bought a year or two ago. While playing ff1, I realized how amazingly easy it was. Did a little search to see if others felt the same way, and found your patch. Man, this "remake" you've created is probably one of the most fun videogame experiences i've ever had. You single handedly increased the enjoyment i got from ff1 from approximatly 10 hours, to hundreds. Cant wait to try out the nuances of different parties, under all of these new parameters. Just want to say thanks. On a personal note, Im american, and these medical bills from the wreck have destroyed me. But at some point, when i get my finances in order, i'd like to hit you up with a donation, if only to help encourage you to rework other classics. I dont know the legality of that.. but i assume it'd be fine as long as it isnt a payment for your patch. Cart before the horse i suppose, but again, thanks for all the work you put in on this, brilliant ideas all around, hope to see more work from you in the future.

— Ryan

I've been pointed towards this hack by a friend of mine from the FF1 NES board on GameFAQs who has been hacking the NES ROM to balance the game out better. I am in awe of some of the changes you've made so far. I attempted something like this several years ago and was only able to figure out how to hack Garland's Long Sword drop (with help) and to map out the EXP tables. I never really got far with any of this. But this honestly looks like the best hack I've seen for any game. ... Sorry to rant like a fanboy, but well... I am a fanboy of FF1 and seeing a hack of this quality really gets me intrigued. So now I say thank you for your time and effort, and wish you success on your further endeavors into the game.

— Rabite

Yesterday I stumbled upon news of this mod from TVtropes.org, and after trying it out I've been very impressed! Even a fight with a bunch of Goblins and Goblin Guards was exciting, and the fact that everyone can cast magic of some sort was very welcome. Congratulations on producing such a fine mod of a classic game!

— Michael

Thank you for all the hard work you've put into all of your mods and hacks Jeff! I felt like I was eight years old playing Final Fantasy 1 for the first time when I played your version of Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls. Your hacks/mods are the most professional I have ever played, Square-Enix would count themselves lucky to have a programmer of your skill.

— Andrew

Hey Jeff, First I just really want to say I adore what you did for the Final Fantasy games with your mods. Particularly FF1; I've waited years for somebody to step forward and pump up the difficulty on that game to make it like it used to be back in the day, while still remaining technologically "up to date."

— Joshua Grant

I have played a little bit of your MoB hack, and it is very enjoyable.

— Leviathan Mist, ROM Hacking contributor to Grond's Final Fantasy (NES)

Wow this is awesome. I've actually used his other stuff, namely his Wizardry 8 mod. Me and this guy have the same ideas when it comes to these games.

I just tried the patch and I gotta say... already it's a lot more challenging. I got guys missing a whole bunch at the beginning, and getting knocked out... which makes sense because I'm level 1. =) Also, I notice money doesn't come as quickly as it used to, so buying a sword or a spell is a big deal now.

I really like how he made White Mages more akin to Clerics in the Dungeons and Dragons games. There was really no need for them to be so "weak" in the vanilla version, since all they could really do was heal. So basically if they weren't healing they weren't doing much fo anything, usually. This mod at least makes them "tanks", which is cool.

I'm also really liking all the abilities he's given Thieves and Monks, so they're more interesting, they can do more than just attack. I agree that there was really no use in calling them Thieves since they couldn't actually "thieve".

Red Mages are even better than before. Their magic has greatly improved, I see.

Black Mages are freakin' monsters now.

Great, great mod.

— John Dane, On version 1.2 [ Link » ]

Awesome. Trying it now. Just wanted to say thanks to the creator. Final Fantasy was also the game that cemented my love for the RPG genre…

Excellent job with this patch. This is truly remarkable.

— Flux Mega [ Link » ]

Been playing the new mod for a while. It has been great so far! Went through the game a couple of times on version 2.0. It's made the game much more interesting than the original GBA version, undoubtedly. Just downloaded 2.1 and will play to the end a few times for sure. ... The Mod has me playing the game when I was bored with the original.

— TDLeslie80 [ Link » ]

This patch is pretty fun! I'm enjoying the level of difficulty. Those bonus dungeon bosses were really difficult the first time around. I think I may be shooting myself in the foot with the level of difficulty right now. I'm currently grinding speed pluses off of Poison Eagles. Not sure how high I want my agility to get but my black mage has 114 AGI at level 54. He was at 39 before I started pumping those roids lol. I probably should've given them to my white mage for more strategic healing. Oh wells, these poison eagles are dropping speed plus like its candy <3

— MikieIJ [ Link » ]

Hi Jeff. What a pity that the Sound Restoration patch can only be used with European version, which is 16MB, while the US version is 8MB. The reason why the arthor can't make a patch for US version is the capacity limitation. Though the BGM is horroble when I play FF5A with my DS (it really murders my hearing), your mod is great I dare to say.

— axl_low

I've become interested in hacking FF5A to fix and tweak a number of issues with classes, similar to what you've done with your Custom Classes hack (which is great, by the way). ...

My question is: how did you actually edit the jobs as extensively as you did? From the acknowledgements page for Custom Classes, it appears that you used the GBA editor and SNES editor to investigate how they changed hex values, and made changes based on that. Do any of the values carry over from the SNES version of the game?

Other than [a few] things, Custom Classes is like a checklist of changes I have wanted for things that annoyed me in the original. If you put all this together by manually checking and tweaking hex values, to the point where even the order in which jobs are available change, well, hats off to you, that's impressive and a little insane (in a good way).

— Jordan Helin

This MOD is for true lovers of Might and Magic. Jeff is the creator Ludwig Ludmeister alias. It puts into play some hardcore elements that you will certainly enjoy it - monsters will not stay dead for long, so it definitely does not fall out of practice was Adjusted balance (balance) between weapons, spells and monsters in the game + was added a few improvements to the roads. Fixed the bug cap and experience in the arena. Finally, read the readme, there's a lot.

— svetmightandmagic.cz, Featured [ Link » ]

The only ones I've done so far are the faster monster movement and the Christian Coder mod. The first one is fine if you prefer phased combat. The second, I've never had problems with, and enjoy immensely.

— NeutralDrow [ Link » ]

There isn't much that I can contribute to your mod or the wizardry legacy other than my thanks and gratitude for a job well done.

I have played the Wizardry series for many years, from Wizardry 1 through to the trilogy of Wizardry 6, 7 and 8.

The game play of Wiz 8 was great, and I played it through many times before, but the mod that I have installed from your site, and efforts, has introduced another level of play and excitement that has renewed the game for me. I truly enjoy this Moded creation of the Wizardry world.

As I saw this mod and read the changes....the thought suddenly occurred to me.....Can I take it!?!? OHHH, this is so pretty!!!! *proclaims Sgt Sparkles*

Thank you for sharing this with the fans of Wizardry!

— Tasoan Steel

Jeff, thank you for the mod for Wizardry 8. I've just started experimenting with it, and most of the changes that you've documented (or I've noticed) are welcome. I've been playing Wiz8 for a long time, and have completed multiple games. I even have a web page offering import parties from Wiz7...

Since I wrote, I've had more time to use your mod, and I like it even more.

— Rich Franzen

Hiya Jeff, I'm a huge fan of Wizardry 8, having played through it several times. Dug it out the other day, (spur of the moment kinda thing) and remembered that last time I had played it I had used the CC Mod. I had great fun. That was almost two years ago, and since then I've got a new PC and I needed to re-install the Mod. Came back to your site where I got it from last time (never forget a quality website) and noticed that the 2.0 had been released...

— Jack Bennett

First of all let me say : Thank you very much for your wonderful job. I played MM4/5 for a really long time... with your mod I see me back 25 years ago.

Secondly... As I'm french I would like to translate your mod in French. ...

Changing "suppress poison" and "suppress disease" and replace them by "cure curse" and "mental integrity" is really very good. In some case this spells are very useful, more than the two others that I never used after knowing the "phyrna root".

Changing the time for Shops, Training, walk outside,...... very good.

I already spoke about the "respawn" of the "small" monsters specially near Vertigo, but I was very suprized to see a Minotaur in the north west part of the map before I was strong enough against "it". Same, when you arrive for the first time in Sandcaster and when you see a Mystic Mage, a Wizard and a Sorceress, you have no chance to left alive.

Very good also to let Priest (Cleric) and Wizard use Missile Weapons. Maybe Robbers and/or Priest could use at least crossbow.

Wonderful to have the possibility to create Helmet, Shields, .....with Ruby, Emerald, .....

This Mod is a wonderful Idea, and I would like work with you for other mods on Xeen and, why not, another game using the interpretor of Xeen, or, at least, expand this world by adding more "maps". I think that adding just a row or a column, with one town and one or two dungeons, on the general map would be a funny thing.

— Zoltic, Accomplished coder and Might and Magic enthusiast

Wow!! This game is really difficult to mod due to its age (Among other things) I'm a fan of it and bought it when GOG offered it. I'm going to try your mod right now. Thanks and congrats for the work!

— Antonio Robles