Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta!

This was a game released in 2012 for the PS Vita, 2018 for Steam, and 2020 for the PlayStation 4.

I played the PlayStation 4 version.

Similar to how Ys: The Oath in Felghana 'replaces' Ys III's spot in the series canon, Memories of Celceta is intended to replace Ys IV's spot in the canon.

However, there's a big difference here. Oath in Felghana for the most part entirely follows the previously-established Ys III storyline, only expanding and building upon it to create a much bigger and more well-rounded adventure.

Memories of Celceta, on the other hand, couldn't really do this in the same way. The problem with Ys IV is that there already exists three entirely different games titled "Ys IV", each of which has its own version of the story that are all largely incompatible with one another.

...So what does Memories of Celceta do? ...Well, it introduces a fourth version, of course. 

Memories of Celceta is yet another version of the Ys IV story. Unlike the previous three versions of Ys IV, this time the development was done by Nihon Falcom themselves. No more outsourced development, it's coming straight from the source this time. Therefore, this is now THE canon version of Ys IV. ...even though it doesn't have "IV" in its title. 

Interestingly, this game doesn't really incorporate anything from the previous versions of Ys IV at all. The premise, story, character roles, plot progression, and basically everything else is all completely new. None of the scenes and events that previously occured in Ys IV happen in Memories of Celceta.

Rather, this game takes the general setting of the Celceta Forest, the ten or so main characters who appeared in all versions of Ys IV previously, a few important items, some of the locations... and remixes them all into something that's completely its own thing.

Even aspects that were consistent between all three prior versions of Ys IV aren't necessarily present in Memories of Celceta. For example, I mentioned previously a scene where Adol gets thrown into prison by the soldiers - but that scene just doesn't occur here. Instead Adol is actually recruited by the soldiers' governor general to help survey the forest.

And lots of other things from the previous versions are not included, even things that you'd think were important worldbuilding elements - for instance, the Five Disciples of Lefance were seen (or at least mentioned) in all prior versions of Ys IV, but in Memories of Celceta, they just don't seem to exist at all, even though Lefance himself is still here. I guess this aspect of the lore is just gone then?

Memories of Celceta takes any pre-existing notion of what "Ys IV" was, and pretty much burns it all to the ground in order to establish a brand new story in its place.

And you know what? ... 

When I was talking about Ys IV previously, I was rather upset at how the extremely mediocre Mask of the Sun was supposedly the canon story, while the superb Dawn of Ys was not. But it looks like, ever since Memories of Celceta came out, neither Dawn nor Mask is canon any more. And... that's actually fine with me. I really like Memories of Celceta, so I don't mind it replacing all prior versions of Ys IV.

I've made my peace with the fact that Dawn of Ys isn't canon any more. It can go ahead and join the club for "alternative canon"  Ys games, along with the Korean Ys II Special.

...

Anyway, let's talk about Memories of Celceta on its own merits for a bit, yeah?

The most notable new aspect of the story is that Adol is amnesiac. At the beginning of the game, he wakes up with no memory of who he is. As you explore the Celceta Forest, you can come across stray memory orbs that reawaken one of Adol's lost memories, which shows a small cutscene of his past.

Due to this, Adol is pretty clueless and bewildered by everything going on around him for the majority of the story. ...He's turning into a typical shonen protagonist, oh no. 😲

It's fine, but I'm generally not a fan of amnesia plots to begin with. ...though some of the memory cutscenes do show moments of Adol's childhood, which is cute.

The game contains a very small amount of voice acting. Every time a new character is introduced, there is a line of voiced dialogue from them, but it goes back to unvoiced pretty soon after. There isn't a single scene in the game that's fully voiced. To be honest, I would have probably preferred if there were no voiced lines at all. It feels very strange to suddenly get a voiced line out of nowhere in a mostly unvoiced game.

In terms of the gameplay mechanics, Memories of Celceta builds from the previous game Ys Seven. All of Ys Seven's basic mechanics were copied over - we have the same combat system with the SP and EXTRA gauges, the learnable skills, swappable party members, enemy weakness system, collectible materials, item crafting, quests... basically everything Ys Seven established was kept around for this game.

The CPU allies don't seem to be quite as ridiculously good at dodging everything as they were in Seven. Instead, we now have the ability to set CPU allies to either "attack mode" or "evasion mode" by flicking the right stick. So if you want them to dodge everything, they're not going to be attacking any more. Oh well.

There are all sorts of other tweaks to the systems here and there. Skills are now learned as you level up, rather than being tied to weapons. You can now swap Adol out of the team if you want to. Charging attacks is now done automatically, rather than requiring you to hold a button. And lots of other minor things.

Overall, I would call Memories of Celceta a great improvement of what was established in Seven. Everything's been tweaked and adjusted to make the game feel better. The skills feel more distinct, item crafting feels more important, team composition feels more meaningful, and overall, it plays better than Seven in almost every way. Great stuff!

Adol has been tasked with surveying the uncharted Forest of Celceta, and the majority of the gameplay involves exploring and uncovering the map. For every 10% of the map you uncover, the governor general will give Adol a reward. Filling out the map is an overarching goal of the game, secondary to the main storyline.

You actually get quite a lot of freedom to explore in this game. When you step out into the forest for the first time, you actually have access to around 40% of the map right from the beginning. You can run around quite a lot before finding the next plot progression point. The world is rather large, especially for Ys standards. I really enjoy that. It's fun to follow the paths and find treasures and beat monsters and uncover the map, little by little. 

The structure of the world is rather mazelike, with lots of squiggly paths, branching paths, and paths that loop into previous areas to create shortcuts. It's not a confusing maze though, as the areas all feel pretty distinct from one another, so it's easy to keep track of where you are.

When it comes to actually completing the map 100%, there is a rather annoying problem in the way the map screen works. What visually looks uncovered on the map screen may actually have a tiny tiny corner that the game considers unexplored, which can't really be discerned just by looking at it. And so at the very end of the game, you can find yourself stuck at 99.6% map completion, with no indication as to which bits are supposedly missing. The only way to fix it is to literally just run around hugging every single wall in the game, hoping to brush up against the last missing pixel of the map... It's pretty awful that the game behaves this way. When I'm completing a map in an RPG, I definitely prefer to unlock distinct defined chunks of map, rather than it being so fuzzy and imprecise like this.

If completing the map was just a small self-imposed side-objective, that would be one thing, but there's actually a pretty big emphasis on it, as this task was given to Adol by the governor general as part of the main story. There's also a tangible and very useful reward locked behind 100% map completion, making it all the more important to be able to achieve it. It really really shouldn't be so annoyingly fiddly. I'd actually say that this is the game's biggest misstep.

But aside from this and a few other minor gripes, I enjoyed the adventure very much. The dungeons are pretty good, but occasionally annoying. Nothing special, but not bad. The bosses in this game continue the trend of Ys games having really good bosses. And the overall story and characters are fun.

It's a solid evolution of the Ys Seven system, a solid revision of the Ys IV story, and overall a great entry in the Ys series. It's a good game!

Unlike Ys Seven, which didn't have any postgame content whatsoever, Memories of Celceta includes both a boss rush time trial mode, and also a New Game Plus mode.

New Game Plus is very generous in this game - basically everything is brought over, including EXP, map completion, bestiary completion, all weapons, armour, materials - basically every item except for key items. It's actually quite fun to play in Nightmare difficulty mode in a New Game Plus file, as there is still a lot of challenge to be had despite being at endgame levels. I think Nightmare difficulty mode might have some level-scaling shenanigans going on or something, because even the early bosses were pretty tricky when I tried them in New Game Plus on Nightmare mode at max level.

New Game Plus is actually required to reach 100% item completion in this game. There's a blacksmith who will create legendary weapons for three of your six characters late in the game, and the only way to get all six is to do New Game Plus and reach the endgame all over again. It's rather annoying that you can't get everything the first time through, especially as there's an achievement for item completion, but oh well. It's not a huge issue.

I did take issue with some of the other achievements though - specifically, there are six achievements for having played "extensively" as a particular character. You need  to accumulate five hours of play time as each of the six party members. And this game isn't too long by modern RPG standards - you'd finish it in 20 to 30 hours depending on how much side content you do. (and a lot of that includes menus and cutscenes that don't count as playtime for the achievements) 

...So yeah, the existence of these achievements kind of made me self-impose some restrictions on my choice of character throughout the journey. Once the "Play extensively as Adol" achievement popped up, I never really went back to directly controlling Adol for pretty much the rest of the game, for fear of wasting the opportunity to be accumulating playtime with the others. ...Which was a bit sad. 

And by the end of the game, I was literally just standing outside the final boss door for like an hour and a half, waiting for the final character's achievement to pop up so I could get them all over with before I started New Game Plus.

I know it's my choice to care about the achievements. But I still think that the existence of these particular achievements is nothing but a detriment to the game. It serves only to make you self-conscious about your choice of character, rather than just allowing you to play as whoever you want without a care. And it's not a particularly interesting thing to reward a player for doing, anyhow.

...

So yeah. Good game overall. I enjoy it.

I dunno what I'll play next. The next game in the series is Ys VIII, however that's a biiig one, and I don't particularly want to start a big RPG so close to the release of the new Zelda. So I may take a break from Ys for now. 🙂

Ys Seven

Originally posted on Facebook on 18 April 2023 

Ys Seven!

This game was released on the PSP in 2009. In Japan and USA it got a physical release, but in Europe, it was a download-only release.

I played the download version on a PlayStation TV - the same way I played the previous PSP Ys games.

The game's full title is just "Ys Seven", which is a little peculiar. It's not in roman numerals like the other games, and it doesn't have a subtitle. ...I don't understand this lol. 

Ys Seven is a rather significant turning point in the series, as this is the entry where a lot of modern-style RPG elements have been added to the game.

So, this time around, it's not just Adol by himself. They've introduced a whole RPG party system into Ys! You begin the game with just Adol and Dogi, and you gain more friends as you progress. By the end of the game, you've got seven different characters to pick from.

You form a team of three characters, which can be done from the pause menu at any time (except during bosses), however Adol must always be included in the lineup. The player controls one of the three characters directly, while the computer controls the other two. You can swap which of the three you are controlling at any time with the press of a button. 

Each character has one of three attack types: slashing, bashing, or piercing. Some enemies in this game have specific resistances to the attack types - generally, rocky or shelled monsters must be hit with a bash, squishy or fleshy monsters must be hit with a slash, and flying enemies must be hit with a pierce. If you use the wrong character, the damage is severely reduced, to the point where it only does 1hp unless you are grossly overlevelled. This means that constantly swapping between your characters to suit the enemy is absolutely necessary. 

This game also introduces RPG-style Skills into Ys. When you equip a new weapon, it may have a skill attached to it. Once you use it enough times, the skill is learned, and you can now use it without needing that weapon. You can equip up to four skills at once - one to each of the four buttons. 

Skills are usually just a stronger kind of attack, though occasionally they have special properties such as having a long range, shooting a projectile, pushing enemies away, etc.

Skills can only be used if you have some SP meter remaining, which refills slightly every time you hit an enemy. 

And additionally, there's another meter that fills up whenever you hit with a skill - the "EXTRA" meter, which gives you one super-duper attack once it's full. 

...

With all this in mind, I wanted to highlight something I thought was quite interesting about this game, specifically regarding the way the game handles the computer-controlled party members.

It seems to me like the behaviour of the CPU allies has specifically been designed to avoid as many annoyances as possible.

- The CPU allies are absolute pros at dodging enemy attacks. They get hit very rarely, so you generally don't have to worry about keeping them safe.

- CPU allies don't take damage from spiky floors or lava, and if they get stuck behind a wall, they will teleport to your location to free themselves. You don't have to concern yourself with paying attention to their movements.

- The CPU allies can use any of their learned skills, not just the ones you've assigned to the four buttons for them. This reduces much of the fiddly swapping skills in the menu - you only have to worry about assigning skills for when you control them yourself. (you can also disable skills you don't want them to use)

- The CPU allies don't consume any of your SP gauge when they use skills. This means they they are capable of doing their big moves without the need to worry about them wasting your resources. This is balanced by the fact that the CPU allies will only use their skills when the player is also using a skill and consuming some SP anyway. So in this way, it's kind of like you're getting to use three skills for the price of one.

- CPU characters will not waste resources. They don't use potions, and they don't use their EXTRA move. If you want them to use these, you can easily just swap control to them and do it manually.

The way they've been implemented, the CPU allies are very predictable, somewhat manipulable, and they never get in the player's way. And if you need one of them to do something specific, it's very easy to switch who you're controlling at any time so you can perform their skills manually.

Since CPU allies are SO good at dodging and generally won't die on their own, you'll mostly only be losing HP as the character you're controlling. This means you essentially have three HP bars to work with, if you remember to swap to someone else once you're at low HP.

It's rather interesting - it kinda still retains the essence of the single-character focused gameplay from previous Ys games, as the CPU allies never really interfere with the player. It's very different from a Tales game where you keep having to tell your allies to not waste your healing items, or Trials of Mana where your allies keep interrupting the flow by casting spells and are always getting themselves killed. Nah, in Ys Seven, your allies are only capable of helping, and are not capable of hindering you in any way.

It's a rather thoughtful way of implementing a multi-character action-RPG system. I kinda like it!

... okay, enough about CPU allies.

They removed the jump button and replaced it with a dash. This makes for a game with much broader and flatter level design than the previous few games, which I think works better for a game with a full party of characters. It might have gotten too complicated if you needed to keep track of multiple characters and do a bunch of jumping and platforming at the same time. This flat design also works well with the new mini-map, which shows a top-down view of the terrain. 

The dungeon design is pretty typical of modern style RPGs. Run around some themed corridors, hit switches, activate mechanisms, solve a couple puzzles.... it's perfectly fine.

I do miss the mazelike aspect of the older Ys games, though. That one dark maze cave in Ys 6 was really intriguing to me, and from the way Seven is evolving the series, I doubt we're gonna see something like that again.

There's a guard parry move called "Flash Guard" that can be used to block ANY attack in the game if you have good timing. But if you miss, it forces the attack to be a critical hit against you. It's fun, but if you get good at the timing, it is CRAZY overpowered. With enough practice, you can become an invulnerable god. The only limitation is that the input is a kind of awkward. (Press L while holding R to parry.... but pressing L on its own activates your EXTRA skill... and I have definitely wasted my EXTRA skill so many times when I meant to go for a parry... heh)

In true modern RPG style, we now have a bunch of materials we can collect, either as enemy drops or from collection points found while exploring. These materials are used for item synthesis, to create new equipment and healing items. It works well enough, but it can be a bit of a nuisance always stopping to collect them. I liked it better in Xenoblade 1 and 3 where you just walk into collectibles without breaking stride.

The inventory system is like a hybrid of a classic Ys inventory and a regular RPG inventory. Healing items and important key items go in the Ys-style item grid, while equipment, materials for synthesis, and lesser key items go in the regular RPG item list inventory. It's a good way of doing it. I like that they kept the classic-style item grid around.

Unlike in Felghana and Origin, healing items are back in the inventory this time - so you can once again heal during bosses just like in Ys 6 and Ys 5. It seems Ys keeps changing its mind on whether or not it wants you to be able to heal during bosses lol.

The game is overall a lot bigger and a lot longer and more in-depth than any of the previous Ys games. It took me over 30 hours to complete this game! The previous three Ys games were like.... 10 hours or so each? The game is also a lot more linear than previous Ys games. You aren't really allowed to explore areas early, which is a little disappointing for me, as I love more open-ended games...but this game has a lot more dialogue scenes and story to it, so it does make sense. The story is relatively simple, but it's pretty good. It does the typical "you are the chosen hero" plot, but it has an interesting twist on the concept that I hadn't seen before. ...Adol sure has been through a lot, hasn't he? Saving the world seven times in a row.... Can't wait to see him do it for an eighth time in Ys 8.

One aspect that was a little disappointing was how NPCs are no longer fully unique. The three previous games (Napishtim, Felghana, Origin) all had nothing but unique NPCs with individual names and character designs. But Ys Seven unfortunately has mostly generic NPCs in the towns. The dialogue is still very detailed, though, as everybody's lines will update after every story event... but it's a bit sad to see generic characters in Ys after three games avoided it. 🙁 

Also there's no voiceovers in this game at all. Felghana had full voiceovers, but Origin and Seven don't. I really have to wonder about the criteria they use for deciding which games get VO and which ones don't. It's very inconsistent.

And... the other big disappointment was the complete and total lack of any postgame content! There's no New Game Plus like Felghana had... There's no bonus arena modes like Origin had... and there's not even a Boss Rush mode like all four previous games had! I was very surprised to see there was no Boss Rush in particular - the bosses in this game are great, and I thought Boss Rush had become a series staple at this point. How unfortunate!

And the lack of New Game Plus means that all the time I spent collecting materials, crafting every single unique weapon in the game, learning every single skill in the game... I dunno, it feels a bit useless? Some of these weapons can only be made after finding materials located within the final dungeon.... I'd have preferred if there was more opportunity to use them, you know? After all that time spent grinding rare collectibles in the last dungeon, there's barely any game remaining to do anything with the stuff they make. ...a New Game Plus mode would have been perfect for this, but as it stands, there's just nothing.

Overall... yeah, Ys seems to be heading in the direction of being a fully-fledged RPG series now!

To be honest, I kind of miss the more action-adventure aspect of the classic Ys games. It was comparable to Zelda in some ways. In fact, many reviews in the olden days often compared Ys I & II to the first Legend of Zelda game. But now, it's nothing like Zelda. It's definitely more in line with RPGs like Tales and Xenoblade - though still on a much smaller scale than either of those.

But it's all good stuff, regardless of which direction it's been evolving in. I had a great time with Ys Seven. 

So... next in the series will be Ys: Memories of Celceta. 🙂 I'll play that one next, probably. Or maybe I'll take a small break from Ys. Who knows.

Various different versions of Ys I & II

Originally posted on Facebook on 9 April 2023 

...okay so maybe I'm getting a bit too nerdy with this, but...

Ys I and Ys II are pretty short and quick games, you know? They were originally designed in the 1980s, so of course they couldn't make them very long back then!

You can definitely beat them in just a few hours each, once you know your way around them. And they have been ported to so many different platforms over the years... I was rather curious about all the different versions!

Most of them are similar to each other, but they all have their slight differences. However, there are a couple of versions of Ys I & II that have some pretty major differences, which I find interesting enough to talk about.

So let's talk about the various different versions of Ys I and Ys II.

....As a reminder, I already talked about the TurboGrafx-16 and PSP versions of Ys I & II in previous posts here and here. (in fact, the TG-16 version was the very first Ys game I played)

I'll talk about them in the order I played them in. Let's begin:

- Famicom Ys I

Released in Japan only - I played a fan translated version on emulator.

The Famicom version of Ys 1 is interesting because it modifies the level layouts, and.... most of the changes I don't really understand.

They changed the town layout: they added a river and some wells to Minea, and they also swapped the locations of the fortune teller and clinic... for some reason? And they added a bunch more houses, but if you try to enter the new houses it just says "Nobody is home". Seems a bit pointless, doesn't it? 

The overworld now has more stuff going on - there are now a couple of islands that can only be reached by teleporter statues.

There's also now a rather elaborate quest required to enter the Mines. Normally in Ys 1, the Mine entrance is just open, and you can explore it at any time. But on the Famicom it's unavailable, and it requires you to unlock it with these steps: Find a staff in a well in Minea, find the correct teleporter in the overworld to reach a lake on an island, bring the staff to the lake to obtain a flute, use the flute on a slightly conspicuous arrangement of trees to open a little grotto, get the staff blessed at the grotto, and then take it north to a lake, which will then dry up, allowing you to cross to the Mines entrance... but we're not done yet! Because you'll find that the Mines now have TWO entrances rather than one, one of which is blocked. You go in the unblocked entrance, and all you find is a small maze with nothing in it, except a placard that gives a not-very-clear hint. If you can figure out what the hint means, you go back to Minea town and enter a bunch of doors in the correct order, until it takes you to the ramparts, where finally, a voice from nowhere tells you "I will grant you access to the Mines". ..........

So, um. ...why was all of this necessary lol. Did they really need to add all this? What was wrong with just having the Mines be open from the start like normal?

Anyway... the second half of Ys 1 takes place in Darm Tower as always, however the layout of the tower in the Famicom version has been shrunken by quite a bit.

I suppose they couldn't fit the whole tower map on the small little Famicom cartridge? ...seems like they had to cut some of it out, and then they probably decided to add that elaborate overworld quest in order to make up for the lost content...

Aside from this, the general gist of the game does feel reasonably enough like Ys 1. The rest of the progression was not changed. Some of the dungeon layouts are modified, but they are close enough that they're definitely recognisable. This version of Ys 1 has a unique distinction in being the only version of the game where entering Darm Tower is not a point of no return. You can actually just walk back out of the tower whenever you like. How funny.

Aside from all the layout and progression changes, the game has an irritating problem - the screen doesn't scroll until you're really close to the edge. Early versions of Ys 1 are always like this, but this Famicom version suffers a lot more from it. It makes this version rather annoying to play. Additionally, it's pretty slow-paced compared to the TG-16 version, though I think Ys 1 was always kind of slow originally on PC-88, so this isn't necessarily something wrong with the FC version. Though I did make plenty of use of the emulator's speed-up function while playing because I was getting impatient.

Another problem with the Famicom version is that they didn't include Reah's Silver Harmonica! Reah is absent from Minea Town entirely, and you only meet her later on inside Darm Tower... and there's no mention of her harmonica at all. The harmonica is seen again in Ys II, Ys IV (Dawn), and Ys Origin as an important artifact of the goddesses, so it's kind of a problem to exclude it entirely from a version of Ys 1. ...I guess Ys lore was not so well established back in the day. 

- Famicom Ys II

Released in Japan only - I played a fan translated version on emulator.

After seeing so many changes to the Famicom Ys 1, I was expecting Ys 2 to have similar changes, but surprisingly that was not so! It's actually incredibly faithful to the regular Ys 2, with just a few layout changes here and there, most notably with Moondoria Ruins at the beginning. But once you're past Moondoria, it's pretty much almost exactly the same as how Ys 2 normally is, which is rather impressive. I was expecting there to at least be some more layout changes to Solomon Shrine, the final dungeon, since it's so mazelike... but it actually seems to have been copied over completely intact with almost no changes at all. 

Famicom Ys 2 is much faster-paced than Famicom Ys 1, which is a nice upgrade.

The biggest problem with this version is the required grinding. It has WAYY more required grinding than the other versions do. Every time you reach a new area, you can't damage any of the monsters, so you need to go back and grind on the previous area's monsters until you level up. It's rather annoying, though thankfully I used the emulator speed-up function to help mitigate the tedium.

I definitely wouldn't recommend the Famicom versions over the TG-16 Ys Book I & II by any means - they're worse in every regard. But it was indeed interesting to see how they differed, especially with that weird new overworld quest in Ys 1. 

Overall, they're not bad. Ys II is especially impressive for Famicom standards, actually. If you're JUST looking at action-RPGs specifically made for Famicom, then it's no exaggeration to say that Ys II rivals the likes of Faxanadu and Crystalis in terms of sheer quality. It's an impressive effort. That being said, the Famicom version of Ys II is definitely not the ideal Ys II experience.

- X68000 Ys I

I played on emulator, and there exists no fan translation for this game.

This is a weird little version of Ys 1, with no corresponding Ys 2 to go with it. The most notable thing about this one is how it doesn't use anime-style characters. The portraits used for the shop NPCs have a really bizarre semi-realistic style that I think looks really really bad and off-putting.

Aside from this, the progression design is similar to how Ys 1 is normally, except that you need to beat the Shrine before being allowed in the Mines. The world layout has been completely changed, and there's barely any overworld this time - it has been reduced to nothing more than a tiny field. Minea town, on the other hand, has been expanded a lot. And so this is a version of Ys where Minea town is somehow actually larger than the overworld field in terms of map size. And that is ridiculous. 

There are now a lot more houses, a nice fountain square, and lots more NPCs wandering around - it's all very nice-looking, however there isn't actually anything new to do in town. It's all just visual fluff. In fact, they even removed some things from this version - The clinic is gone, and you can't sell any items to Pim any more, nor return the Sapphire Ring to the guy in the pub. So in expanding the size of the town, they actually removed a few things and added nothing new to replace them. The only sidequest left remaining is returning the Harmonica to Reah. I wonder why they didn't include the other things? It's not like there isn't room for them to still be here.

The dungeon layout for the Mines has been redesigned entirely, however Darm Tower is extremely faithful to the original - it is basically 100% intact. This leads me to speculate that maybe Darm Tower was created first for this version, and then they ran out of disk space, so they had to remove most of the overworld to make it fit. 

...Hey, you know that these games came on floppy disks, right? The original PC-88 version of Ys 1 came on two disks, one for the main overworld and one for Darm Tower. (that's why Darm Tower is a point of no return - it was originally the point where you swap over to Disk 2!) ...so with this in mind, why didn't they do the same thing with the X68000 version? This version is just one disk, which has the full Darm Tower on it, but a severely reduced overworld. Hmm...

One thing about this version that surprised me is just how nice the boss fights are. Most old versions of Ys 1 have pretty janky fights, but the X68000 versions of the bosses all felt really fair and were quite fun. I was rather surprised by that. Additionally, this is a version of Ys 1 where I felt the Timer Ring, which slows enemy movements when worn, is actually very useful. Some of the areas in Darm Tower are full of lots of fast-moving enemies, much moreso than I've seen in other versions previously. I think that's cool.

Overall, this one is certainly an oddity, though it is actually pretty fun to play. Playability-wise, one of the best versions of Ys 1. But contentwise, it is very much lacking. Oh well.

- MS-DOS Ys I

I played on DOSBox. This version exists only in English - not even in Japanese, I don't think...

A very simple but fun version of Ys 1, which again, has no corresponding Ys 2 to go with it. Everything is fully intact - there are no compromises in content here. The gameplay works well enough, and it's a very speedy version of Ys 1 too, especially compared to some of the slower 8-bit console versions. However... the presentation in this version is horrible. The graphics are very ugly, and the music is literally just single-channel beeps pretending to be a soundtrack. I think if I wasn't playing on modern hardware with DOSBox, the beeps would be literally coming from the motherboard's internal speaker, and not from any sort of sound device. ...Remember when some older DOS games actually did that??? Weird times... This version is only good if you turn the sound off completely and play in silence.

This might be one of the easiest versions of Ys 1. The bosses are all pitifully easy, and none of the enemies can significantly slow your momentum. You still need to grind, of course, but it doesn't take very long to do so.

One interesting note about this version is how all the names have been changed. Adol is now "Arick", and every single other character now has a completely new made-up name. ...except for Sara the fortune-teller. She got to keep her name for some reason. ...But yeah, it's always annoying when they do this. Even the amazing TG-16 version of Ys Book I & II changed a few of the character names for no real reason. It's so annoying! It always leads to continuity problems when future games come out... For example: in Ys 6 for PlayStation 2. Adol's former-thief friend Dogi and the old-man scholar Raba have a scene where they reminisce about their time spent trapped in Darm Tower back in Ys 1 - except, in the TG-16 version, their names were Colin and Rasta, and here in the MS-DOS version, their names are Ogien and Aldon. ...ugh, changing character names willy-nilly like this just screws everything up for the future.

And Dogi ended up becoming a major character in basically every single Ys game going forward, so it's really unfortunate that his first appearance in the series gives him the wrong name in the initial English versions. ...At least the modern "Ys I & II Chronicles" version uses their proper names.

- Sega Master System Ys I

For this one, I played the game on real hardware with an actual Sega Master System cartridge - the PAL version.

I was interested in playing this because the Sega version of Ys 1 was the only Ys game to be released in Europe AT ALL. This Sega version was the only thing Europe saw of the Ys series, until 16 years later when Ys 6 came out on PlayStation 2. So I wanted to see what it was like, you know? This is also why I was keen on using the actual physical game cartridge instead of emulating it.

Interestingly, this release gets the game's title wrong. It's called "Y's", with an apostrophe, which is just.....not correct lol. You're not supposed to put an apostrophe there. This is only wrong on the packaging and cartridge label, however - in-game, the title screen is correct and any mention of Ys in the dialogue is correct. Hmm...

And they also changed Adol's name yet again, this time it's "Aron". However, unlike the MS-DOS version, all of the other characters got to keep their names... though some of them have alternate spellings (Luta Gemma is now "Luther Jemma", Raba is "Rauba", etc. A lot of these are actually closer to the way Japan typically romanises the names though, so they're not necessarily wrong.)... Dogi amazingly enough is correctly named Dogi in this version, which makes it the only English-localised old-school version of Ys 1 to get his name right. The weirdest name change is with Darm Tower, which is now called The DOOMED Tower... and with Dark Fact, the final boss, who is now named Dulk Dekt. Other than this... they didn't mess with the names too badly.

So, anyway, how was it then? ...well, this is probably the least-fun version of Ys 1 I have played so far. The reason being is that it's just... so... SLOW. It's absolutely maddeningly slow. 

The MS-DOS version took me two or three hours to blaze through, since it was such a speedy little version... but this Sega version took me around 7 or 8 hours. Ugggghhh. 

It probably didn't help that I was playing a 50hz PAL version of course, but even so, it's much slower than any other version of Ys 1 I tried, by a significant margin. 

There is no missing content in this version, however for some reason the dungeon layouts have all been fiddled with. They're not totally redesigned, but for some reason, they decided to flip some (but not all) of the rooms like a mirror image, and they occasionally redirect paths so that they lead in different directions than normal. I don't understand this at all - at least the layout changes on Famicom made sense to me, as they might have been running out of space in the ROM - but here on Sega, the dungeons aren't any smaller, they're just reconfigured a little bit. It is baffling.

The grinding is pretty bad in this version. There are so few enemies here... in areas where you'd normally find five or so enemies in other versions, the Sega version has... maybe two? And they take forever to respawn too. ughh. Grinding takes forever, walking takes forever...It's so annoying to do anything in this version. Also it feels like the bump combat system has been implemented rather poorly, as I can take damage even when I feel like I am properly positioned. It just feels sloppy.

Overall... bleh. This version is fine if you have a LOT of patience, or if you play on emulator and use speed-up (which I didn't lol). Otherwise.... there's just no benefit to playing this one. (but I am glad I got to see it through anyway, make no mistake 😃 😃 😃 ).

- Sega Saturn Ys I

This is a Saturn CD-ROM titled "Falcom Classics", which includes Saturn remakes of three Falcom games: Ys 1, Xanadu, and Dragon Slayer.

This Saturn game was only released in Japan, of course. ...hey, you know, I DO just so happen to have a Japanese Sega Saturn, right? so... yeah, I played this one on real hardware too. 🙂

This Saturn version of Ys was the very last of the "Classic style" versions of Ys I & II. All versions of I & II released after the Saturn version are based on the new and modern "Eternal/Complete/Chronicles" version, with the expanded overworld and added content etc.

The Saturn version is a very faithful version of Ys 1. You'd expect as much on the Saturn, as there shouldn't really be any technical limitations to speak of for such a simple 2D game. It has more detailed graphics, and also includes 8-way movement and a "run" button - but aside from these additions, it is pretty much a direct, basic, faithful version of Ys 1. Nothing added, nothing removed, nothing changed. (well, actually, I noticed a single change - the Treasure Chest Key is no longer found in a chest, but rather given to you by Feena once you rescue her. Not sure why this was changed when nothing else was...? anyway) This version plays quite well with the smoother movement - I quite enjoyed it, especially since I played it immediately after the horribly slow SMS version.

I thought it was quite good! The one problem this version has is that the boss fights cause the entire screen to rapidly flash white whenever you deal a hit of damage, which is really painful to look at. I actually had a big headache after finishing this version... 🙁

This is another very speedy version of Ys 1. Beat it in around 2 or 3 hours or so. Not bad!

I suppose I could say that this version of Ys 1 is very unremarkable. It doesn't have any interesting additions, nor any bizarre quirks. It's just a played-straight version of the game, and it's been done quite well.

...I've actually been rather curious about the Dragon Slayer and Xanadu series by the way. I don't know if this obscure Saturn collection is the appropriate starting point however - I would like something in English to begin with, if at all possible.... but that's for another day. For now my focus is on Ys.

- Sega Saturn Ys II

This is a Saturn CD-ROM titled "Falcom Classics II", which includes two more Saturn remakes of old Falcom games: Ys II, and "Taiyou no Shinden: Asteka II", which is also known as "Tombs & Treasure" in English.

And again, this Saturn game was only released in Japan, and I played the original CD on my Saturn. 😃

...I would like to play Tombs & Treasure on NES one of these days... I'm not too interested in the Saturn version for the moment, since the NES one is actually in English. So yeah, of course my focus here is on Ys II for the moment.

Again, this is a very straightforward faithful rendition of Ys II, with no additions and no changes. The same control improvements from Saturn Ys 1 are present here too, and they make for a very speedy version of Ys II. Completed it in around 4 hours, which is pretty fast for Ys II!

Interestingly, they actually included VO this time, whereas Saturn Ys 1 did not have any voices at all. What's funny is that in the title menu, there's an option to see some of the scenes from Ys 1 with added voices. I wonder if fans were complaining that Ys 1 on Saturn was not voiced, so they decided to include some newly-voiced Ys 1 scenes as an apology or something. Very peculiar.

The bump combat was implemented much better here than in the Saturn Ys I. In Saturn Ys I, it's too easy to run right through the enemies, as it seems like the bump system was not updated properly to accommodate the faster movement and new diagonal movement. That has all been fixed in Saturn Ys II, which makes it feel a lot nicer.

Overall, the two Saturn versions of Ys I and Ys II are some of the better ones for sure. There's still a lot of mandatory grinding, unfortunately, but other than this, there are no major gameplay issues or compromises. They are just fun versions. My only complaint is the horrible screen flashing effects during bosses. ...And also that they are in Japanese only.

- PlayStation 2 Ys I & II Eternal Story

This release was exclusive to Japan. I played it on the original PS2 disc.

At first I thought this was going to be exactly the same as the PSP version I talked about in a previous post, since they are both based on the same "Ys I & II Complete" remake that was initially for Windows PC, however Ys I & II Eternal Story for PS2 does have some notable differences compared to the PSP version.

From the title menu, you can select three options: There's "Ys I" and "Ys II" separately (like normal), but there's also a new and exclusive "Ys I & II Eternal Story" option, which at first appears to be a combined version. I thought it might be something similar to the TG-16 version, maybe? Well, as it turns out... not really. It doesn't really combine the two games into one... rather, all it does is add a bunch of strange changes to the games.

So if you want to play the standard, unmodified remake versions of Ys I and Ys II , the option is there. And if you play them separately, then yes - it's pretty much exactly the same as the PSP and Steam versions, like I was expecting. When playing in the standard mode, the biggest difference is that the loading times are way worse on PS2 than they are on PSP - they're especially bad in Ys II specifically for some reason. It makes the PS2 version a chore to play in general. ...Because of this, the PSP / Steam version is absolutely the better way to play. (and also the PSP and Steam versions are available in English too - that's pretty important!)

However, let me go into detail about that weird new "Eternal Story" mode that is exclusive to the PlayStation 2 version.

When playing the game in "Eternal Story" mode, it starts off in Ys 1, and then when you beat it, it goes on to Ys 2. Unlike on the TG-16 version, however, your EXP does not carry over - which means the two adventures are fully separate. ...I don't know why they decided to combine them in this mode when it doesn't actually behave as a combined adventure in practice, but whatever.

More importantly, when playing in the Eternal Story mode, a bunch of changes are applied:

- In Ys 1, the level cap is raised from 10 to 50. This makes it so that you can grossly overpower the bosses if you feel like it, but it also significantly screws with the balance of the game. (Though, to be honest, I'm just glad I didn't have to struggle with the Vagullion fight again for this playthrough...) 

In Ys II, the level cap is raised from 55 to.... I don't know. I was at 71 when I finished, and it seemed like I could go higher. Most likely it was raised to 99.

In order to accommodate the higher level caps, all of the monsters in the whole game were rebalanced. And to be quite honest, it doesn't feel like they were rebalanced very well. In Ys 1, you will start to overpower everything very quickly, and in Ys 2, you tend to feel underpowered throughout the whole game. ... It felt much worse than my PSP playthrough did.

- A bunch of "effects" can now randomly happen when you attack enemies, depending on which kind of sword you use: "Stun", to make enemies stop moving, "Critical Hit" to deal a lot more damage, "Killed" to randomly instakill an enemy, "Counter" to deal damage back if you trade blows. Since it happens randomly, there's no real strategy to making use of these other than just getting lucky. It just makes the game easier at no cost.

- There's a new "combo" counter which keeps track of how many hits you have dealt to enemies in a row, which resets to 0 whenever you take damage. I think having a higher Combo number is supposed to make your accessories more effective or something?? I didn't quite understand it, and I didn't really notice any benefits at all.

- You get a new item, the "Dreamy Jewel" which can transport you to a screen where you meet up with two new characters: Misha the artist and Jeanne the singer. If you keep clicking the "talk to Jeanne" button, then Jeanne will add more songs to her song list, depending on your current story progress - basically she acts as the Sound Test function. As for Misha, she will paint you ten paintings if you bring her ten specific items that have been hidden in the world. There's a seashell, a ribbon, a pair of golden earrings... you get the idea. These items only exist in the PS2 version, and they only exist for this purpose. 

- The voiceovers are exclusive to Eternal Story mode... for some reason??? If you play in the standard mode, all dialogue is unvoiced. .... It's pretty ridiculous to limit it this way, it has to be said.

- Other miscellaneous small changes are also applied. For example: In Eternal Story mode, it's possible to get the Short Sword from Slaff for free if you talk to him and listen to all his dialogue options. Whereas you normally have to pay 500 gold for it in Minea's shop. ... There may be other small changes like this that I didn't notice.

And... that's it. They added ten hidden items to the world, added random critical hits, and significantly screwed with the game balance. And also the loading times are way way worse. That's what you get for playing on the PlayStation 2 version.

Personally, I would stick with the PSP / Steam version, "Ys I & II Chronicles". The new additions exclusive to Eternal Story are just not all that worthwhile. This version is only good for if you are really struggling to beat that damned Vagullion fight on PSP or Steam, and want a version where you can overlevel lol.

Additionally, the game crashed once for me. Not sure how rare that is, but it's worth noting.

Also annoyingly - there are three different modes and four different difficulty settings, yet the game only lets you save three save files. It's just not enough. I know you can just swap memory cards if you really wanted to, but it's not ideal.

Overall... yeah. Not a fun version of Ys I & II, mostly due to the screwed balance and baaaad baaaad loading.

- Nintendo DS Legacy of Ys: Books I & II

This was originally released as two separate Nintendo DS games in Japan, however the USA version combined both into one DS cart with a selection menu on the title screen.

They did not release this game in Europe, so I had to go get myself the USA version from eBay. Of course, I played on a proper DS - I don't like emulating DS games in general since the dual-screen and touchscreen stuff just works best on the actual device, you know?

This DS version is rather unique - it's primarily based on the Eternal/Complete/Chronicles remake version of Ys, however it is not a direct port at all. The graphics have been overhauled, and the combat system has been adjusted too.

The graphical style uses a mixture of 3D polygon environments with 2D character sprites, and... well, I'm actually a big fan of it! 😃 😃 It feels so very "DS" to me in a way that makes me nostalgic for the days of playing Pokémon Gen 5 and other DS games with this kind of style. I like what they've done here, though I'm sure there are fans who prefer the fully 2D style of the PSP and Steam versions.

That being said, there are a lot more loading triggers now, especially in Ys II. Lance village is awkwardly split in half with a loading trigger down the middle... Thankfully the loading times are very short, but the extra fadeouts make some of the traversal feel a little bit unusual - this is most notable in the Noltia Ice Ridge, where it has a loading fadeout on almost every staircase.

They added a mini-map to the bottom screen, which is a standard feature in many DS adventure games, but it actually marks the very first time an Ys game has ever had a mini-map. It's sooo useful in navigating the mazelike dungeon areas, especially since the view on the main screen can feel a little cramped.

The dungeon layouts were not altered at all, however the navigation is so much easier in this version, just because you can see so much of the surrounding dungeon layout on your touchscreen at all times.

Combat has been completely changed...and to be honest, not in a good way.

Okay so... the bump combat system is in this game, for about five minutes of gameplay. Once you reach Minea and buy a sword, suddenly the bump combat is gone completely. 

Once you equip a weapon, you need to press the Y button to swing the sword, and it's a very short-range swing. You sort of have to approach enemies while swinging the sword in order to hit them - sort of like a combination of bumping and regular swordplay, but you have to time it properly in order to make it work, and it's rather fiddly and awkward. ...I find it funny that the obscure Korean "Ys II Special" has a waaayyy better implementation of Ys sword combat than this much more well-known DS game lol.

If you hit enemies in quick succession, the word "combo" appears on screen, and according to the instruction booklet, this will increase EXP gain from the enemy, though I'm not sure I noticed the difference.

This new method of combat feels really sloppy. You can just button-mash to victory, but if you try to be a bit more efficient, then you can just end up taking damage seemingly out of nowhere. And sometimes enemy attacks can hit you even when you are trying to be careful. It's kind of not so great...

If you go into the options menu, you can switch the control scheme to "Stylus Mode", where now the buttons don't do anything, and instead you control Adol with the touchscreen, in a manner very reminiscent of the two Zelda games on DS. While playing like this, then bump combat works - you just ram into the foes. I generally prefer the D-pad controls though, since they have more precision - so I have no choice but to get used to the weird new combat.

...You know, I don't understand why you need to change a setting in the options menu to swap control schemes? When using touch controls, the buttons do nothing, and when using the buttons, the touchscreen does nothing.... so wouldn't it be much simpler to have both styles active at the same time then? So we could easily just start touching when we wanted to, rather than having to specifically change a setting? ...

Anyway, the poorly-redone sword combat actually wasn't a huge problem in the end, for two reasons:

Reason 1: They made Ys 1 WAY too easy in general. And Reason 2: In Ys II, they made the fireball spell VERY strong, so you don't really need to use the sword at all.

This is the easiest version of Ys 1 I have ever seen. Ys 2 in this version actually has a decent difficulty comparable to other versions, but Ys 1 is an absolute joke. 

In Ys 1, the basic enemies never feel like they pose much of a threat. They adjusted the levelling system a little, and so the level cap has been raised from 10 to 24...but you gain EXP so quickly that, even with the increased level cap, you still will reach max level before entering Darm Tower. The early game bosses can be a little tricky, but the fast EXP gain means it won't be long until you can easily overpower them. But all of the Darm Tower bosses are absolute jokes. There is zero challenge to be had with them.

Additionally, they adjusted the game to fully ensure that players will never get themselves in sticky situations - you can no longer enter the Mines before completing the Shrine (when you try, it just says "There is no reason to go here"), and in Darm Tower, some of the empty treasure chests (that normally serve as decoys) have actually been filled with spare weapons and armour, just in case you didn't buy them before the point of no return. 

They also added a brand new location to the game! After clearing the Shrine and before entering the Mines, you have to traverse a new area called the "Vageux-Vardette". This is a small maze area where you have to hit switches to open gates. It's actually pretty fun to explore a never-before-seen area in Ys 1, but this place has some treasure chests that give you a very powerful weapon and set of armour for free - which completely breaks the point of having to save up money to buy the stronger items in Minea. 

...the back of the box claims this version of Ys has "new equipment", and... that's literally only true because of these added items in the Vageux-Vardette, and they really don't amount to much other than further breaking the game balance.

In Ys 2, while the difficulty for the bosses remains fairly intact, the fire magic is absurdly powerful compared to your sword. Normally in Ys 2, your fireball has a comparable power level to your sword - with the benefit being its long-range, and the drawback being the MP cost. But here on the DS, the fireball is so so so much stronger than the sword, there's basically never a reason to use the sword for anything, except for the odd enemies immune to fire.

...

I have a theory about this DS release. I think that they were trying to turn Ys into a "casual-friendly" game for the Nintendo DS market. The DS was very popular with a more casual audience, in a world before smartphone games really took off. Game developers wanted to appeal to this new kind of audience, so they had to make the games simpler and easier and more hand-holdy to achieve this... This is why we ended up with the two DS Legend of Zelda games that were much more straightforward (and much more boring) than any previous Zelda.

I wonder about this, though, because Ys 2 DS actually retains some of its difficulty. I wonder if they felt like they went a bit overboard with Ys 1, and toned down the "casualification" a bit for Ys 2? It makes sense when you realise that the games were separate releases in Japan. 

The DS version doesn't include all of the content from the other modern remake versions of Ys I & II. It does not include the bestiary, character logbook or adventure journal.

It does include a boss rush mode, though, so at least there's that. Strangely, there's also a brand new "Multiplayer" mode??? Unfortunately, I couldn't take a look at it because it requires multiple Legacy of Ys cartridges, and just getting one was kind of expensive. But it seems to just be a simple competitive minigame of "kill the most monsters to win". Again, this very much reminds me of the Zelda DS games which also had a rather tacked-on competitive mode. ...Was this also something seen as appealing to casual players?

There are many things that make this version feel like a rather sloppy job:

First of all, there's a lot of slowdown during most of the Ys 2 boss fights. Whenever there are a lot of bullets or objects on screen at the same time, the game slows to a crawl, which is kind of annoying.

Various animations are messed-up or missing - most notably when you obtain an item in Ys 1, its picture is supposed to appear on screen, but it kind of appears just for a second in a way that doesn't feel right. Teleporters in the dungeons have no visual or sound effects at all, and some animations such as Adol drinking the holy water in Ys 2 are just not included. Additionally, the screen doesn't scroll correctly in certain scenes - most notably with Maria in the belltower: you can talk to her, but you can't see her because she's just a little too far off screen. It kind of makes this frantic part of the story lose a lot of its impact.

The item that gives you access to the bestiary was removed in Ys 2, however there is still NPC dialogue that hints to its location, which is just bad and confusing... And toward the end of Ys 2 when the land of Ys is supposed to have descended from the sky and landed on earth - if you go to the beginning cliff, the background graphics still show us being high in the sky... which completely breaks the story the game is trying to tell. They couldn't just swap out the background graphic here like the PSP version does? Or did they just forget to?

Overall, it's a pretty decent, fun version of Ys I and II. Despite the drastically lowered difficulty, I thought the game was still pretty fun. It's a very fast-paced version of Ys, and it's still just fun to run around the dungeons collecting everything, especially with the mini-map making navigation a breeze.

I actually enjoyed this version a lot! ...Though I wouldn't consider it to be a definitive version by any means. There's no denying it's a very flawed version compared to the others. Regardless - if I had this game when I was younger playing my DS all the time, I am certain I would have absolutely loved it.

...

...

...

Okay, so. If I were to rank all of the versions of them... hmm..

- 1st Place: TurboGrafx-16 CD Ys Book I & II

I like how they combined both games into one large game, which has the effect of rebalancing the entire EXP system. This fixes some of the problems with grinding that plague all other versions of Ys I and Ys II. There are no compromises in content, and it maintains the appealing retro feel of the older versions while still playing well. (well, okay, the retro style is more appealing to MY tastes anyhow) Additionally, it has the best version of the soundtrack for sure!

- 2nd Place: PSP Ys I & II Chronicles

This is the main remake version of Ys I & II, along with the Steam "Chronicles+" version which I believe is basically the same thing (though I have not personally tried the Steam version). It expands the game and makes everything modern, without losing the essence of the original. It's a very nice remake, however I have more personal attachment to the TG-16 version. To me, the biggest problem with this version is the ridiculous difficulty spike at the Vagullion boss. I know I keep complaining about it, but I seriously have an issue with the way this boss has been designed in this version, and it seriously impacts my enjoyment and my ability to recommend this version.

- 3rd Place: Saturn Ys I and Saturn Ys II

These are the probably the nicest versions of the original "pre-remake" Ys 1 and Ys 2. They have all the content and none of the compromises, and they control really smoothly as well. I rank them below the TG-16 version, however, because the TG-16 put so much extra effort into the presentation, whereas the Saturn versions very much play things safe and may feel a bit more "boring" in comparison. Also the harsh screen flashing effects during bosses are very unfortunate. ...and they are also only available in Japanese.

- 4th Place: Nintendo DS Legacy of Ys: Books I & II

This is primarily based on the Eternal/Chronicles remake version, but has its own unique graphical style. I think this is a very fun and fast-paced version of Ys I & II, however the drastically lowered difficulty, altered sword combat, and other changes make for a flawed version that is not on par with any of the other releases of the remake. Still a fun game. 🙂

- 5th Place: X68000 Ys 1

Definitely not the ideal way to play Ys 1 since it is missing so much content in the overworld, but anyone who is already a fan of Ys 1 should definitely give this version a try at some point, just because the boss fights are so uniquely fun in this version. This version would rank higher if there was also a corresponding Ys II to go with it, or if the overworld was fully intact. It really does play very nicely. It's only available in Japanese, but that's okay since realistically, at this point, this version is only going to be played by someone who's already a fan and already knows the game anyway.

- 6th Place: PlayStation 2 Ys I & II Eternal Story

This version is basically the exact same as the PSP edition, except the loading times are way worse, making it less fun to play. It also has a new way to play, the "Eternal Story" mode, that is mostly the same but with a bunch of weird changes that screw with the game balance. Generally made redundant by the PSP / Steam version, unless the weird changes are particularly appealing. Only available in Japanese, which hurts it too.

The reason this is so low down the rankings compared to the PSP version, despite being almost exactly the same, is because the long loading times really affect the enjoyability of this version.

-7th Place: Famicom Ys I and Famicom Ys II

The only remarkable thing about the Famicom versions is the bizarre new overworld content in Ys 1. Otherwise, the Famicom versions are just generally worse than most other versions. The grinding is very pronounced, and Ys 1 in particular feels very lacking in its presentation. That being said, Ys II is a pretty impressive game for Famicom standards.

-8th Place: MS-DOS Ys 1

This isn't too bad a version in terms of playability, but the abysmal music makes it impossible to recommend. There is no reason to opt for this version. Though to be fair, it ain't a bad port at all despite its appearance.

- 9th Place: Sega Master System Ys 1

This version sucks compared to the others. It's just so slow. If this is the only version of Ys 1 you know, then yes, it's a pretty fun adventure game for Sega. I'm sure it had its fans back in the day, especially for being the only Ys release Europe got. But it has to be said... basically any other version is superior.

...

...

Honorable mention:

Ys 1 and 2 were originally released on five different computer systems in Japan. PC-8801, PC-9801, FM7, X1, MSX. I really wanted to try one of these versions.

So I downloaded the MSX rom and ran it in an MSX emulator, and this is what you get:

You get a game with relatively slow movement and extremely choppy scrolling. The MSX wasn't known for its scrolling, it has to be said.

You also get an EXTREMELY AWKWARD saving system: Whenever you press the F4 key to save, everything immediately stops, and it prompts you to swap the game disk with the user disk, which is a blank floppy disk for your save game to go on. After it's finished saving, then you need to swap the user disk back with the game disk.

This wouldn't be so annoying if it wasn't for the fact that you have to do this every single time you die as well.

I think the MSX system did have two floppy drives, but Ys specifically asks to use only Drive A for both disks, forcing you to keep swapping. I wonder why it can't use Drive B??? There must be a technical reason, right?

On emulator, "swapping disks" means browsing for the game's .dsk files on your computer's dekstop folders, and loading them into the emulator every time the game asks to swap...

Thankfully if you're on emulator, you can also just use savestates to mitigate the awkwardness.

I don't really want to rank the MSX version to be honest. ...it feels a bit unfair to call it a "bad version" when it was in fact one of the original five versions of Ys in the first place.  All I have to say is.... the slow SMS version being the way it is makes a lot of sense if this was its source material. (aside from the restructured dungeons - I still don't get that)

I did not play the MSX version to the end. I only wanted a peek. Overall.. definitely an amazing game for 1980s standards, absolutely. But all future versions have greatly improved upon the playability, making the original five releases the most non-ideal way to play.

Okay.... so now that I have played through Ys 1 and 2 like ten times... is it FINALLY time to move on? I say so. 😃 So next time I will actually be making progress with my journey through this saga, and I will be playing Ys Seven next. 🙂

Ys II Special

Originally posted on Facebook on 2 April 2023

Ys II Special for MS-DOS

Okay, this might be one of the most obscure Ys games out there. But I was sooo curious about it, I felt compelled to play through it!

"Ys II Special" is an MS-DOS game released in 1994. Of course I played it on my computer with DOSBox, after having downloaded it from an abandonware site.

This Ys game has an interesting distinction - it was never released in Japan! Rather, this game was exclusively released for the South Korean market.

While I do have some intermediate Japanese language knowledge, I have absolutely zero Korean language knowledge, so I was completely illiterate throughout my Ys II Special playthrough. I couldn't find a walkthrough for this game online, however, THANKFULLY someone had submitted the game's maps to vgmaps.com, and they even included useful information about where to find and use items. Additionally, I found an Ys fansite forum thread from 2007 where people were figuring out how to progress. This is about as close to a walkthrough as there is, and it was helpful enough to allow me to finish the game.

Ys II Special is loosely based off Ys II, except it has been greatly modified and expanded. The same characters, locations, and very broad story structure are present, but everything has been changed so heavily that it barely resembles Ys II at all. 

For example: in regular Ys II, Adol starts with the six Books of Ys, which he must return to the six priest statues found in the first dungeon area.

However, in Ys II Special, Adol must travel the lands, seeking out six towers - each one dedicated to one of the priests. Each tower is a dungeon with many floors and a boss fight at the end. Adol will then return one of books to the priest statue at the top of the tower.

This aspect of the story that was just an earlygame quest in Ys II has become the entire premise of the adventure in Ys II Special.

Ys II Special overall is actually quite a bit bigger in scope than most of the classic Ys games. I would say that it took around three or four times longer to finish Ys II Special compared to Ys II normal. The numbers also get much bigger - At max level, you have 9999 HP! Compared to regular Ys II where you max out at 255 HP.

The gameplay is pretty smooth. Adol has eight-way movement, and he will automatically navigate his way around bumps in the terrain, which is really nice. He walks pretty fast, and the game even has a "fast mode" that makes the game REALLY fast! It's easy to toggle fast mode on and off whenever you like with the PgUp and PgDn keys, so backtracking and exploring large areas is really fast-paced, which I enjoyed a lot.

You have the classic bump combat system, but additionally, you can also swing the sword independently of the bump combat. What this means is that you can steamroll your way through weak enemies just by walking, but when up against a stronger enemy or a boss, you also have a more controlled way of fighting. I actually like this system quite a lot!

The dungeon design in this game is okay - the earlygame dungeons are fun to explore, however the lategame dungeons tend to drag on a bit too much, with some of them being based around a not-so-fun gimmick. Most gimmicky is Fact Tower, which is sixty floors of "pick a door", and if you pick the wrong door, it sends you back a few floors. ... very annoying.

However, the dungeon that really got to me the most was Solomon Shrine, the final dungeon of the game. 

In regular Ys II, Solomon Shrine was a large, mazelike area that was pretty fun to figure out. Once you got the basic gist of the layout in your head, navigation became pretty simple. 

However, with Ys II Special, they went way, way, WAY overboard when designing the expanded layout of Solomon Shrine. It is an enormous, confusing, maddening labyrinth, and I just couldn't get my head around it. Most of the other locations in the game were fun to figure out mostly by myself, but when I got to Solomon Shrine, I was nose-deep in those vgmaps.com maps the whole time. It would have taken more patience than I had to figure it all out for myself - especially while illiterate. So yeah. Fun dungeons for the most part, but that final one is a bit too much for me!

The overall game balance feels a bit out-of-whack in this game. When exploring a dungeon, it is very easy to get yourself in a state where you "feel" overleveled, as the enemies can barely touch you... however, when you reach the boss at the end, you find that you can't deal any damage to it, which means you still gotta grind. It feels like the power levels for the bosses don't match the enemies. Grinding is pretty fast in this game, though, as you can just turn it to Fast Mode and zoom up and down a corridor, gaining tons of EXP very quickly... so you won't be stuck on a boss for very long.

I would say that the enemies in this game are pretty negligible for the most part - most of the dungeon challenge comes from the navigation.

This game has a lot of cool hidden secrets to find in it. Mostly small sub-areas with unique items in them, which is always fun to find. Some of them are hidden pretty well too...

So overall the game is great, right? A big unique adventure, fun dungeons, fun exploration, tolerable enemies.... well, not exactly. There's one huge, huge HUGE problem that almost ruins everything.

...

And that problem is that the game has a tendency to crash. And it's not just the occasional random crashing - it's some significant consistent crashing.

In fact, the crashes are so bad that it makes the game literally impossible to beat, unless you know about a very very specific way to bypass the crash.

Let me go into detail:

The game seems to crash at specific moments. I noticed that there are some secret sub-areas in the main overworld with a treasure chest inside. However, every time I went inside and grabbed the chest, the game would crash upon trying to leave. Every single time.

So eventually I just learned to avoid entering these areas.

However, the big problem came when this consistent crash started happening in a quest-mandatory location.

In the Ice Ridge area, there is a section where you need to find an NPC in the Ice Ridge field, and then go back to the nearby town afterwards. However, every single time I talked to this NPC, the game would crash before I had a chance to go back to town. I tried six or seven times, and it was the same crash every time. I was well and truly stuck. And it wasn't just me - the people in the 2007 forum thread were reporting the same issue. So it's not my specific DOSBox setup - it's the game itself that has the problem.

In this game, you can only save at Inns in town. You can't save anywhere, which is a real problem when the game crashes, as you may lose a lot of progress.

However... HOWEVER. In the first village in the game, Lance Village, there is a very very VERY hidden cave. You have to walk into what looks like a solid wall. It is very unlikely that a player will find this cave accidentally. ...And once you're inside this cave, it's swarming with high-level monsters that will instant-kill all but an end-game level Adol. HOWEVER - inside this cave is a treasure chest containing the "Diary" item. And with this item in your inventory, you are granted the ability to SAVE ANYWHERE. 

This item can be obtained immediately upon starting the game, however since it is so well hidden, you most likely won't chance upon it. I only learned about it thanks to the 2007 forum thread and the vgmaps.com maps. And even if you do find the cave by pure chance, you might assume that this is a high-level area you should return to later, and may not decide to explore it fully. Actually reaching the Diary chest requires some nimble avoiding all of the enemies, which isn't so easy.

I speculate that the crashes occur due to the game not clearing its memory properly after certain scenes. But if you make a save with the Diary before a crash is about to occur, you can save, close the software, relaunch it, and... all of a sudden, you can progress past the crash point just fine! 

There's one problem though.... once you enter the Ice Ridge, you temporarily lose access to Lance Village. You have to complete the entire Ice Ridge area before you're allowed back out. ...this means that, if you entered the Ice Ridge without the super-duper-secret Diary item in your inventory, then congratulations - you have rendered your game completely unwinnable. No matter how hard you try, you cannot progress without the game crashing. And you cannot leave and go grab the Diary either. Welcome to your new icy purgatory.

So...yeah. Is this a huge problem, or what?

Thankfully the Diary item even exists in the first place - otherwise the game would be literally unwinnable. 

There are lots of other bugs too:

Some of the doorways in Solomon Shrine will trap you in the walls when you enter them, forcing you to reload. ...it makes an already confusing maze even worse.

A couple of times, the game set my respawn location to be precisely on top of an enemy, which caused an infinite loop of dying and respawning and dying over and over until I reloaded. ...that was fun.

There are actually many other signs that indicate that the game might have had a rushed development. For example, one of the towns has a large building with a playing card icon on the door, however the door doesn't go anywhere. It seems like there were plans for some kind of casino minigame here, but there's just nothing there. I wonder if they had run out of time, and had to scrap the nonessential minigames in order to finish the important parts of the game on time.

And some of the item placement feels like they didn't fully finalise everything too - very often you will open a chest and find a new weapon that is significantly weaker than the weapons you've already had for a long time. And one of the items, the Flame Shield, is found in two different locations - once in Burnedbless, and once in the Solomon Shrine Waterways. If you grab the second one, it doesn't get added to the inventory, it just vanishes lol. Additionally, I found a few keys that didn't seem to have corresponding doors. And there appear to be lots of items in general that just flat-out don't do anything. The inventory gets pretty messy in this game, with no way to sort items.

I wonder if the game was rushed to release. If they just had a bit more time to develop the game, they could have sorted out the bugs at the very least.

It's such a shame.

Ys II Special is a great game to play if you're following guides like I did.

But these technical problems are too significant to overlook. You have to be savvy about mitigating the crashes in order to enjoy this game.

Overall, though, I had a great time with this game. It's fun, but definitely not a must-play in the Ys series. I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity about this game for sure. It was well worth a playthrough for me, despite the technical difficulties. 🙂 

Ys III, IV, and V for PlayStation 2

Originally posted on Facebook on 27 March 2023

I decided to play the obscure PlayStation 2 editions of the classic Ys series. And wow, it's an interesting mixed bag.

In 2003, Ys was revived from its dormancy with the release of two games: the newest entry Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, and the remake of Ys I & II, which has gone by several names over the years (Eternal, Complete, Legacy, Chronicles). I already talked about these two games previously. 🙂

After both of these games were ported to the PlayStation 2 by Konami (Ys VI) and DigiCube (Ys I & II), it seems like Nihon Falcom were keen to follow up these releases with even more Ys games on PS2. But unlike with Ys I & II, they didn't actually have anything already developed to port over - so they commissioned Taito to make three new versions of the remaining classic Ys games.

None of the games were released outside of Japan, and as far as I know, there are no fan translations available for them either.

These PlayStation 2 games are titled:

- Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (2005)

- Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - A New Theory (2005)

- Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand (2006)

...I didn't exactly feel like setting up a PlayStation 2 emulator for these ones, so I instead went on eBay and bought them all secondhand. 😃 

So. Let's talk about them then.

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- Ys III: Wanderers from Ys

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Amazingly enough, this version of Ys III was released just three months before The Oath in Felghana came out. As I mentioned previously, Oath in Felghana is a complete reimagining of Ys III that turns it into a really nice fully modernised proper Ys experience.

However, this is not what the PlayStation 2 version is like. Rather, the PS2 version of Ys III is surprisingly very faithful to the oldschool 16-bit versions of Ys III.

So just like the original Ys III, the game is a sidescroller. All of the graphics have been redrawn in a 2D anime style, which looks nice. 

The game is fully voiced in Japanese, and for the first time, Adol himself has been given a voice. ...Previously on the TG-16 version, all characters except for Adol were voiced, which was very bizarre. Since the PS2 version of Ys III never got a fan-translation, I had to play in Japanese. But that wasn't too big of a problem, since the game is pretty simple.

Adol's moveset has been adjusted. He can no longer attack while moving, and instead does a five-hit combo when you tap the sword button. He can also attack upwards at a diagonal angle.

Thankfully the game has been made a little bit less jank in terms of gameplay. The oldschool versions of Ys III were definitely not great with hitboxes and collision and things like that. But here on the PS2, while it's still not great, it's at the very least "acceptable" now. The boss fights now have something resembling a strategy to them, rather than the "just keep hitting them and hope their HP goes to 0 before yours" boss fights of the old versions.

The game structure is surprisingly exactly the same as the old versions. You explore six or so short, mostly-linear sidescrolling stages, and then you're done with the entire game. The level designs are pretty much identical to the old versions, with a few tweaks here and there.

The leveling-up system is also exactly the same - even to the point where Adol's max level is just 16, which he reaches at precisely 65535 EXP. There's a technical reason why it's this number exactly - Wikipedia mentions that 65535 is "the highest number that can be represented by an unsigned 16-bit binary number", so there's likely a memory-saving reason why the old 90s versions of Ys III used this kind of integer to store the EXP value. ...But... I'm pretty sure this technical limitation isn't all that necessary for a PlayStation 2 game, you know? ...they stuck so closely to the original design of Ys III, even the old EXP values were copied over and left untouched.

The biggest problem with this game, is also due to something they copied over from the original version. And that is the saving system.

In the original versions of Ys III, you can save anywhere instantly, which is great because monsters just love to gang up on you and drain your HP in seconds - and every death causes an immediate reload. So, it's kind of an expected thing that a player will constantly be saving and reloading during their playthrough of the game. 

The saving system was made to be exactly the same for the PlayStation 2 version...which is actually a huge problem. If you're familiar with PlayStation 2 RPGs, you'll know how long it can take to save in them. Every time you bring up the save menu, it has to spend a good while checking the PS2 memory card, and then when you select 'save', it spends a good while writing your file to the card. ... And yeah, that's a big problem in a game like Ys III where you need to save basically every time you enter a new room. It's pretty horrid.

...They really didn't care to redesign the save system to make it work better for the platform the game's played on. I can think of a few ways to make it work better - for example, perhaps the game could track your state every time you enter a new room, and it could just reset back to that state upon death, with no need to get the memory card involved. There do exist all sorts of potential solutions, but the developers didn't seem interested in making any kind of modifications to the original design at all. Which is a pity, because it really affects the playability of this version.

I played this game on a proper PlayStation 2 with the actual Ys III PS2 disk - but perhaps players who decide to play on an emulator would be able to mitigate this issue if they made heavy use of savestates.

The game lasts about 3 or 4 hours - it's just as tiny as the original. There's no added areas, no added items, no new content to speak of. It's the same underwhelming old game, just with new visuals. The only things they added were difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard - I played on Normal), and a new Boss Rush mode. ...Normally you'd expect a PlayStation 2 RPG to last a liiitle bit longer than 3 hours, right??

So yeah. it's just Ys III. The most mediocre of all the Ys games, but this time presented in a lovely new graphical style. ...But it's still the same old incredibly mediocre game. Now that Oath in Felghana exists, I seriously doubt that Wanderers from Ys is ever going to see the light of day again. So I bid farewell to this entry. Maybe in the future I'll play some of the other versions that exist. 

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- Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - A New Theory

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With this game, the bizarre legacy of what "Ys IV" even is grows ever more confusing. Before this game, Ys IV already had two completely different games to its name - "Dawn of Ys" for TG-16 (which is not considered canon), and "Mask of the Sun" for SNES (which was considered canon until 2012). And now we have the addition of "Mask of the Sun - A New Theory" for PS2... And once again, it's a completely different game from the other versions. ...

The game generally uses the SNES Mask of the Sun as its source material. None of the locations, concepts, plot points, or characters created for Dawn of Ys were used at all in A New Theory - it's pretty much as if Dawn of Ys never even existed. 

...Maybe you could say it doesn't matter whether or not a game is considered part of the canon, as long as it's fun to play in its own right. This is true... but it's still relevant to keep in mind, because the status of the overall series canon will affect future releases. As much as I preferred Dawn of Ys over Mask of the Sun, I have no choice but to accept that Dawn of Ys will likely never see a remake in the future. So it's only to be expected that this PS2 version of Ys IV completely ignores it.

The overall storyline and the structure of the adventure is similar to Mask of the Sun SNES, however there have been many changes and adjustments. For example, that scene I mentioned last time where Adol is captured and put in the prison - in Mask of the Sun SNES, Adol escapes because he finds a "secret door button" in his prison cell, which is what I consider to be incredibly lazy storytelling. ... in A New Theory, this scene is changed - now the prison is besieged by a huge monster, and Adol earns his freedom by defeating it in a boss fight. That's an improvement indeed!

It seems that many of the more nonsensical aspects of Mask of the Sun SNES were altered and changed like this for A New Theory - however I was unable to appreciate any of the more subtle changes because the game has not received a fan translation. I had to play it fully in Japanese, occasionally checking a walkthrough for guidance. (the walkthrough I used was also written by someone who didn't know Japanese lol). Overall, though, it just feels less contrived and ridiculous than the SNES version... but I can't say that with 100% certainty of course. If this game ever gets a fan translation, I may have to replay it in English and see for myself.

This effort to make the game less contrived also extends to the world layout design. I remember complaining that Mask of the Sun had a very unnatural-feeling world that wasn't believable enough for me. Well, A New Theory scraps everything and redesigns the world layout from scratch. That's a good thing - in this version, I no longer feel like the world makes no sense as a place where people can live their day-to-day lives.

Anyway. Aside from the setting and the characters and the story, A New Theory has basically no resemblance to Mask of the Sun SNES in terms of gameplay. It's completely its own game.

Let's start with the level design. To be honest... it's not great. 

First of all, I really need to complain about the dungeons. They're a bunch of mazes that I find very difficult to navigate for a number of reasons. 

The biggest problem is with the camera viewpoint. The dungeons are all designed like classic RPG dungeons: a series of pathways arranged in a maze, with lots of dead ends and loops that can get you confused and lost if you don't pay attention. Classic stuff. However in this game, the pathways are all very wide - wide enough so you can't see both sides at the same time. The camera shows the dungeons at this awkward 45 degree angle, almost like an old isometric game. This would be okay if the camera could be zoomed out a bit, but it can't! it's always much too close to the floor.

This makes navigating a real pain - in order to check for forks in the road, I find myself constantly zigzagging around the paths, checking both the left side and the right side walls, which is really annoying to have to do.

It doesn't help that the graphics can get rather confusing when it comes to what is decoration or not. Sometimes it looks like there's a gap in the wall, but in reality it's just part of the scenery, and not a real path. The environments are also very copy+pasted, which doesn't help matters either. Nothing feels visually distinct, and I can't get a good feeling for where I am in the maze. It's just so exhausting to play through. 

...And sometimes you need to return to previous dungeons with later abilities, and I find myself completely unable to keep these layouts in my head between visits. I basically have to go through the entire process of figuring out the layout from scratch each time.

Maybe I should have made myself some dungeon maps with pen and paper for this game? I don't normally need to do that when I play RPGs, since I like to internalise layouts in my head, but it sure would have helped with this one. oh well.

The right stick on the PS2 controller does nothing btw. No camera controls at all.  

But that isn't even the biggest problem with the dungeons. No, the biggest problem is that, for whatever reason, they disable the save option inside dungeons! 

Normally in Ys games, you can save anywhere, so if you get dogpiled by enemies, you can reload and be on your way. But in A New Theory, they decided to disable saving within dungeons, which means that if you get killed, you just have to do the entire dungeon from scratch. And this includes fighting the boss at the end... and also the trip back out of the dungeon after the boss! All of this without saving. ...what madness is this? Every other Ys game at the very least lets us save before the bosses. 

The enemies can get pretty annoying, and they can deal a lot of damage to you. Most notable are the wizards who shoot projectiles, and the fireball guys who zoom straight into you. And because the camera is zoomed wayyyy too closely, you'll often get hit by these enemies before you even have a chance to see them.

So with this being the way of things, there really is only one option you have if you want to clear these dungeons with any degree of confidence: And that's to grind. Oh goody.

Once you're levelled up enough to traverse the dungeons without being scared of dying to a few stray hits, you at least only have to worry about the navigation.

Thankfully the bosses are very wimpy in this game. I never had to learn a single boss pattern, I literally just go up to them and spam the sword button, and it works. A couple of the lategame bosses gave me a bit of trouble, but I killed almost all of them on the first try. That's one saving grace at least. The bosses being pushovers doesn't make the game good, but it does reduce one source of extra stress caused by the lack of saving.

But that's just the dungeons! So what about the overworld design? Well... it's really boring! Overworld areas are connected with linear pathways that are not interesting to traverse. It's okay the first time through, as you're exploring and finding treasures and levelling up etc. But it gets old on repeat visits. And boy do you have to traverse them a lot! Because, at least three or four times during the adventure, you need to backtrack to previous locations, and unlike either of the previous two 16-bit versions of Ys IV, there's no quick and easy fast-travel spell available, and the only method of warping is limited to lategame. So you unavoidably need to spend a lot of time trudging back and forth between locations through these overworld paths as the story demands. What fun.

The combat is very basic in this game. There is no jumping, only walking around. You have both swords and magic, but the magic isn't very good.

Adol has three sword buttons - Light, Medium, Heavy. For the most part, enemies can be dealt with simply by spamming the medium sword button... light attacks are too short-range and don't stun large enemies, and heavy attacks have too much cooldown. So just mash that medium button all day and it'll work out. You can get a fancy combo finisher if you do "Light, Light, Medium, Medium, Heavy" in that order, which is cute, but not very effective for most situations. I think It's useful for some of the bosses, but that's about it.

Magic is performed with magic swords. You obtain five different magic swords throughout the adventure - Ice, Fire, Thunder, Earth, and Time. The way Magic is used is rather convoluted - you have to hold a sword button, which charges a gauge. Then you let go with a full charge, and it creates a crystal in front of Adol. Then, you hit the crystal. If you hit the crystal with a Heavy attack, it slams to the floor and creates a shockwave. If you use a Medium attack, it flies forwards as a projectile. And if you use a Light attack, it starts swirling around Adol, conferring a stat buff. The stat buffs are: Ice: Movement speed up. Fire: Attack up. Thunder: The crystal swirling around Adol has a hitbox and does damage. Earth: Adol won't take knockback from enemies. Time: Slows enemy movements, but drains Adol's HP. ...These buffs really don't last for very long, and the time it takes to actually charge the sword, create the crystal, and smack the crystal really makes it not worth it to keep casting and recasting the buffs so often. I wish you didn't have to stand perfectly still to charge the sword - being able to charge while walking would have made me actually use them more.

The projectile and shockwave functions are all virtually useless in combat situations, because it just takes so dang long to charge the sword. You can find an accessory that sliiiightly shortens magic charge time, but even with this it still takes much too long. Enemies can really swarm you quickly in this game if you leave them alone for too long, so there really isn't any time to charge, and you'll likely be better off just getting good at using that Medium sword attack.

Aside from this, Magic is used for removing specific obstacles in dungeons. Flaming rocks in the way? Use ice magic. ...pretty basic stuff. Time magic is unique in that it lets you interact with these black obelisks that are dotted around the world. Hit an obelisk with a time crystal, and it will transport you to a hall of doors where you can warp to any of the towns. This is pretty handy, but unfortunately you don't have a whole lot of opportunity to make use of this during the vast majority of the required backtracking, as most of it happens before you can acquire the Time Sword. How annoying.

Right before the final dungeon, you get a special Sword of the Sun, which has an insanely long magic charge time, but its buff effect is to heal you. It's such a powerful heal that it makes the final dungeon really easygoing if you just keep using it all the time. Even though the charge time is long, you can pretty much just tank all the enemy attacks that may happen during the charge, because the healing effect will negate it all anyway. And this is effective during the bosses too! What a hilariously overpowered ability. The final dungeon also wasn't so bad to navigate compared to the earlier dungeons, so I was actually having a nice relaxing time in there. Which is funny considering it's supposed to be the grand finale moment of the adventure.

I also wanted to mention some other problems I had with the way the game presents itself. Quite often, when entering a new area, a cutscene plays that takes place in this new area, but the game doesn't show Adol walking to the spot where the scene is. This means that after the scene finishes, I'm left stranded in the middle of the new area, not knowing which direction leads to the path I supposedly just came from. And since the camera is always so zoomed in, it's not so easy to do reconnaissance to get your bearings. The game also has an abundance of loading screens, but I guess that's just typical PS2 gaming.

The other major problem is that Adol's walking speed is pretty slow. And constantly using the ice spell to make his walking speed more tolerable is pretty annoying in and of itself. ...you just gotta be in a chill mood while playing this game, I suppose.

So overall, the game is just not all that great to play. The overworld pathways are boring, there's too much needless backtracking, and the dungeon mazes are extremely tiresome to solve.

That being said, I didn't have a terrible time. It's mindless fun to bash the enemies, and the game isn't long enough for the tedium to really drag on. I completed the game 100% in 11 hours after all. And it certainly was interesting to see yet another entirely new interpretation of the Ys IV story, even if I couldn't understand the dialogue.

Here's the real question, though... is it better than Mask of the Sun SNES? ....well, to be honest, I wouldn't exactly say so. Mask of the Sun SNES was pretty bad in terms of worldbuilding and story, but the moment-to-moment gameplay was still decently fun Classic Ys stuff. A New Theory, on the other hand, doesn't have all that great moment-to-moment gameplay. It's not actively awful, but it's absolutely nothing remarkable. It does, however, do its worldbuilding and progression structure more competently. So the overall quality evens out I guess.

I'd say they're both extremely mediocre RPGs, but they are mediocre in their own special ways.

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- Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand

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I mentioned that I got these original PS2 discs from eBay, right? Because dang, Lost Kefin in particular was reallllly expensive secondhand. It's worth it to me, though! 

Lost Kefin on the PS2 is based on the SNES Ys V, and it's been given the same kind of overhaul treatment that Mask of the Sun got. 

On the surface, it looks and feels very similar to A New Theory. ...Well of course it does, it's another PS2 remake of a SNES game by Taito. They did them both in the same exact style.

Combat in this game is...not great but also not awful. Unlike in A New Theory, there's only one sword button. Unfortunately it's not as good as the Medium sword button from before, but that's fine. The sword works well enough. The ability to guard with your shield from the SNES Ys V is back, and they also decided to include the two jumping sword techniques from Ys VI Napishtim / Felghana / Origin - you can do a rising slash, and a downwards stab. However these aerial moves are notably much stiffer and more awkward to use compared to how they are normally. ...but once you get used to it, you can make it work. It helps that the enemies are all very slow-moving in this game.

The magic system has been improved. It's not difficult to improve upon the abysmally poorly-designed magic seen in Ys V SNES after all. It's also completely different from A New Theory, which is a good thing.

All of the weird systems from Ys V SNES have been scrapped. You no longer level up magic separately from regular EXP. You no longer need to find hidden elemental gems around the world. You no longer are restricted from using magic during bosses. Magic no longer has these ridiculous windup animations. Spells no longer cost MP even. All of this has been thrown out. The whole system has been greatly simplified in a way that works pretty well.

In this game, enemies all have one of four elements - Fire, Water, Earth, Wind. Kill an enemy, and it can occasionally drop a gem of its element. Collect enough of these gems and take them to the alchemist, and you will get elemental spells. Most of the spells are projectiles, though they have different properties. Some have homing shots, some have spread shots, some are wide shots, you get the idea. Some spells are traps you set on the floor that continually damage anything that steps on them, and some of them are close-range attacks too.

You equip the spells on the slots in your sword, and buying a better sword also means that you can have more spells equipped at the same time. If you equip multiple of the same spell, you'll get a stronger version - a fireball spell becomes three fireballs for example. I like this aspect a lot actually - it makes for some nice customisability in what is otherwise a simple combat system. ...There is no lock-on or targeting system, so a lot of the time your spells will miss - but MP has been replaced with a cooldown timer, so missing isn't too big a problem.

One aspect that makes it necessary to have spells of all four elements is that enemies' weaknesses / resistances are very pronounced in this game. Enemies barely take any damage from neutral spells, take a lot of damage from their weakness, and they will absorb and restore HP when hit with their own element. This applies to bosses too. This means you can't just rely on one favourite spell the whole time - you have to actually experiment around with the different available options, which I think is a good thing.

One thing I need to mention - there is an option on the game's title menu called "Link". When I select it, it checks the PS2 memory card for Ys III and Ys IV save data.

Upon starting a new game after doing the "Link", you get two special swords for free - a fire sword for having Ys III data, and a healing sword from having Ys IV data. The fire sword is very strong for earlygame, and it allows you to use fire projectiles from the beginning. The healing sword isn't as strong, but it comes already equipped with "Healing" magic, which as far as I know doesn't actually exist anywhere else in the game. So these bonuses are pretty strong! The fire sword can only use fire, and the healing sword can only heal, so they're not so versatile when you need to use other magic. Especially since you can't open the menu during bosses, so if a boss requires specific magical attacks, you can't really use these special swords for that fight. But yeah, they give you a way to screw with the natural game balance if you feel like it.

The only other thing the Link option does is for after you beat the game. After the end credits, an artwork gallery and a sound test are unlocked, and if you did a Link, it will add Wanderers and A New Theory artwork and music to the gallery too. A nice bonus.

The boss fights in the game are okay, but some of them are not really all that well-designed. There are a few bosses where it felt like I have to repeat the same motions over and over because I'm dealing 50 damage at a time and the boss has 3000 HP and it just goes on for far too long... However, this actually does encourage you to experiment with your spells and maybe equip different swords or accessories to suit the occasion, so there is room to experiment.

They definitely pose a challenge this time, unlike in A New Theory and the SNES Ys V, which both had ludicrously easy bosses.

...

Let's talk negatives now.

The biggest problem I have with the PS2 version of Ys V: Lost Kefin is in regards to the level design.

It's a really really poor showing. 

Firstly, I'll talk about the overworld. For the most part, the overworld is laid out the same way as in the SNES version of Ys V. The areas are definitely recognisable, though the layout of each town has been entirely redone. They made the forest trail around the Foresta area somewhat bigger, but it's also a lot more straightforward, so it's not really all that interesting of an addition.

The problems start when you realise just how many areas from the SNES game just weren't included in the PS2 remake. The second town you visit, Foresta, is no longer nearby the starting town Xandria. Instead they put it after the arena with the first boss fight, which is where Woodcutter's Village was located in the SNES game. But then...where did Woodcutter's Village go? ...well, it's just not here. It's just gone. And that's not the only missing location either - the Marshland area, the Jungle area, and even the villain's secret island - they're all just straight-up missing. 

Any plot scenes that took place in these areas were either moved to somewhere else, or just omitted entirely. And not only that, but the areas that ARE here have been greatly truncated. The path between Ferte and the bridge to Xandria, for example, used to be a rocky mountain trail with some tricky enemies and a merchant encampment halfway through... but now it's just a tiny little path with barely anything there. Not to mention the Lost City of Kefin itself - on SNES it had what felt like a sprawling underground tunnel system, which has been heavily truncated on PS2 into just a few rooms. What happened? It's obvious that they were using the SNES overworld layout as the source material, but I guess they just... didn't feel like including every area?

It's not like with Mask of the Sun's remake where they were recreating the world from scratch in order to make everything more cohesive. In Lost Kefin, the world is very similar to the original, except it now has several chunks of it missing, and barely anything was added to replace the missing bits. It really does not give a good impression.

It's not just the overworld that's been truncated, but also the things that occur within the story too. There's a section in the SNES game where Xandria gets occupied by the soldiers, and you have to sneak your way underground to get into the mansion. ...That section is missing on PS2. There's a part in the SNES game where you see Ferte city completely covered by a huge sandstorm, as an indication that the magical energies in the desert are growing unstable (or something like that)... and this event just doesn't happen on PS2. 

So, okay - to be fair, I had to play in Japanese, so there were quite a lot of story scenes I was unable to understand. There are a lot of added cutscenes that weren't in the original, so it's very possible that these missing parts of the story have been replaced with other things that I just couldn't appreciate. So I can't really judge this aspect of the remake - all I can definitively say is that there are several parts of the game from the SNES version that are not here on PS2.

...

But the missing parts of the world are not actually all that big a problem compared to the REAL issue this game has with the level design. And that's with the dungeons.

The dungeon design is quite frankly horrible in Ys V for PS2. It's so bad that this might be my least-favourite Ys game of all, purely due to the dungeon level design.

While I did complain a lot regarding how the dungeons were presented in A New Theory just a moment ago, I didn't actually have much issue with the dungeon layouts themselves. Once I got into the swing of things, I could manage the dungeons in A New Theory well enough, and they could even be fun at times.... but this is absolutely not the case in Lost Kefin... The dungeon layouts here are awful awful AWFUL.

So, no surprise - absolutely none of the original SNES dungeon layouts were used. All of the dungeons have brand new layouts.

Two of the dungeons are caves, and the other six dungeons are castles or castle-style areas.

The two cave dungeons aren't too terrible. They have a weird system where the camera will swing around corners to give you a better view of the path you're on, which is a bit disorienting, but otherwise they're fine. Although they're not very interesting.

But it's the castle style of dungeon that makes me so upset. They're made up of endless strings of copy+pasted rooms that you have to traverse through over and over and over.

Okay, let me try and describe the pure and utter tedium of these dungeons with a scenario. So imagine this: You enter a dungeon, and you're in a room with three doors. You pick one. It leads to a linear string of rooms that go on and on and on and on. Room after room after room, where the only thing to see in each one is the door on the opposite side that leads to the next one, plus a handful of enemies in the middle. It's so straightforward, but every single time, it takes you a moment to walk over to the next door, and you have to deal with the enemies along the way of course. It's the same set of enemies in each room, and after a while of traversing room after room, it all blends together in your mind. Your sense of location is thrown out of whack as you explore so many identical rooms with identical enemies in a row...

So anyway - at the very end of this linear string of rooms is nothing but a dead end with a treasure chest. ...Oh goody. ... So now it's time to go aallll the way back. So you turn around, and walk through each room in reverse, and eventually, reach the beginning again. And so you pick the second door. It has a similarly long string of rooms in a row, but this time, at the end of it all is nothing but a locked door. You can't continue. So you gotta go back........ And the third door similarly has a long string of rooms, and this time we have a dead end with a switch. You hit the switch.... Okay, so now............now what. ...now, you gotta go all the way back, and then try door number 2 again. The locked door at the end is open now. Hooray. Now it's time to repeat this process all over again for the next section of the dungeon.

Now imagine playing an RPG where you have to play through six increasingly complex dungeons with this kind of level design. The rooms are all copy+pasted, so it's easy to lose track of which path you're on, especially when you start finding branches within branches, meaning you now have to actually keep track of which paths you haven't taken yet. The later ones start looping in on themselves too, which can make you lose track of which paths are which, and which ones you haven't been down yet. And....it's just way too much. These dungeons take so long to finish, and there's just nothing happening the entire time. It's so BORING.

...at the very least, the issues from A New Theory did not carry over into Lost Kefin. Most importantly, they put save points before bosses now. And they kept intact the "Quick Save" option from the SNES Ys V, so you can set up respawn checkpoints wherever you like - and since it doesn't actually save, it doesn't need to check the memory card, so quick saving is instant. .......hey, wouldn't it have been nice to get this kind of Quick Save option in Wanderers from Ys on PS2, come to think of it?

But anyway. Playing Lost Kefin on PS2 is fun for a while. The beginning isn't too bad. But then the latter half of the game is spent in these horrible dungeons, and it just turns into a nightmare.  The first half of the game tricked me into thinking the game was gonna be fun. 🙁

If the PS2 Ys remakes ever get fan translations in the future, I may be interested in revisiting Mask of the Sun - A New Theory in English. ...even with all the backtracking, it was still decent mindless fun. ...however I will be extremely, EXTREMELY reluctant to ever touch Lost Kefin again. I just don't have it in me to go through this trudgery a second time.

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In conclusion, to summarise the Taito PS2 Ys games:

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- Ys III: Wanderers from Ys:

An overly-faithful reskin of what was already a very mediocre game. It's still fun for a while, though the way saving was implemented kills its playability.

- Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - A New Theory:

A complete reimagining of the Ys IV story based on the mediocre SNES game. It improves things in certain areas, while introducing its own brand new set of issues. It can be mindless fun, however I wouldn't call it "great".

- Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand:

An overhaul of a SNES game that improves many things, but also removes many parts of the game, only to replace them with nothing but a bunch of long, boring, tedious, awful awful awful AWFUL dungeons that make me never want to see it again.

..... 

...i think i want to play some good game next time 😕