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 😕
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