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.