Anime Ys series

[Jack Dandy]

Combat & bosses in later games are much more fun. Look forward to it!

 

[Machocruz]

Maybe I'm a giant weeb or luddite, but hand drawn look looks much more appealing to me in isometric/top-down perspective than purely 3D rendered look. I say "purely" because I know that in Ys 1 and 2 remake they use 3d elements, like Guilty Gear Xrd.

But man do I love arcade style play. My number one contention with modern western action games is that they are slow and lack challenge in single-player mode. I just can't agree that a game like Uncharted 2 reaches greatness.

 

[Shadenuat]

I experienced bij and my brain melted on Dark Fuckt, I need a break and a smoke
and I don't smoke




You know what's great
Silent protagonist!
Starting today every JRPG should have one
Imagine FF8 where Squall would never say a word!

Spoiler

:

 

[4249]

Finished Origin on Nightmare with Hugo. Besides from Hugo making my hands hurt (a lot), I think Hard was more enjoyable than Nightmare. At times I felt that it was necessary to grind a few levels on Nightmare, whereas Hard had some fairly challenging fights with 0 grinding and overall felt like a more coherent experience. And the toll to SP-gain was a bit ridiculous, no way to get anything but armor upgrades. Probably I just need to git gud though.

Anyways, on to Oath in Felghana then!

 

[Jack Dandy]

Yeah, Nightmare on Origin was a bit cheap, specifically due to the SP thing.
But, you really haven't "Beaten" it until you play it with Toal on Nightmare. Just saying!~

In any case, OiF deals with Nightmare mode better. No HP-regen bosses, and no SP shenanigans either.

 

[Abu Antar]

I now have 98,0% of the map explored in Memories of Celceta. I'm going to see if I have it in me to go for some of the trophies or just finish the game. I can probably get the treasure and search point trophies, since they are both over 90% completion.

It's been a decent. game. Some fun boss fights and as always, a great soundtrack.

 

[Amn Nom]

Can't get enough of these games. One of the only series I've played where I can recall a few pieces of the OST from each game. Played:
-Origins: My favorite of the lot. It isn't the best designed, but you get 3 distinct characters that make the game different enough to warrant 3 playthroughs (extremely rare for me)
-1&2: Good for historical value, wouldn't recommend until the rest are finished.
-Oath in Felghana: This one is the best designed of the lot. Probably the best bosses in the whole series.
-Ark: Only played a few hours on an emulator, stopped when I heard it was coming over to Steam. Felt like a weaker Felghana, but still worth playing.
-Seven: Interesting take on the party based ARPG, it kept the fast paced combat intact and introduced some depth to an otherwise reflex based series. My gripes boiled down to item mat hunting (has no place in a Ys game imo), and the final boss difficulty compared to the previous boss being too sharp of a jump.

 

[Valestein]

I now have 98,0% of the map explored in Memories of Celceta. I'm going to see if I have it in me to go for some of the trophies or just finish the game. I can probably get the treasure and search point trophies, since they are both over 90% completion.

It's been a decent. game. Some fun boss fights and as always, a great soundtrack.

Celceta's a good game, problem is the difficulty with the bosses, or rather, lack there of(at least on normal).This is made worse due to how you can have 99(!) of each health item as opposed to how it was in Ys Seven where it was more limited but even despite that, I cleared most bosses without needing to use even one.

Will do a hard playthrough of it whenever they finally localize the latest japanese patch that adds vita tv compability and some performance tweak(s).

 

[Jack Dandy]

Ark of Napishtim was the first 3D Ys game, and as such may feel a bit inferior to Felghana\Origin.

However, I think it's the best of the three when it comes to a feeling of sheer "Adventure". The setting in Felghana is very generic, and Origin is more of a linear dungeon (tower?) crawl.
Napishtim, felt less "rail-roaded" than the other two. And has some really cool locales.

Also, it has the hottest chicks.

 

[Shadenuat]

aaand suddenly going through all 25 levels again would seem to be already worth it
(places another empty coffee cup into a row near keyboard)

 

[Valestein]

I like how Hugo maintains his frame, negs a bitch and then has her become enamored with him.

Sorcerer game recognized.

 

[4249]

Yeah, Nightmare on Origin was a bit cheap, specifically due to the SP thing.
But, you really haven't "Beaten" it until you play it with Toal on Nightmare. Just saying!~

In any case, OiF deals with Nightmare mode better. No HP-regen bosses, and no SP shenanigans either.

Heh, I think I'm done with Origin for now, even if I've only beaten it in scrub-mode.

Anyways, I really need to git gud at action games and timing and shit. Ellefalle in OiF on hard gave me more trouble than I'd like to admit . I don't know what it was about her, but she kept throwing me off timing in the second phase for some reason. It's fun though that I don't frustrated at these games at all, even if I have to repeat the bosses for 10 or 20 times. They're just so finely tuned without resorting to cheap shots that I can usually see what I did wrong and where I need to improve.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Exactly! And good news are that the statuebitch is one of the most tedious bosses in the game- after her, there's only one boss I'd call "unfair", but that's only on Nightmare mode. The rest of the game is sheer fun!

 

[Machocruz]

I remember playing Naphistim on PS2 after I had played Oath in Felghana. I was greeted by a grubby little 3D model of Adol instead of the nice, crisp sprite-ish model from Oath. And environments with low-res PS2 textures and edges. I shipped that shit back to Gamefly the next morning and decided to wait for a proper port.

 

[pippin]

I like how Hugo maintains his frame, negs a bitch and then has her become enamored with him.

Sorcerer game recognized.

It's the robes!

 

[Shadenuat]

Ys 1
+ I like the purity of visuals and setting, it has no moe, but much that makes you think there's some ancient epic behind it, especially the central element (Laputa shrine, tower of Babel, a villain who is not God/Satan well you know 'em JRPGs)
+ the waifus are beautiful and wear dresses
+ the visuals and music are excellent
+ there is some surprising depth to what you do when it comes to discovering plot, including item management and finding right characters, and there are side quests and NPCs and journal that you can collect entries into
+ the bosses are simple but merciless
+ there are a few HUElarious fuck-you's, including one that you should have seen coming mile away concerning the right choice of equipment for combat, that never happen in games and especially JRPGs, that will make AAA players RAGE, and they actually do on Steam
+ Adol introduced himself
+- the final boss is rape rage death
- umm it's not really and RPG?
- the combat and grinding are AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL
- GO BACK 13 LEVELS
- But did you not forget to equip the harmonica?

Ys 2
+ The good stuff is still mostly there but now it's more linear progression while Ys 1 is... also linear progression but there is some illusion about it because there's one centrlal city and some villages/dungeons around it
+ the waifus are beautiful and wear dresses, you can give them flowers, and there are three now!
+ Now can throw fireballs at people, can turn into demon and speak with them!
+ As a demon can skip all combat except bosses, farm the fattest xp mobs instead
+- some locations are now fucking mazes
+- some quests are like mazes and make you go mazes
- I am not sure it is still an RPG
- the combat and grinding are still shit
- SHITTON OF BACKTRACKING FUCK THE SHRINE LEVEL FOREVER
- final boss is not rape rage death because you get magic resist spell

Felghana
+ New combat system! Combat is alright, even regular enemies can be difficult and some of them are more unique, and grinding is no more
+ Bosses are, for the most part, interesting to fight, even if some of them are kinda cheap
+ But then Dark Souls 2 also had dragons you kill by striking their feet
+- One waifu, kinda okayish, but overall
+ kinda looks good
+ good difficulty all around
- the plot is JRPG banal shit, no tower, no goddesses, no central theme
- no item puzzling like as in Ys 1, no demon talking as in 2, just combat and shit (and no, breaking walls doesn't count)
- the final boss is too much of a chore, I mean, ping pong, really? God I hate multiple phase bosses
- hm, is Zelda an RPG?

Origin
+ Holy shit 3 characters
+ can play as waifu who axes things
+ can play as wizard who shoots fire lazers out of 2 Morte-eyes flying around, Chief
- can play as boring crap difficult melee Diablo 2 assasin, fuck that guy
+ the waifus are beautiful and wear dresses and now there's a fucking overload of them since they act as major characters
+ so many pretty screens with waifus
+ one has three at a time including one whom you can axe things
+ and white wings

+
+ err, what was I talking about, I forgot...
+ the central theme is there, ton of nostalgia for Ys 1&2
+ the plot and character interactions are somewhat complex even for a JRPG since there are 3 characters to play
+ yet the dialogue somehow is not cringeworthy even if protagonists now speak also
- well except final assasin part, and they say Kerghan in Arcanum is a random villain that is introduced too far into the game, lol
+ the combat is like Felghana and is nice and responsive
+ the levels are impressive for such a game, water, quicksand, spikes, there's even some platforming involved
+ bosses are also impressive and some are very mobile
+ game looks good and sounds good
+- mouse support is almost fully in, but I still mash Z as a zombie
- was somewhat dissapointed whole game is just the Tower
- not sure I really like canon plot and it doesn't explain as much as it could
- there isn't anything particularly to "solve", like getting sword in Ys 1
- the boss battles sometimes feel hard locked and scripted, like, when you load up with a buff and think you can take half of health bar away, but boss just locks out of damage after set amount of damage taken
- there is an awful JRPG level hard lock, meaning if you're below boss level you will do like, 1 damage, but get a few more and you now deal 20 damage per hit. Even if leveling up is very easy and takes almost no time, it means while replaying game you still have to mostly clear whole levels all over again.
- what is an RPG
- can't play any more Ys on PC?

 

[Valestein]

If you want more Ys on "PC" while waiting for Ark of Naphistim's pc version to finally be localized then you could try your hand at emulation. There's Ys III: Wanderers of Ys on SNES (Oath in Felghana is a remake of this Zelda II like side scoller), Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (SNES) and YS IV: Dawn of Ys (PC Engine/Turbographx). The two Ys IV games are actually two completely different games with just the same basic premise and have the Ys I + II bump system IIRC.

There's also Ys V on SNES but i'm not sure if there's a fan translation of that and from what I've heard it's not that great(the series was in a coma between this and Ark of Naphistim's original release).

 

[DwarvenFood]

I think you forgot to mention the various aspects of the waifus thorough the series, can you elaborate on that a bit ?

 

[4249]

Huh, so the Steam versions of Origin and Oath in Felghana have their soundtracks in .OGG format in their respective folders. And someone even posted a track listing on the steam forums: Origin/Oath In Felghana Soundtrack

to the guy.

 

[pippin]

Many games do have their complete soundtracks on their respective folders, most of the times in .ogg format. Which is funny, since there are some games which also sell their soundtracks as a separate download. Hotline Miami is guilty of this.

 

[4249]

Yeah considering that Nihon Falcom pretty actively sells and promotes their music I would've thought they'd been packaged somewhere and required some datamining and shit.

And most games don't have as soundtracks as these two

 

[Jack Dandy]

Let's do this thing! Favorite theme, from the top of your head! No hesitations!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knd4oW-RpbU

 

[4249]

Already posted Silent Sands(which is still fucking awesome) earlier, but I got into the Quarry in OiF the other day and was smacked with this amazing slab of over-the-top cheesy 80's metal

 

[Jack Dandy]

Everybody loves it. You enter the mines, get that generic gloomy-spooky music.. then FUCKING HAIR METAL

 

[Valestein]

If they ever localize PC versions of Ys Seven and Memories of Celceta, then you cats on the PC will be in for a treat with the music, especially the boss themes.