Anime Ys series

[NerevarineKing]

Oath in Felghana's Hard mode is actually hard unlike Ys 9's. Origin and Oath are both high points of the series for sure.

 

[4249]

Oath and Origin really nail the feeling of being hard-as-nails, but still feeling fair. The final boss theme of Oath is still ingrained at the back of my head, that guy really pushed me as well, but it never felt too frustrating since I always knew what I fucked up on and just had to git gud... and the music was awesome.

 

[Nutmeg]

Just finished Ark of Napishtim.

Compared to engine brethren Oath in Felghana and Origin, this game has a much more limited moveset. No double jump, no air combo, no dash. But the moveset it does have is solid, and it's fun making the most of it. Also your basic combo changes depending on your elemental sword, with red not having a finisher but instead a charge attack. Cool concept, but in my experience, there was never any reason to e.g. go for yellow's finisher (except to reach a certain platform). It would just kind of happen, and sometimes you'd chain it nicely, but it was all very incidental.

The limit breaks were sorta good. Red probably being the best. Dash jump platforming was interesting. It's like the devs knew it wasn't the easiest thing to pull off with any consistency so they never demanded you chain it or anything. Just careful, mostly costless (just have to climb back up), attempts.

Not many bosses in this one, but the end game is 3 bosses one after the other and they're all quite good, so I appreciated that. Elizabeth was a particularly memorable and fun fight. Also they all looked great. In general, compared to other games on the same engine, this one looked better. Makes sense, as I guess the engine was designed around the art for this game. If I had to single out why I'd say the lighting on the pre-rendered sprites which had more white in it and the lighting on the bosses.

Dungeons were great, the cave being a particular highlight, which I had to map out. The mountain was probably great, but I cheesed it. Ruins of time had some good secrets and fun navigation via falling (a dungeon crawling favorite of mine).

Speaking of cheesing things the main mechanism was selling water for armor, and later water for seeds. Seeds being the mechanism for stat allocation. So I bought seeds of power (STR+) to be exact. I beat the game at level 50 with 306 strength lol - the final boss went down in 3 openings.

Game world was a bit more free form than either Origin or Oath. Unlike what I played of Xanadu Next, the world did not open up via shortcuts, only teleportation, which is not nearly as amusing, but very welcome because there are a few reasons to revisit some spots, regrettably including "talk to this guy in this town, then this other guy in this village". There are 3 optional bosses, appearing in stronger form after a certain point in the game, and giving some nice equipment.

The music is not as memorable as the speed metal takes on chip tune classics you have in Chronicles, Oath or Origin, and definitely not as good as the chip tunes themselves. But, pretty cool music anyway. Kind of relaxing. The music in the final dungeon reminded me a bit of the Bare Knucle 2 OST I guess the Falcom guys stayed Koshiro fans long after his departure.

Turns out there are many Galbalen, turns out Feena and Reah are indeed members of an entire race of winged gods, Alma also being one. But honestly, who cares. It's all obviously very ad-hoc after the guys behind Ys I and II left. I did like the ancient underground weather machine computer thing though. Reminded me of Votoms.

The game ends with Adol on a ship with his Pirate admirer, while a pure priestess and her loli younger sister tearfully wave goodbye. It's all very anime.

Anyway game is good. In terms of pure action, it's not as good as Oath in Felghana or Origin, and in terms of adventure and dungeon crawling it's not as good as Chronicles (would be closer if the default movement speed was as brisk). But it's not far behind the latter, and a simpler easier to grasp alternative to the former. The game is just a lot more relaxing on the whole for a Ys game, so maybe it has its place as the cool-off Ys.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Ys 9 Pc/switch 6 July 2021

 

[Siveon]

Ys 1 and 2 have been remade to death, we need a V remake.

I think a 5 remake in the style of Origin would be just what the series needs to feel well rounded. Thus far we've been beat over the head with 7-style RPG focused games, how nice would it be for a Oath or Ark pure-action style just for a breather?

 

[Harry Easter]

I can finally play Ys: VIII. I had to wait four years, but it was all worth it. I like the fast gameplay, the music is awesome and although I know what the story is, I am still invested in the whole scenario and the characters. And I appreciate the writing even more after playing Trails in the Sky 1-3. I think it has the same quality as those three games, but is somehow a bit better. Mostly because of the themes of Ys: VIII, I think.

 

[Rean]

And I appreciate the writing even more after playing Trails in the Sky 1-3. I think it has the same quality as those three games, but is somehow a bit better. Mostly because of the themes of Ys: VIII, I think.

I'm afraid this opinion is wrong.

 

[NerevarineKing]

I'd say Ys 8 and 9 are at least better written then the Trails of Cold Steel games.

 

[Harry Easter]

Well, finished Ys VIII and I loved it. I played on hard and it took me 75 hours to complete the game. This includes all of the sidequests, most of the fish and all upgrades for the weapons and the armor. I'm very satisfied with this game and I think it delivers to enchant newcomers and old fans alike.

The writing is mostly excellent, although I found a few scenes in the last chapters a bit overlong, but overall I think the story and the characters are great. It's the kind of story you can only tell with an Ys - game. Combat is fun and fluent, companions are sympathetic, I do care of every member of the castoff village and the monster design is so good. They did it, they created the best game of the series so far. Maybe IX will change my opinion, but until then, this will be my new second favorite game of all time. I also love the true and the bad ending, they do it right. The normal ending is a bad meh, though. So I would advice to go for the true ending.

I also hope that they will reuse the mechanics in Danas Solo-Adventure again or create an Solo-Adventure in general for Adol again. As much as I like the party combat, most of the time I use Adol, because Adol is the characer I want to play. Maybe Falcom will surprise us with Ys X.

Now I will take a break from Ys and then finish Memories of Celceta and buy myself Monstrum Nox. Until then, they will hopefully reveal more about X :D.

 

[Perkel]

I'd say Ys 8 and 9 are at least better written then the Trails of Cold Steel games.

Weren't ToCS games said to be one of better written games ?

As much as i love Ys games their stories events and so on are just aftertought to design of gameplay and just pure awesome music dump.

 

[Rean]

Correct. People should just appreciate games for what they do right.
Ys has fun gameplay, but Cold Steel's writing cannot be topped.

 

[Harry Easter]

As much as i love Ys games their stories events and so on are just aftertought to design of gameplay and just pure awesome music dump.

Eh, true but at least with VIII they showed, that they also want to tell good stories too. And since the writers for Ys are also the ones for Trails, this shouldn't come surprising. What is different, is the kind of story they tell. Ys is straightfoward adventure with excellent environmental storytelling, Trails is more characterdrama with lots of worldbuilding. But they put more of Trails (at least the worldbuilding) in IX too, so let's see how it goes. But they do experiment more wih Ys, than Trails so far.

The actual writing of the dialogues and characterising NPC's is very good in both series though. You may not find the stories in Ys interesting, but you always feel at home with the location, that turns into your homebase in every game.

 

[Perkel]

I don't know what you played before to say that YS dialogues and stories are excellent.

Because the games i played were all about random enemy crab boss fight out of nowhere.

 

[NerevarineKing]

All I know is that Ys 8 and 9 were more interesting from a story perspective than any Cold Steel game and Ys 9's side quests were all 10x better than anything in Trails. Maybe Ys was mostly about the gameplay 5 years ago, but things have changed with the modern titles.

 

[Rean]

All I know is that Ys 8 and 9 were more interesting from a story perspective than any Cold Steel game and Ys 9's side quests were all 10x better than anything in Trails. Maybe Ys was mostly about the gameplay 5 years ago, but things have changed with the modern titles.

Bro, you found Morrowind interesting from a story perspective. Sit the fuck down.

 

[NerevarineKing]

All I know is that Ys 8 and 9 were more interesting from a story perspective than any Cold Steel game and Ys 9's side quests were all 10x better than anything in Trails. Maybe Ys was mostly about the gameplay 5 years ago, but things have changed with the modern titles.

Bro, you found Morrowind interesting from a story perspective. Sit the fuck down.

I was already sitting down, but whatever makes you feel better I guess.

 

[Harry Easter]

I don't know what you played before to say that YS dialogues and stories are excellent.

Because the games i played were all about random enemy crab boss fight out of nowhere.

Ah, I said with VIII you can see, that they want to tell better stories (although I liked Sevens, because it played around with the formula). As for the giant crabs: I guess you play VIII and you are still in the early parts of the game? It takes time until the story starts, but I like that. It gives you time to fool around and to interact with the other survivors. After that, the drama amps up.

As for the dialogues in general: The text may be not very playful or high brow, but when I think of NPC's that I won't forget, then I think of the townsfolk in Ys - Games. They just grow on you and you're invested in their little subplots. And when that happens, the dialogue did its job.

 

[Rean]

No one is saying the writing is bad. It's still leagues ahead of western garbage like Solasta and the characters are indeed fun and memorable.
The comparison to Cold Steel was just inane.

 

[NerevarineKing]

Well I guess someone has to defend the game where the main character falls on the love interest's boobas in the first hour.

 

[Rean]

Hilarious!
'The NPC tries to bring up some random comedic moment from the first couple of hours of the first game in a series of 4 that caught his attention as something negative.'
Regardless of the event being intended to be funny, it still served as a good character development point for Rean and Alisa and does come up repeatedly, so your point is moot. And if you don't like Alisa's boobies, you're a fucking faggot.

 

[NerevarineKing]

Hilarious!
'The NPC tries to bring up some random comedic moment from the first couple of hours of the first game in a series of 4 that caught his attention as something negative.'
Regardless of the event being intended to be funny, it still served as a good character development point for Rean and Alisa and does come up repeatedly, so your point is moot. And if you don't like Alisa's boobies, you're a fucking faggot.

I'll have to pass on that, I'm not really into men who jerk off to Alisa figurines every night.

 

[Ventidius]

Hilarious!
'The NPC tries to bring up some random comedic moment from the first couple of hours of the first game in a series of 4 that caught his attention as something negative.'
Regardless of the event being intended to be funny, it still served as a good character development point for Rean and Alisa and does come up repeatedly, so your point is moot. And if you don't like Alisa's boobies, you're a fucking faggot.

The ironic thing here is that Ys VIII has a very similar fanservice scene at the start:

 

[NerevarineKing]

...And I didn't like when they did it in Ys 8 either. It's like the laziest way to try to do character development. Ys 9 has less stuff like this IIRC.

 

[Rean]

It's true, I even played YS VIII and forgot that was there. Probably because I'm not a pussy that's bothered by fun segments and I don't feel the need to put down other good games to defend my favorite one.

How will the Morrowind NPC ever recover?

 

[Rean]

...And I didn't like when they did it in Ys 8 either

You need to stop being gay.
Seriously, quit it.