Ys I & II Chronicles - Ys II is Much Better

I just wrapped up Ys II, and I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit more than Ys I. I'll get into that in just a second - I have to tip my hat to XSeed for putting in a guide to Ys I in the manual of Ys I & II Chronicles - I hadn't noticed it until after I beat Ys I, but it sure would've helped to get through that obtuse mess.

Anyway, Ys II plays very similar to its predecessor in terms of mechanics - Adol still bumps into enemies at a slight angle to do damage to them. Ys II, however, adds quite a bit. The first magic item you get allows you to shoot fireballs with the X button - which is how you'll defeat most bosses, to be honest. You get a MP meter and - gasp! - can gain more than 10 levels! This makes the game quite a bit more balanced. You now gain levels at a roughly even pace throughout the game, so when you reach a new boss, you really don't need to grind or anything. Your enemies are a bit more interesting, too. Most of them have some sort of attack that triggers after they blink for a second or two, that you have to dodge or you'll take a lot of damage. This is nice because it means enemies can damage you in ways other than just running into you.

But my favorite thing about Ys II is how not obtuse it is. The game goes out of its way to give you hints as to where to go to next or who to talk to, and even gives you a warp spell pretty quickly. I only had to consult a FAQ twice, and one of those times, I didn't even need to - turns out I was getting lost in this one little area. The other time was because I needed to find some kid who wasn't in his hometown, and I had no idea where the hell he was. The game isn't completely straightforward, of course, as there are still a few puzzles here and there, but overall it is much better designed. The areas aren't quite as labyrinthine as in the first game, and there are no stupid warp puzzles! The music is also quite a bit better, too - my favorites are this track and this track.

Pretty much every complaint I had about Ys I was addressed in Ys II. The game is just much more forgiving and thus the difficulty is paced better throughout. The combat is better, the bosses are actually fun (imagine that!), and the game never felt tedious. I would even go as far as saying I wouldn't mind seeing another game in the vein of Ys II - combat and all. If I ever play a version of Ys I & II again, I won't be playing Ys I, I'll be sticking pretty much exclusively to Ys II.

Ys I & II Chronicles - Ancient Game of Ys

Ys Month continues, as I've now moved on to the original games in the series: Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, and Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter, presented in 2011-o-vision Ys I & II Chronicles for PSP, released by XSeed.

First, a brief history of these games. Both Ys I and II were released originally for the NEC PC-8801 in Japan only in 1987 (1988 for Ys II). The games were then ported to like a hojillion systems. Time for a (probably incomplete) list! Some of the platforms Ys I & II were ported to:

-Japanese computer X1
-NEC PC-9801
-FM-7/77
-FM-77AB
-MSX2
-Sega Master System
-Turbografx CD
-MS-DOS
-Sega Mega Drive
-Sega Saturn
-Famicom
-Super Famicom
-Nintendo DS
-PC
-Playstation 2
-Cellular phones in Japan
-Wii Virtual Console

And of course the version I'm playing now, the Playstation Portable port. Having just finished Ys III (Oath in Felghana) and Ys Seven, I wasn't sure what to expect going into the original Ys games. I was worried I wouldn't like them at all, due to how archaic they supposedly were.

And they are archaic. Well, Ys I is, anyway - haven't played much of II yet. But I did beat the first game and I must say, I only sort of liked it.

You see, there is no "attack" button in the original two Ys games. You literally ram Adol into his enemies to kill them - the trick is, you cannot do this head on. You must hit them from the back, the side, or slightly off center to the front to be able to damage them without taking damage yourself. It's a very odd mechanic, especially considering Nintendo's Zelda had been out for almost a year by the time Ys I was released. Perhaps Falcom was trying to differentiate their series by speeding up the combat? Who knows!

But the mechanic isn't all bad. In fact, it can be pretty fun - when Adol is running around a bright, wide open area, it's tons of fun to ram into enemies and rack up gold and experience. The overworld of Ys I was a blast! But when Adol is running around small corridors in almost total darkness, it sucks! Like, a lot! Such as the entire second half of the game, in Darm Tower!

I will admit to liking the presentation of Darm Tower, at least in the PSP version (I have no idea if the original releases did the things I'm about to list - kind of doubt it). Adol is told when entering the tower that he has a day to complete his quest - after that, the guy who guards the door won't bother opening it every morning. As you climb higher and higher, night begins to fall. You see this because the tower is built in such a way that to climb it, you actually go outside on just about every floor. I thought it was a pretty nice touch.

Here's the problem. The level cap in Ys I is 10. I was level 10 before entering the tower. There is also nothing to buy in the second half of Ys I, because you literally end the game in the tower, so all the gold I had collected (and continued to collect, for whatever reason, inside the tower) was useless. There's nowhere to spend it! Okay, so that isn't a big deal. But it is just an odd design choice. The corridors of Darm Tower are also incredibly narrow, making it hard to hit the enemies. Oh, did I mention its fairly dark?!

So I didn't like that part. I struggled through it, and did something I usually don't (and haven't in a long time): I used a FAQ.

I have no regrets.

No, really. The game would be pretty tedious if I wondered around this tower, trying to figure out what to do for hours. There were a few people inside the place, and I kept having to go back and forth between them, ferrying items or information between them, to advance in the tower. Now, if there were no level cap, or perhaps something to spend my gold on, I wouldn't have minded. The grind would have eventually allowed me to do something. But all I would have been wasting was time, and frankly, the dungeon wasn't very fun to move around, so I just wanted to get through it.

In Oath in Felghana and Ys Seven, the bosses were (for me, anyway) the best parts of the games. Not so in Ys I. Almost every boss were annoying or exceedingly difficult - and not in a fun way - to fight. I enjoyed the worm boss and the two masks you have to fight, probably because they weren't stupid hard. That's it! The last boss in particular wasn't any fun, either. He floats around and when you hit him, wherever you landed the attack, a piece of the ground falls away, becoming a pit. If you stay on the tile as it falls away, you instantly die, ending the battle. And since the dude floats around the whole time, you can actually trap yourself and not be able to hit the boss at all, and slowly die via the fireballs he shoots.

I suppose I'm not surprised. The game came out in 1987, and for god sakes I was able to actually beat it. I can't say I have the stomach to do that these days for any turn based RPGs from way back then. Hopefully Ys II isn't such a slog - I do plan on finishing it though. Even if it does suck, I'll be cleansing my palette with Ys: Ark of the Napishtim for PS2 afterwards, most likely.

Oh! The music. I thought it was really good! Not as good as Ys Seven or Oath, but still better than most videogame soundtracks. You also have the option of switching between the Chronicles version of the tracks (the most recent remixes, which are great), the Complete version of them (the remixes done back in 2001 for the PC re-release of Ys I&II), or the original PC-8801 mixes, which I adore. I should note that the music for these two games was done by Yuzo Koshiro, of Etrian Odyssey fame. If you liked the music in those games, you will like the PC-8801 tunes in Ys for sure.

Ys Seven Postmortem

Just wrapped up Ys Seven with about 21 hours on the game clock. Definitely enjoyed the game, but overall I think I like Oath in Felghana better. They're both very good though!

It's just Ys Seven tends to sag a little bit in the back half of the game. Once you've explored all of Altago, you are required to go back into all four temples you had visited, and access a deeper portion of the temple for a few new dungeons. The new dungeons are hit and miss; the first one in the forest is pretty boring. The second new dungeon is very short, but has incredible music - my favorite in the game, I think. The third one, in the wind temple, is unlike anywhere else in the game in terms of the way you traverse it - thus it's probably my favorite dungeon in the game.

As you might expect though, the parts that don't sag are the bosses. The bosses of each new dungeon are fantastically designed (especially the forest one - perhaps to make up for the boring dungeon). They are an absolute blast to play, and are pretty challenging, to boot.

The final dungeon of the game isn't that hard or incredibly interesting, but I must say - the final battle is a masterpiece. As soon as I saw what I had to do, I nodded my head as if to say "I see what you mean, Falcom. You want me to take the battle system to its logical ultimate conclusion." The final boss is a huge bug-like monstrosity that is divided up into three sections - bottom, middle, and top. Each section is fought by members of your team - every member. Not just the team you like to fight with through the whole game. You don't even get to choose who fights which part - which I suppose would be my only complaint. The three characters you fight the first form with were all characters I didn't use often, so they were pretty weak for my first try against the boss. But a bit of grinding (and some equipment upgrades, which I hadn't bought for most of them since the first half of the game) did the trick just fine for my second attempt.

The final part, the top section, is fought only by Adol himself. This means you do not get to switch party members if Adol is low on health - nor can you let his health drop to 0, either, because it's game over. No one else would be able to heal him. And by the time you get to this point, this is the fourth battle in a row you have fought without getting to save. My favorite part of boss battles in Ys games (well, the two I've played so far) are learning their patterns. Dodging, as I said in the last post, is incredibly important in Ys Seven. Therefore, as you go through the final boss fight, you are learning three patterns of attacks (that get more relentless as the boss's HP drops). By the time you land the finishing blow on the boss, you are exhausted. I was out of healing items (all of them!) and had been for a while - if it were not for my ability to dodge the bosses attacks he would have easily killed me before I got his final form down to 25% HP.

I can honestly say now that I'm an Ys fan. Tomorrow I'll start Ys I & II Chronicles, and see if I like the old school flavor. Oh, by the way - the localizations of these games are really good, too. I even began posting on Xseeds forums as a result of these games.

I've never even done that for Atlus. Now that says something.

Ys Seven, part 1

I picked up the premium edition of Ys Seven the day after I beat Oath in Felghana, and I must say I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. It does play a little different than Oath; there is no jumping, for example. There is, however, extremely fast dodging - which plays a huge role in combat. But we'll get to that later.

Adol and Dogi arrive in Altago and begin to talk to the inhabitants there and... Eh, who cares. I mean the story isn't necessarily bad, really, just pretty plain. The point is, you have some stuff to kill.

Having only played Oath, the gameplay in Ys Seven is fairly different. Rather than just Adol, the player is given anywhere from two to three party members (probably three most often - a few people have come in and out of my party in the five hours I've played so far) to play as. He must switch between them at will by pressing circle, and the reason to do so is because each weapon each character uses does a different kind of damage. For example, Adol has a sword, which does damage better to "softer" enemies (basically, enemies without carapaces or armor, etc.), while Dogi uses his fists, which apparently does more damage to "harder" enemies. Other characters have different types (including the one currently in my party; she has "pierce" attacks, which are good against some "hard" enemies and some "soft" ones).

The other reason to switch characters is during boss battles. The boss typically will target its attacks at whatever character the player is currently controlling. It is thus wise to switch to characters who are either A. out of the way of the boss's attack or B. have more health than the currently controlled character. Unlike in Oath, you can use healing items in battle, so option B isn't as pressing as one might think.

Each character levels up, and each character has a set of special attacks, which unlock throughout the game. Each special attack can be leveled up (through using them, I think) and use SP, which is regained through the successful execution of regular attacks. I especially enjoy that, because it means I can use special attacks fairly often, without having to worry about refilling my SP gauge with items or at one of the healing rocks (the save rocks in Oath just heal you in Ys Seven - you can save anywhere at anytime except during boss battles).

Speaking of items, Ys Seven introduces a pretty nifty little item crafting subsystem. Whenever you kill a monster, they drop cash and items like Monster Hide or Monster Fluid (gross). There are also the occasional spots where you can farm items, somewhat like the "Take" or "Chop" spots in the Etrian Odyssey series. These can be used to craft new weapons or items. You can also just straight up buy items if you can't craft them, but I assume as the game goes on, the crafting will get more and more useful.

The centerpieces of the game, as in Oath in Felghana, are the boss battles. Each boss is very, very dangerous, and you must learn their patterns and avoid their attacks to be able to hit them when you can. You must also switch between characters and dodge all over the place to make sure all your party members survive, to ensure they all get the experience points once the beast goes down. This makes the pace of the battles frantic, and a lot of fun.

I beat Ys: The Oath in Felghana in about twelve hours. I've heard this game is quite a bit longer, which I'm happy about, because I'm rather enjoying it so far. Wait! How could I get through almost an entire post about Ys without mentioning the music? It is good! Quite good! Although I like Oath's music better so far.

Either way, though. Never would have thought I'd be mainlining Ys games. I'm definitely an Ys fan... I'm going to keep an eye out for the PS2 Ys: Ark of the Napishtim.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana

So in between bouts of running around post-apocalyptic Vegas and kicking punks' asses in the first Yakuza, I've been playing Ys: The Oath in Felghana for the PSP. I just beat it, actually, and have to say I'm excited to pick up Ys Seven, also for the PSP, which supposedly plays a lot like Oath.

The Oath in Felghana is actually a remake of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, which was released way back in 1989 for the Japanese-only PC-8801. There were ports to American hardware, too, though - the Turbografx 16, SNES, and Genesis, to be specific. Now, the original Ys III sucked. I can say this because I own the SNES version. It controls terribly and has ugly graphics, and that's all you really need to know. Not worth playing at all, really, unlike Ys Book I&II.

The PSP remake of Ys III reworks the game into a fully 3-D engine, and plays like a dream. Adol Christin, the hero of all the Ys games (except Origin, that is) is controlled via the d-pad or the goofy little analog nub (I switched occasionally back and forth between the two, depending on how much of a straight line I needed to move in). He can jump and swing his sword for a few combos, and can use new moves with some bracelets he finds throughout his adventure. There is a level up system, and also some very basic equipment upgrading as well.

There is also no way to heal Adol except by returning to a save point. This means that boss fights must be won by skill; you cannot simply beat on a boss and eat a few herbs or something to replenish your HP like in other games of this ilk. The bosses are very well designed, too, and thus a lot of fun to play, with very few exceptions. They all have patterns - difficult patterns - and must be bested by exploiting them. If you die (and you will), the game allows you to restart the battle right from the beginning without having to sit through any cutscenes, and if you die enough times, it even asks you if you'd like to lower the difficulty. You don't have to, of course (I was able to beat the game on Normal with very little big sticking points).

The graphics are beautiful, too. I suppose they aren't very original (mines, caves, castles, volcanoes, etc.) but they look very, very good. The special effects are nice, too, like the shimmering in the volcano, or the absolute darkness in the cave (before you find the item that lights it up, of course). My only real complaint is fairly minor: sometimes enemies are too small to see, such as the blue flying things in the last level. Are they bats? It's hard to tell, because as soon as Adol swings his sword, the only way I know they are still alive is if numbers keep popping up when he swings that way.

Of course, this being an Ys game, the music is fantastic. I've only really played this game, but I've heard in various places on the internet this game has the best music of the series. It wouldn't surprise me - the soundtrack is solid from start to finish. There are some great guitar tracks, good piano mixes, and even a violin thrown in there. The fact that the soundtrack comes with the deluxe edition is welcomed, for sure.

One of the things I'm dreading when it comes to starting Ys Seven someday is the story. I didn't really care too much for the Oath in Felghana's characters - I couldn't wait for them to shut up so I could start hitting stuff again. Thankfully, the dialogue in Oath is pretty light, and skippable. I've heard Ys Seven just goes on and on and on and isn't interesting to begin with. Hopefully I'm able to stomach it, because if the gameplay is as good as Oath, I'll be enthralled.

It has taken long enough, but the PSP has become a great little system for hardcore RPG fans like myself. It's really all I care about for the system, really. Other than Mega Man Powered Up (which I thought was good, not great), I've really only played RPGs on it. But between Ys, Persona 3 Portable, Crisis Core, Dissidia, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, and others I haven't played yet, I've really fallen for the little system.

If only my hand didn't feel like it had gotten stuck in a garbage disposal after playing for more than thirty minutes. Although I suppose that's what I get for playing on a PSP-1000. Rambling aside - if you have a PSP, pick up Ys: The Oath in Felghana. It is a PSP must-have.

Fallout New Vegas, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Buggy Bomb

It's difficult putting my finger on exactly why I feel this way, but I like Fallout: New Vegas more than Fallout 3.

Perhaps it's the environment? While New Vegas still takes place in a bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland, it's color palette isn't so dark and muted. Sure, there is a lot of desert, but much like the hicksville areas of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it's really there more as negative space for the important locations.

Thinking about it, New Vegas seems like more of a coherent world than Fallout 3. That game, while based (I'm told somewhat accurately) on real-life Washington D.C., just felt very same-y. I felt like I spent way too much time crawling around subways and trying to weave my way through the city because there were collapsed buildings everywhere. New Vegas is much more open - not just in a "we're in a huge wasteland desert area" but there are much less artificial roadblocks. Sure, there's the occasional mountain, but at least it makes sense that you cannot pass it - unlike the rubble piles in the city in Fallout 3.

It could be the story, too. I went way, way out of my way to avoid the story missions in Fallout 3, because I just did not care about the player character's dad. Oh man he wants to purify some water! Okay you run along and do that, Dad, you nerd.

New Vegas starts with the player character (hereafter referred to as the Courier) getting shot in the head by some dude who steals this mysterious package he was tasked with delivering. After being rescued in the middle of nowhere by some robot no one seems to know, you are set loose to find out what the hell all that was about. And the main hook of the story (that I will not spoil here) is a fantastic payoff, especially if you take the route I did. I felt like a badass when I beat the game. That's all I'll say about that.

I find it interesting, too, that the game was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, whose team is made up of people from the former Black Isle Studios, who made Fallout 1 and 2 (Fallout 3 and its downloadable content was developed and published by Bethesda, whereas New Vegas was only published by them). I really enjoy the writing of New Vegas more than Fallout 3, and I believe Obsidian crafted a much more entertaining world to play around in. Credit of course must be given to Bethesda for crafting the basic engine of the game, though, of course, as New Vegas was built upon Fallout 3.

Something must be said, though, about the ridiculous number of bugs in this game. I'm not talking about Radroaches, either - Fallout: New Vegas crashed on me time and time again, despite being patched a few times before I got around to it. There are numerous little bugs, too, like when I had beaten a quest, and was told to go get a deputy to arrest a guy, when the guy who needed to be arrested locked himself in a room and started giving a suicide speech over the PA. About half a minute into his two minute long speech, the audio just ended - and after another minute and a half, I would hear a gunshot and then the quest would end and I'd gain experience. No matter how many times I saved and reloaded (I even tried the quest over again from the beginning!) I couldn't get the bug to stop appearing. Every once in a while, I'd see an enemy character (usually animals or bugs - humans didn't seem to suffer this problem) get stuck in the environment, like halfway into a rock or something. There are more than that, too, but I don't feel like listing them all (and to be honest, they just tend to be annoying - the freezing didn't happen all THAT often and everything else was a small nuisance at best, nothing game breaking, at least that I encountered). In my experience playing it, Fallout 3 ran perfectly compared to this.

Even so, I never did finish Fallout 3, and don't really have any desire to go back and play it, either. I just found everything in New Vegas to be more compelling. The different factions are all so well characterized and written, whereas I can't even really remember the difference between all the people in Fallout 3.

The game structure seems a bit more polished, too. I like the leveling system in New Vegas (well, at least how now there isn't Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons - it's just Guns and Energy Weapons). The game controls a bit better, as well. Companions do not stay dead permanently if knocked out, either, which is a vast, vast improvement as far as I'm concerned. I was afraid to use my companions in Fallout 3 for fear of them dying. In New Vegas, if a companion is killed, they will stay dead until all nearby danger is eliminated, then wake up after being "unconscious".

If you enjoyed Fallout 3 at all, I feel like New Vegas is a must play. You will certainly enjoy yourself, and I don't think it's "more of the same" like I kept hearing people worry about before the game was released. I know that "war, war never changes" but Fallout does, and for the better.