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.