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.