pure vibes. in this walking sim, a JRPG protagonist realizes that he's too much of a loose cannon to mess around within the emaciating confines of 'menus' and 'random encounters', and makes it his business to barrel his way through a plethora of demons with unrelenting ferocity. this 'bump' system, as it came to be known, is the ultimate manifestation of violence. the madmen at falcom made the final dungeon like half of the games length twice in a row because they knew such a superficially impervious roadblock would deter your average JRPG protagonist, but to adol, the King of Drift, the man who challenges those hairpins, these are only paltry speed bumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fNhyo0VOgc

This review is all feelings-based with no actually good argumentation for my score. But YS 1 and 2 (The 2013 remasters to be specific) are some of my favorite games ever. I could list many, many reasons why they should not have a score higher than about 3/5. But i still rate YS 1 4.5 and YS 2 a perfect 5.

I was not young when I played these games the first time. There is 0 nostalgia here. I was not playing video games during the era of the originals either. But the first time I played Ys 1 and 2 I basically played for 3 days non stop. You know that feeling that you chase when looking for new video games? The one games gave you when you were a kid. There was a magic to your favorite games that feels like it doesn't exist as an adult.

Ys Chronicles gave me that feeling.

Since i have experience with RPG's that came out in the 80's I expected the story to be almost nonexistent. I was wrong! With this version they added every tiny bit of lore they possible could. Beautiful ingame art/portraits! The opening and ending cinematics are gorgeous (especially compared to that Ys anime series that tells this game's story with some liberties). The OST track is one of the all time classics in gaming.

I'll say if you are a player that values world-building and lore over how simplistic the combat is, you're going to enjoy parts of this game immensely (unless you only like 'newer' stuff by proxy, but that's more a mindset issue). And if you lose your way somewhere there is no shame in using a map or guide it's an 80s rpg after all those can be cryptic. Simplistic combat doesn't mean easy by the way, the nightmare difficulty in ys 1 is true to it's namesake.

Ys gave me a warm feeling when i look back on it, not unlike trails in the sky ironically enough. I look forward to the rest of the games. From what i gathered those stories are mostly unrelated to each other, but avdol and his closest friends get more depth over time and things get referenced here and there. No trails level integration but enough to see it as an unique world. I'm curious! Also with regard to what developments the combat will go through.

Impressive how well the second game does at wrapping up the incredibly, almost non existent story of the original and fleshing it out. I actually cared for a few of the characters, despite dialogue being very minimalistic.

Only gripe with the games is the lack of a minimap, which makes exploring the dungeons incredibly frustrating without a guide, as they're super easy to get lost in, especially the lava level.

Also recommend watching the OVAs, they're nice companion pieces that also flesh out the story a lot.

It's been so long since I had such a good time with a jrpg. After having played numerous bad ones I can truly say that these two games are a very needed breath of fresh air for me.

The vibe these games have is great and makes me feel cozy and nostalgic. The music is immaculate and the bump combat system is quick and fun to play with.

Some of the dungeons can be quite confusing though.

In a genre drowning in 60-120 hour epics that can absolutely devour a working man's entire year, Ys I & II are a breath of fresh air. Each of these is a solid 2 session game -- 1 if you have a full day to commit to it -- finishable in 10 hours tops.

These were originally designed in the late 80s, so a guide is probably a must if you don't want to get lost because you didn't find the evil skull hidden behind a secret wall because the game doesn't completely convey what light magic does...

I appreciate how each game is divided into two arcs: arc 1 is a land-trotting adventure to gather information and tools to prepare you for arc 2, a dive into a massive, labyrinthian dungeon ripe with rooms, artifacts, and story. The final dungeons of each game are massive and half of the game. Darm Tower is so cool it got a full spin-off.

Ys II is probably a technical improvement on Ys I in nearly every way, and the review page reinforces that opinion, but I enjoyed Ys I more. These games are fun for the same reason the original Dragon Quest is fun: they predate the fusion of superfluous mechanics into a fatty genre. Ys I & II are lean, but Ys I more so. You bump into stuff and you win. That's the selling point. Ys II's introduction of a magic system conflicts with the bump system.

And while inventory, grinding, level design, and bosses are all technically an improvement, Ys I's dynamic locales, small-scale sense of adventure, and general aesthetic are more compelling. And that is, after all, an RPG's biggest selling point, no?

But as my introduction to the Ys series, these are fun. I look forward to how the series progresses.

Are modern games getting you down? Do you find yourself getting bored by long cutscenes and patronizing tutorials? Do old Zelda games simply require too many buttons? Surely, you think, there must be a better way.

There IS!

Say goodbye to the JRPGs of tomorrow! Why spend three hours meeting all of your party members when you could be spending three hours killing squirrels on the first map so everything doesn't kill you immediately? Why get tied up in pointless, convoluted gameplay when you can just run straight at monsters and pray to the blue haired beautiful angel goddesses that you chose the correct angle? Fighting bats and other dumb, flying enemies is stupid! It would be actually really awesome to fight a boss who is made of at least fifty bats! The final boss of Ys I probably took up nearly two actual hours of my life and that is a dark fact!

That said, the soundtrack is legendary and is easily better than anything made before we figured out how to get the third dimension in a game. The games are very much of their time in a way that is pretty cozy. You can probably beat both games in a day or two and it has neat little touches like how you can transform into a ferret and get a solid chunk of entirely unnecessary dialogue that tickled my particular brand of JRPG autism. Adol is probably one of the only gaming characters who could be accurately described as a "chad." It's a piece of video game history that feels oddly important and is absolutely not worth the undiscounted asking price for it. I liked it. It was pretty cool. If you've played any other Ys game, I think it's sort of essential. If you've played none of them, please play Oath in Felghana instead.

Almost snapped my PSP in half while fighting Dark Fact, good times.

Finished on December 5th of 2020.

The bump combat system can seriously be infuriating, but surprisingly very fun too. Since characters don't even have attack animations (In Ys I at least, Ys II actually gave Adol and the mob enemies attack animations) it's pretty impossible to avoid damage when you're just running into every enemy. The boss design in Ys I is really horrible, especially the final boss which is basically 80% luck and 20% skill, Ys II has a lot better designed bosses though, also Ys II gives you magic abilities and just having a range attack alone helps so much.

Some of the level design can be quite annoying too because it's very labyrinthine and you don't even have a mini-map so it's easy to get lost, but the OST is incredible and always sets the atmosphere for every level so even when I got lost I never minded, I also love the pixel art and character designs. The story is very simplistic, there's honestly probably only 50 lines of story dialogue between both games but what little story the games have is engaging enough and made me care about the main characters.

All in all I am glad I played through Ys I & Ys II, while they didn't blow me away, they were still solid, enjoyable experiences and very memorable, seeing the formation of the series was nice. Plus Origin, Ys I & Ys II all have a bit of interconnected world-building and since Trails is my fave series of all time you can imagine I like that and playing all 3 games together felt pretty fulfilling.

The bump combat system won't be for everyone, but it is pretty satisfying once it clicks. Ys I is a very short and sweet adventure. I found Ys II to be a lot more frustrating. I liked the addition of magic to spice up the gameplay but the game is far more linear in its progression, and the dungeons are way too big and labyrinthine to be easy to navigate. The final dungeon is the worst case of this being essentially half of Ys II. Bosses in both games can be hit or miss. Sometimes they have fun patterns, other times you can run in a circle and kill the boss before it kills you. The final boss of Ys I is notably bugged when playing at 60 fps making it very difficult. If you are a fan of old school adventure games, you'll probably like this.

Ys I chronicles was my first run-in with the Ys series. Tried it at the behest of a couple of friends of mine. I chose a digital version from steam. Which performance wise was great! Weird making a lot of the resolution settings have its own executable, but it works. I can say with ease this game was a good time. Not without some short comings though. First off, the art and soundtrack here are amazing and being able to switch between old school and modern renditions of the soundtrack is a bonus. Even the art can be switched in the settings to change character interaction scenes both of which are great. Some serious waifu bait here. The game has mostly a serious tone with some comedy mixed in that landed pretty well for me. The games runtime was about 18 hours for me. Which is a breath of fresh air in a sea of long winded 100 plus hour rpgs. Ys has a strange approach to combat in the same vein as Hydlide (which was not good). Here though I think the developers did a serviceable job. You fight by running into enemies, (Charmingly called the BUMP SYSTEM) which is counter intuitive to most gamers when running into an enemy sprite normally hurts you. Here it can but if you attack an enemy off center or from behind it only damages the enemy. Feels strange at first but becomes second nature after an hour or two. I was really interested that all npcs in this game have their own name and diary entry giving good context to each townspeople's motivations and personality. Dialogue didn't come off as cheesy to me but I'm a weeb so it was fun for me. Ys does an okay job guiding you and giving well translated hints on what to do. Only downside here is you may need a guide. In every review I do for a standard run not 100% or anything. If I need a guide its one star knocked off no matter what. There is decent number of cryptic directions for where to go at times and needing to find specific items in a dungeon to bring to a npc that you haven't talked to in like 5 hours is annoying especially when they move. Dungeon design here is I think this games weakest point. While not to hard till the final mega dungeon. Most dungeon design here is very winding and maze like you will be wandering a lot looking for a specific Items you need to progress. Most dungeons having very little in the way landmarks and feel samey to the dungeons theme throughout. So will get lost a lot without a guided map of some sort. Grinding here is not terrible but bosses and certain enemies do have pretty hard progression thresholds that need to be meant. If you're lacking really any pieces of equipment and are slightly under leveled for bosses, you're going to have a bad time. Some bosses being outright impossible without certain gear and level requirements. So, you guessed it if you miss stuff more wandering around. Finally and what made me drop another star here is the boss design. Biggest gripe being the final boss fight. These fights feel more luck based than skill not to say there is nooooo strategy here just that I felt bosses you attacks feel like luck to avoid. So, I just throw myself at them and hope for the best while trying to avoid damage. Final boss was where I almost wanted to quit and shelf this game. He is such a prick and a testament to bad boss design I wouldn't blame anybody for quitting. For one you really need to pay attention dont use the best gear in the game one tier down or would will do no damage. As you hit him the arena falls apart roughly where you hit him. So you will die over and over again to falling through a tile. or him justing spamming you to death. which again dodging attacks unless your the one is just luck based. Took me well over an hour to beat this guy on NORMAL. Despite that this game has a ton of charm and I would suggest everybody that is a fan of rpgs and anime to get into this one.