Playing Ys games “in order” the way I like to play series offered a unique challenge out of the gate. Falcom’s original flagship series was incredibly messy for decades, with almost every entry having multiple versions from back when different versions on different consoles meant often wildly different expressions of the same core concepts, from sound and visuals to level design and gameplay mechanics. Ys IV was famously outsourced for its two versions to two separate studios who didn’t collaborate at all and this resulted in two completely different games both titled Ys IV with different subtitles to differentiate them, which worked from the same design outline but otherwise diverged wildly. Things started to level out for the series with the release of Ys VI on the PS2 and PSP, and since then there’s a mainline Ys game every once in a while, but Falcom has also gone back and fully remade the first four Ys games alongside their work in furthering the series. These remakes are considered the definitive versions by the developers and “canon” to the overarching plot, such as there is one, but even they don’t totally simplify things. They came out haphazardly between Ys VI, VII, and Origin, and occasionally share engines with these games, which means that Ys Origin, VI, and III play the same, IV and VII play the same, VIII and IX play the same, and I & II live in their own little thing. There is currently no recognized Ys V because Falcom never remade it and it languishes on the SNES, technically having happened in the canon of the story but unrecognized by its own creators.

So here I am, playing Ys III, which is both the fifth Ys game chronologically and the second game to iterate upon this particular engine and play style, which originated in Ys VI. Do you see what I mean? This is outrageous. What’s going on here.

Anyway all of this is to say Falcom wins they broke me they broke my stupid shitty brain I do not give a shit about playing these games in release order I won’t do it I’m just gonna fuckin play the remakes in the order the numbers go in on the boxes. FUCK it bro. Origins can plop in after 6 I don’t give a SHIT. Maybe I’ll play some old ones later we’ll fuckin see.

A N Y W A Y Oath in Felghana fuckinggggggg slaps super hard bro this game is so fun it ALMOST makes me okay with the fact that they got rid of Bump Combat. Where Ys I & 2 Chronicle, the remakes of the first two games, are very clearly facelifts of the most beloved versions of those two games that otherwise preserve their cor designs and gameplay, Oath is a ground up reimagining of Ys III: Wanderers of Ys, which was originally a Zelda 2-like on the SNES. Now, rather than that OR the classic Ys style, we’ve landed on a fully 3D isometric game that kind of EMULATES the visual identity of classic top-down Ys games except when they think it would be cool to do anything else. All the characters are 3D models filtered and scrubbed to look sprite-ish, but the camera swoops and swerves with you to give dynamic or dramatic angles whenever it’s appropriate. Sometimes this is used for general sidescrolling, or classic spiral staircase traversal, but a lot of the time it’s just for the flair of things, and in a game that introduces as much platforming as Oath does it’s welcome to be able to offer different vantage points.

Combat itself evokes the FEELING of Bump Combat, expressed in a more normal mode. Adol has a six hit combo that you get by just mashing the fuck out of the attack button, a small combo when he’s jumping into the air, and a plunging attack he can execute at the height of a jump that stuns most enemies. As you acquire magical bracelets throughout the game you also acquire a ranged fireball, a spin attack, and a charge that doubles as an i-frame counter if you time it right. And that’s it! It’s not deep and it’s really arcadey-feeling, but where the game is clever is in the way the game works itself around your small skill set, always introducing new enemy types and frequently dolling out bosses with unique mechanics that require special deployment of abilities, often only for the moment of the game. I don’t think this works EVERY time (fighting airborne enemies in particular always feels a little wonky), and the balance of the game feels tuned a little too specifically so that often the difference between doing no damage to a boss and creaming them is grinding out only a couple of levels, but overall combat is as fast and fluid FEELING as ever even if that’s not practically true.

Something that I think is absolutely fucking insane about Ys is that it’s setting is like...Barely Fake Real World Plus Monsters??? It’s set largely on a continent that just looks like Europe ass Europe, the main antagonistic presence in the background of all of these is the Romun Empire with a U, there’s talk of the continent of Afroca with a O??? Why are you doing this Falcom, make something up!! The plot of this game revolves around this fake Catholic church which I would not blink an eye at aesthetically in a JRPG except that in this game they are explicitly a stand-in for the real life actual ass Catholic church it’s so weird! It just hits different when you’re hanging out in Fake Germany lol. It’s called like Garmany or something it’s so funny.

The region of Felghana itself though is very pleasant. Like the first two Ys games you still have a sort of central town area that you return to over and over to chat with the locals and upgrade your equipment and maybe pickup a sidequest, and as is typical for modern Falcom the flavor writing here is full of personality despite these people and their plight being super generic. You visit standard Mines and Icy Mountains and Lava Caverns but rather than feel generic in a bad way it does carry that classic vibe, like this game may be from 2005 but it’s really carrying the 1991 sensibilities on its back, which is what I want from this sort of project.

The driving force of the plot in this game is this guy who really wants to get revenge on the local tyrant and he devises this really convoluted and massively destructive way to do it (it’s poetic you see, because the Count destroyed his entire island and all the people on it, so it will be good to massacre people in proximity to the count, even though they are his servants and suffer under him and he doesn’t care about them). This kind of feels like a classic lib-brain “the bad guy is right but too much” thing right, like this guy is right that the Count did a genocide and deserves to die but people will be like nooooo killing is wroooooong nooooooo. Hilariously though this is not really what happens? Like yeah there’s a little bit of that but there’s more than one scene where people try to talk him down and their arguments are more like “what if you ONLY murdered the Count, or drove him into exile or something.” Both times they’re like “you know EVERYBODY hates the count right like if your plan simply wasn’t to murder everyone in the castle too you could get the whole town in on this EASY, NOBODY would care.” EVEN the count’s wife is immediately like “yo fuck this guy” when given evidence of his crimes lmao but no our buddy does in fact unleash a curse on the castle that literally just kills all the staff people and damn their souls to Fake Catholic Hell forever and unleash Mega Satan, WHILE GOING OUT OF HIS WAY to protect the countess and her children specifically. WHAT a prick lol.

But idk I feel like that beat is kind of my thing on the game in a nutshell it’s just kind of goofy and loose and hard to take too seriously and it’s constantly serving me fun shit to dig into even when it’s executing a lot of stuff in a way that feels just like 15% off the mark. As an expansion of the design core of Ys 1 and 2 I think it does a way more interesting job of incorporating magic into both combat and traversal but WAIT really I need to be comparing it to YS VI FUCK

anyway it’s good I had a good time it’s only like fifteen hours long that’s the sweet spot

What an absolute gem of a game. I had such a blast playing this.

Playing this game right after Ys I & II Chronicles+ made me miss the cozy vibes of these two games, but Oath in Felghana definitely has its own charm! The gameplay is still quick and fun, which made me enjoy every second.

Not being able to save when I want to and a few bosses were a pain in the ass though.

Great game if you think you like shmups but won’t try anything that doesn’t have stats.

Sorry that was mean. The juice carries hard! I’m sold on this engine at least on a game-feel level, cutting through mobs like a tiny red-haired buzzsaw on my lil PSPgo mildly kept my interest for about two hours. Felghana is at its best when it locks you in a room with dense twin-stick-like enemy and bullet patterns, where the extra Z-axis and melee attack options give the game a distinct flavor from comparable challenges in other titles. Mashing the shit out of your fire spell is innately enjoyable, staggers enemies regardless of damage and presents an interesting dynamic in that you can’t aim at your target without also moving there.

Bosses dictate the pace of their fights and have odd punish windows — the first Chester encounter for example has multiple, visually identical instances where he’ll idle a bit after completing his attack, yet the only one that’s actually safe to punish is following one of his big white aura moves. Not respecting this will regularly get you owned, and it doesn’t exactly make for an exciting dynamic.

This is probably the game’s most abrasive quality, but one I could’ve looked past rather easily were it not for the abundance of filler mob-corridors you have to trudge through. This is both a level design / structure issue — it’s trivial to jump over and run past enemies, the only reason not to do so is that it might leave you underleveled (DMC combat walls may have helped?) — as well as a seeming weakness of the mechanics: I like me some consistent enemy stagger, but Adol puts out hitboxes so fast that most mobs are unable to offer any meaningful counterplay unless they pelter you with projectiles from multiple angles (like in those shmup rooms I mentioned.) Many action games tend to make it so that the final hit in a combo knocks the enemy away, both as a strategic option for the player, as well as to give the enemy time to prepare an attack of their own, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here very much. Playing Ys Origin’s opening fight for comparison points to some careful rebalancing measures in that game, namely how the melee character Yunica seems to attack much more slowly.

Which segues nicely into why I ultimately decided to drop Oath — all the homies make it sound like Origin just emphasizes that game’s positive qualities while trimming most of the fat. Bring it on, baby. I don’t regret the time I spent in Felghana, but I also wanna keep it that way lmfao. The comfy JRPG vibes are definitely off the charts if that carries for you!

Okay, some mixed feelings here despite giving this a 3/5. I think my expectations for Ys have skyrocketed after playing through Ys Origin and Ys VIII, with the former being one of the best surprises of this year and the latter now being one of my favorite games of all time. Oath in Felghana has many of the classic elements that make Ys great, but I'm going to nitpick a fair bit here and try to explain why I think this pales a bit in comparison to Origin.

Oath in Felghana takes place as Adol Christin's 3rd adventure, in the land of Felghana where monsters have begun attacking rampantly for some reason and it's up to you, the adventurer, to do slashy slashy things and save this forsaken land! Now, I'd say the aesthetics and atmosphere are basically all there; graphics look fine for isometric 3D in 2005 with some pretty cool bosses and visuals, the soundtrack of course is banging because Falcom has never made a bad soundtrack in their lives, and game feel is generally very smooth because the Ys Controls are extremely simple and responsive. There's a story attached to all of this about your classic RPG tales of revenge and redemption and all that, and it's told well enough; you might even end up feeling bad for some of the characters despite story not being the main focus here. You can easily beat the game in less than 10 hours (that's with some grinding too, I'll explain that in a bit), and for the most part, you will be able to figure out exactly where you need to go to progress the story and Adol's upgrades. All the elements for a great action JRPG are here... so now I'll need to try and explain what felt "off" to me.

Oath in Felghana has two problems that stick out to me in my mind. The first is that in some sections, the checkpoints are too far apart from one another (particularly an issue in the abandoned mines and in the final dungeon of the game). If you happen to be playing the PC version like me, then when you die in a dungeon, you will teleport to the last checkpoint that you healed/saved at... which in some cases could result in you losing 2 levels of progress or more. This is made particularly more brutal by the fact that healing items in Felghana are either found as a one-off in some breakable pots (that never return), or as a drop by some enemies, so healing in general outside of checkpoints is not really reliable, especially at low health when you want to avoid combat. You'll eventually get an item to help alleviate this in the end game that lets you heal when standing still, but until then, your best reprieve is backtracking to the last checkpoint via a teleport key item (which you get early on enough) and saving your experience levels, but losing your level progress, because levels can get pretty long at times. So this was a major cause of frustration where getting wombo comboed during levels lost me about a half hour of progress or more at times. (There is an item that alleviates this slightly by increasing enemy item drops by the way, but it requires you to activate and complete an optional hidden sidequest on the other side of the map that was never mentioned to me by any characters and expires after completing the next portion of the storyline... OOPS!)

The other extenuating issue I have with Oath in Felghana is the boss design. Oath likes to do this thing where it often feels like an endurance test instead of a threshold/execution test; many of the bosses tend to be invincible or unable to be hit due to positioning until they let themselves be hit after dodging enough attacks or landing a crucial hit after dodging enough attacks. This results in this dance and song of having to wait around and dodge tons of projectiles and other physical attacks until you get your opportunity to punish with a few hits, and then waiting and dodging again to repeat the process. This may not sound that bad, but I'd like to compare this to Ys Origin, where in almost all cases it felt like I could actively influence the battle throughout its whole duration; in Ys Origin, bosses dissuade you from going all out by dealing damage to you and forcing you to dodge attacks when telegraphed instead of say, flying off the screen/above the ground to where you can't touch them or flashing invincible for some time. I think it's somewhat antithetical to Ys's popularized gameplay of playing aggressively and being rewarded for dodging/defending well, because in Oath in Felghana, you're usually waiting around or dodging for a good chunk of the time instead of being able to pile on damage whenever you're not on the defensive; it feels less like player-intuited counter play and more like following a script. Oh, and the small margin of error does not help here, because you have little time to attack due to the cycles and a lot of time to get hit, and when you get punished, you will get punished greatly because there are almost no invincibility frames from what I can tell. You could grind a little bit to lessen the damage (a problem that Ys Origin also has, to be fair), but that feels like a bit of a cop-out at times, and I really didn't feel like I had to grind in Ys Origin while I almost felt like grinding at times was necessary in Felghana due to how stressful and demanding the fights in Felghana fight. For context, I usually took about 1-4 tries for bosses in Ys Origin, while many bosses in Oath of Felghana took upwards of 7-8 tries; you could definitely argue that Felghana's just a more brutal game, but I think a lack of agency over pace during boss fights in Felghana as compared to Origin also contributes to this.

Now, this last part I'll be a bit more forgiving towards because I'm not sure how much of this relates to the PC port being scuffed. It became fairly evident to me that the PC port's physics were tied somewhat to frame rate, and because this game is ancient (in internet years at least), it constantly runs in the thousands of frames on my PC. This results in a lot of cases where double jumping onto platforms straight up didn't work because I'd get caught on the lip of the ledge instead of landing on top of the platform, and almost soft locked my game at the beginning of the mountains section because I couldn't figure out how to double jump and land on top of the elevated path. The proposed solution was to turn on V-Sync and cap the frames... except in my case, the box for V-Sync was checked in the config settings and I had used Nvidia Control Panel to cap the frames, but to no avail. The actual solution came when I played the game on fullscreen instead of windowed and somehow I was able to make all of these jumps (except for one in Valestein Castle... going to guess that one is just janky physics) on the first try. I think the frame rate - physics issue on PC also led to some unusual behavior during boss fights where bosses attacked more quickly at times or had tons of homing/tracking attacks I couldn't dodge easily or had yardstick hitboxes and lingering hitboxes that lasted longer than Link's nair in SSBM (I'm not even sure if that's base game in general or due to an issue with the PC port to be honest). I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're gambling a bit playing this on PC because I'm definitely not the only one who's run into this issues, and maybe you should just stick to the PSP release to err on the safe side despite the lower frame rate and lower graphical fidelity.

I think Oath in Felghana is still a good game, and still feels like a good Ys Game despite not being the Ys game; when you're playing well, there's really no other feeling like wailing on enemies and shredding bosses with well timed execution and dodging. But there's definitely some important factors here that make me greatly prefer Ys Origin, its sibling in this era of Ys, as my choice of condensed and introductory ARPG over Felghana. I'd say this is still worth a shot and I was more than happy to complete the majority of the game over two days without any burnout; give Ys Origin a shot first, and if you like what you see there, then Oath in Felghana's a must play. Just don't expect a 1:1 recreation in terms of experience and design; there's a reason why Origin was my first and not Oath.

Top 3 Ys game and the best of the classic 2D games.

In Memories of Celceta you learn more about Adol, but in this you get to learn more about Adol's travel companion Dogi. It was cool coming to his homeland, seeing the town he grew up in and learning his backstory.

I really loved the story of Chester and Elena and it's one I won't be forgetting any time soon. It definitely pulled at my heartstrings at times and Chester was a really relatable antagonist with a good backstory that I can't elaborate on because of spoilers.

The art design and graphics are really charming and have a very 90s anime style to them. Much like all of Falcom's games from that era.

Combat is the same as Ys: Origin due to being on the same engine, it's a lot more simplistic than newer Ys games where you get skills and can combo and stuff, but simple isn't always a bad thing and it's still a fun system, especially the magic part of it.

Bosses in this game are VERY difficult, some people might not enjoy it, but I'm a masochist so I really enjoyed it. I'll just say tfw your action J-RPG becomes a bullet hell.

Level design was great. Your typical Ys. Lava level, ice level, underground waterway, forest, cave, etc, but even though I've seen these levels many times they're designed well with good platforming sections and secrets to find and are always fun to explore so I never mind the formula.

The MUSIC. Peak Falcom. Among one of my faves of all their games. Incredible. Super catchy melodies, shredding guitars and keyboards that sound like they came straight out of an 80s Yngwie Malmsteen album, beautiful violin pieces as well.

I really don't have any complaints, for a simplistic, old-school low budget J-RPG from the early 2000s, this game is pretty damn great and close to perfection.

The first two Ys games succeeded in large part due to their speed and momentum, a delicate balancing act created by the combination of fast and simple combat and a banger soundtrack. The Oath in Felghana understands this and absolutely recaptures their spirit in one of the best games this series has ever produced.

Felghana takes the solid bones of The Ark of Napishtim and polishes them to a mirror sheen: the combat and movement are faster and more fluid, with the removal of consumable items and a power-up + hit counter system creating a greater sense of momentum; boss fights are challenging, but cleverly designed and satisfying; the music is some of the best this series has ever seen. It’s a game with a laser-focus, nearly all combat and movement once you get into a dungeon, and that focus pays off in a game with few missteps.

But Felghana is also a master-class in how to remake a video game. Wanderers from Ys is much reviled, an experiment undone by its wonky combat and terrible use of vertical space. Felghana preserves what worked…but it’s also surprisingly faithful to what didn’t. It absolutely retains the verticality of the original game, its emphasis on platforming, with some room layoutsbeing practically identical re-creations. In doing so, it preserves the original’s identity, taking its failed ideas and re-visiting, re-contextualizing, and re-executing them to make them sing in a way they never did before.

- Almost fully voice acted
- Story was interesting and it has an (ys world) east European influence. Also funny that the local lord is originally from the Ys roman empire, because in the real world the Romans indeed traded with that area.
- On the shorter side. These days that's a positive for me. The story didn't feel incomplete, so that just means that it didn't do needless filler to increase the runtime.
- Great quality sprites in the Falcom style
- Amazing OST, also love the violins in it
- Dungeon design that plays with height but not overly frustrating/confusing
- the amulets that give you different powers are much better than the different elemental swords in Ark of N. You don't need to grind endlessly to power them up. They even gave an easier dash option than the one in the last game. The dev team learned a lot from the mistakes they made there.
- really good bossfights even compared to the other earlier titles

This one checks all Ys boxes for me. Amazing remake.

7,5/10.

Em poucas palavras tão engajando e divertido quanto ys origin, porém inferior.
Sendo sincero a ost aqui é um ponto bem alto e o flow de como tu lida com as fases e os boss, ao menos para mim, foi um tanto difícil, esse jogo tem spikes de dificuldade que real eu senti um incomodo muito forte em somente 2 ocasiões.

Tirando isso, foi uma aventura satisfatória, tem elementos de narrativa interessantes minimamente, mas bem ok.
Pelo visto não foi aqui que ys começou a elaborar melhor sua narrativa, ainda assim esse jogo tem uma temática e acho ela ok.

Concluindo, um jogo sólido.

This was my first Ys game and a good introduction to Adol's journeys.

Felghana's gameplay and bosses are some of the best and most challenging the series has to offer. Combat is a huge improvement over Napishtim, feeling less clunky. The horrible dash jump mechanic was also replaced by a normal and easy to use double jump.

However, while not bad, I personally found the story and setting to be just okay, with the exception of some twists in the endgame. It does contain some of my favourite dungeons though. OST contains some bangers, but still, not in my personal top Falcom OSTs.

Don't have much more to say actually. It's a really good Ys game and if your main thing you seek in Ys are the challenging bosses and tough action gameplay, this might as well become your favourite.

such whiplash jumping from viii to this one... I guess I brought it on myself. there's just so many issues tied to this weird hybrid 2D-3D isometric engine holding me back from enjoying this one more.

hitboxes are hard to parse because the sense of depth is compromised by the perspective and the flat characters. it doesn't help that during boss battles there's usually a lot of hitboxes on screen at once. this is exacerbated by the fact that generally adol's only way to get out of harm's way is to jump, and an aerial adol's location in space can hardly be determined without some practice. combat in general is light on options given adol's limited kit in this game. attacks are limited to the usual mash-x combo and with the added wrinkle of a couple different aerial attacks. fighting the regular mobs is so tedious and dull by the end of the game... once you get the double jump you can at least stun enemies by doing double jump->downward plunge? but late-game enemies don't respond to these as often so it doesn't feel like it significantly changes the gameplay loop.

and those boss battles... they truly love throwing crazy bullet patterns and such at you in this game. I'd love to see a 3D action game take on that level of challenge and variety of projectiles, but in this hybrid engine it feels claustrophobic and arbitrary. in the first half of the game I found the bosses truly overwhelming, and much of this has to do with streamlined mechanics from typical action rpgs that really should've made an appearance here. there's no way to heal in a fight outside of popping a full boost gauge, but the second level that includes healing doesn't unlock until the midgame unfortunately considering how useful it is. there's also no way to upgrade equipment until you unlock the ability to teleport after the second major dungeon, which is still relatively early on but feels awkwardly late given how useful upgrading equipment is.

the bosses aren't only overwhelming because of the hitboxes of course, as there's a sort of maximalist old-school design pattern going on here. each boss has a ream of moves that must be dealt with, with virtually all fights having multiple phases and occasional overlapping attacks that really stress proper positioning. what's unfortunate about this is that adol's limited toolkit results in very few options available to approach each encounter. it's a necessity to experiment and find which strategy works with each attack, which is a common design pattern for any boss fight but feels extremely restrictive here with so few different approaches to each fight. in some cases the proper solution to a given attack can be relatively obscure or unintuitive, such as the swoop attack gildias uses in the third phase in his fight. he remains aerial the whole time, but he will only pick you up if you don't jump, which does not make much physical sense and was a strategy not apparent to friends who had previously played the game when I talked to them. this one attack could potentially kill the player in a single shot depending on luck (he throws you down a chasm with ledges that will severely damage you if they are not narrowly avoided or blocked using the charge magic) which feels cruel on the side of the developers. likewise multiple other projectiles towards the end of the game (such as in the clockwork robot fight or either of the final two bosses) will knock you down and chain into other projectiles, causing massive damage to the player. it seems like in a lot of ways the developers put in a wide variety of creative ideas without caring much about how viable it was to play against them. compared to the much gentler difficulty curve of the modern ys games, it's a little shocking to spend 10+ attempts on a boss that can consistently kill you in only four hits. the final boss is especially excruciating, as for most of the fight you cannot attack the boss directly and instead must just survive until your next opportunity to attack arises. it's a shame too, as much of the end of the game (barring the clock tower boss which was far too fast for adol and mostly consisted of me running in a circle waiting for my boost to recharge) has some very solid bosses that feel more flexible regarding feasible approaches. it's not that the ideas here aren't good, but the way bosses control the pace of the fight really removes much of the fun of trying to optimize damage or fight aggressively.

what's most damning really is that this frustration is surrounded by little else. the plot is certainly fine but is pretty thin with shallow side characters and a relatively predictable structure. dungeons generally consist of long straight lines with small detours for field items or extra goodies, and so exploring each one feels more like a chore of wading through enemies rather than any sort of puzzle layout or organic area. regular enemies generally require little thought except for some focus on character placement, which would be fine if the combat had a bit more spice. the magic as well rarely gets used outside of clearly telegraphed lock-and-key puzzles that don't particularly evolve over the course of the game. this is a game entirely built around engaging boss encounters, and I really don't think the combat mechanics are robust enough to make an imprint on me that this is a must-play or even particularly engaging at all.

it's a shame really, since all of the requisite falcom bits are present: energetic music, lovely sprite art, and the feeling of a well-crafted and succinct B-tier jrpg snug within your psp (or pc, which seems to unfortunately not play nice with modern hardware). it just suffers from a lack of ambition in its fluff and structure while potentially possessing too much ambition in its boss design. for every boss I felt satisfied to beat there was a counterpoint that felt tedious or stiff or poorly considered. or perhaps I'm just more cut out for modern ys rather than these older titles.

Gave up at the final boss, but I really liked the arcade-esque difficulty of this game before dodge rolls came along and poisoned every single action game ever.

Most bosses feel unique and require you to pay attention to the moves, usually there's something really subtle about how you need to move to avoid the attacks. Things like bullet movement or boss limb movement actually matter since you need to not touch them! (Vs. just roll through it)

I like that harder difficulties add in new moves, too. The dungeons are simple and some have a few platforming ideas to them, they generally had a good pacing even if the structural ideas weren't that profound. I guess if I have a complaint it's that due to the leveling system (which mainly serves as a kind of dynamic difficulty for bosses - if you're too weak, grind a bit to have an easier time). The regular enemy designs are all neat too, but I feel they rarely get to shine because you're either too low-level to engage them safely (there are like, no checkpoints in this game so you almost never want to take risks in the long dungeons). OR, you easily outlevel and just spam your way through fights.

In that sense, this feels like an arcade game that's kind of ruined by RPG mechanics - even if you try to engage the enemies in a fun way, you naturally level up and everything dies too easily. I think every Ys game has this same problem. Sure, you can feel more powerful as you level up, but I think they could have limited that to just the bosses (some kind of thing you can grind for to power up slightly if you really want a slight edge against the bosses).

All the bosses were cool, but bosses have a few issues - like ones who don't have openings until you get a certain sequence of random moves (final boss!) - these are kind of tedious to fight because there's a lot of waiting.

This game has a ton of additive-blend particle effects, which makes reading the arena particularly confusing, especially when the attacks use huge particle effects - the hitboxes are vague and imprecise and you have to just intuit where you're moving (the fire serpent felt particularly bad here.) I also don't like the 'really fast rat human' type bosses like Chester 2 where you either boringly skirt around ridiculously fast attacks until you get a tiny opening, OR you just grind to get more DEF/HP and spam attacks when you know you won't take as much damage.

There's an unpleasant imprecision to flashy boss attacks - part of why this game is so fun is that enemy attacks and the top-down 3D perspective feel really readable - and those flashy attacks feel like they go against what makes other parts of the game good.

Anyways, I like this Ys the most out of the top-down 3D ones (Oath, Ark, Origin). I wish there were more made like this! (Rather than going down the dark, RPG-heavy dodge roll path, like Celceta, 7 8 and 9 did... not really interested in playing those (I played a bit of 8))

Oath In Felghana : Ys perfected ?

If there’s one game so far that we constantly bashed over perhaps unfairly it’s Ys III : Wanderers from Ys ! And look, I’m sorry to all the people who enjoy the original iteration of Adol’s third adventure, after all why would they keep re-releasing the game later down the line if it was that much of a failure ? Well suffice to say that Ys III marked the end of Ys presence in the west for a long while, only returning to western shores with Ys VI in the 2000’s thanks to the help of Konami porting the game on consoles which was only a brief return but something was about to change within Falcom after the release of this game.

See, initially after releasing Ys 1&2 Eternal (the semi-complete remake of Ys 1&2 on which the Chronicles version available on steam is based on) the natural next course of action for the company was to do something similar with Ys III, pretty much taking the base game of Ys III and give it a graphical overhaul as well as some slight gameplay and progression adjustment. But the younger staff at Falcom were tired of releasing ports and remakes and decided to take things into their own hand, this led of course to the creation of 2 new franchises (Zwei and Gurumin), a new episode of the Ys franchise as well as the start of a new legend of Heroes subseries : Trails in the Sky.

All these projects will see moderate but significant enough success in Japan where the PC market wasn’t quite dead yet at the turn of the millennium and later down the line a small console was about to push Falcom even deeply into the top of its niche : The Playstation Portable. It’s simple every early 2000’s releases of Falcom will see ports and re-release on the PSP and thanks to many western publishers being interested in Falcom’s output and some good old word of mouth, Falcom went from a company struggling to revive from its ashes to a company somewhat recognized for their low budget but full of heart title.

But the idea of remaking Ys III was still in the mind of Falcom and thus, they decided that instead of making yet another overhauled port of Ys III since it was kind of the series blacksheep, they decided instead on completely remaking Ys III from the ground up. And thus, Ys : The Oath in Felghana was born !

There’s a belief I have when it comes to game remakes that I think should be widely more considered in this industry. Our society has commonly accepted videogames to be an art form as valid as cinema or literature and yet the consumerist nature of gaming and its tie to the evolution of technology forces us to always seek to upgrade our games to current standard. This leads to either a completely original product based on the original and only borrowing its rough plot outline and iconography, an enhanced version of the same game with different graphics and slight gameplay rebalancing (which would be closer to a remaster than a so called remake) or the more rare occurrence like FF VII Remake to be some sort of a meta-sequel and an extension to the original made first and foremost for people already familiar with the original (but still sell itself as something a newcomer can jump into no problem which is schizophrenia as fuck).

However, my issue with this lies in the fact that we mostly do that to good games, games that are considered classics of the medium and that’s where I’m really confused because if those games are classics ? Why do we feel like replacing them in the modern discourse with a new shinier version stripped of its context and mechanics ? Is there a point really ?
And this led me to another reflection. If the core idea of remaking something is to upgrade a videogame to be more palatable to modern audiences, why do that with good games ? Of course, the reason is oftentime “Money” but there’s also this deeper sense of hypocrisy in the gaming community that we wish the games we used to love could be as good as we remember them being ? If they made us feel something back then, they could make us feel something now but also we don’t want to be reminded of the rougher reality that games technically and mechanically ages. But if games can be good enough to become classics, why remake them in the first place ? That means they’re technically timeless, technically they’re a piece of history worth going back to and maybe modernizing it will make it lose its meaning rather than add to it ?

As you can probably tell, I’m not a big fan of remakes, but there’s one thing that I’m open to, remakes of games that never got that chance to shine under the spotlight. In our childhood we all had these games which we enjoyed but can’t really be called “all-time classics” and personally I think it’s much more interesting to see a game which had the potential to be great actually being given the chance to prove itself with a second take on the same ideas. I believe Ys III despite my virulent review of it was that kind of game for many people. In an era where the selection of games were pretty limited and accessibility was even worse than it is now, people just used to cherish what little games they could actually get their hands on and if that game happened to be Ys III well… You could be playing better but you could be playing worse really.

But Ys Oath in Felghana doesn’t just remake one of the series most infamous titles, it takes that blight upon the series legacy and literally turns a pile of shit into diamond because Oath in Felghana might be the best Ys game we’ve covered so far and I mean it !

Oath in Felghana is a remake of Ys III but first and foremost it’s the second game in the Ark Engine trilogy. Following the advance and game design prowess of its predecessors, Oath in Felghana sets out to literally perfect the formula left by its forefather. As such the gameplay segment of this review will be shorter than usual because most of what Adol can do in Ys VI, he can do here and yes even the Dash Jump which is still possible to do but not required anymore to clear certain gap or explore, it’s now just a speedrun tech like god intended.

However that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t change anything because on top of Ys VI’s mechanics a couple of new things have been added which greatly enhances the flow and overall dynamism of the game. Now the game has a sort of combo meter which doubles as an EXP multiplier, the more combo you make and the higher the multiplier is which can raise the EXP gain up to 2x the normal amount as long as you keep the combo going but that’s not all.

As you mash through enemies some of them will drop stat enhancing bonuses which works similarly to the combo meter whereas if you keep collecting said bonus the multiplier gets bigger and bigger as long as you don’t break out the chain. These bonuses can range from strength, defense and MP regeneration speed and once all of them are maxed out, you truly feel like an unstoppable god tearing and shredding through monsters which all comes back to that old comment I made about the Ys series pretty much being “Zelda for Doom-brained people”. This single addition to the gameplay really changes everything, whereas Ys VI was a slower more methodical game, this game wastes no time and the game feel is immaculate.
Another thing which pushes the players to do well is the boost meter, once full Adol can rush towards his enemies with doubled strength and speed which is very satisfying to activate.

Magic also makes a return, no more sword style changes this time around unfortunately but a selection of magic rings adding new moves to Adol arsenal which replaces the terrible magic ring system of the original game while making shoutouts to them. A grand total of 3 Magic Rings can be found throughout the game, one is a fire ring which allows you to throw fireballs in rapid succession or charge it for a bigger blast, the other is a wind ring giving Adol a circular attack which can be used both on the ground and in the air to cover long distances and last longer and is wider as you charge it (easily one of the best addition to Adol’s toolkit) and last but not least a thunder ring which allows you to punch through wall with a big fist which gives you a couple seconds of invincibility frames while doing so.

And those invincibility frames are gonna come useful because the game seriously doesn’t fuck around, this might actually be one of the more challenging Ys games in terms of difficulty even on Normal Mode, one of the reasons to this difficulty switch is the fact that you can’t stack up on healing items anymore, in fact you can’t use healing items period. The only way to heal is to get healing herbs dropping from enemies which automatically heals a set amount or rest at one of the game's various save points. On top of that most of the enemies especially in the later stage of the games are much more aggressive and can easily overwhelm you if you’re not careful combine that with the level design having a bit more hazard than Ys VI did and you get a game which doesn’t fuck around.

Of course this means that this time around you actually have to master bosses pattern and defeat them without a get out of jail free card that can heal you mid-battles and when it comes to bosses I will say that Oath in Felghana has quite a lot of hit and miss in that department. Of course, all of them are better than their original counterparts and I will even say that most of them are actually better than the ones in Ys VI but one thing that kinda bothers me about some of them is just the sheer length of their pattern. Most bosses in Oath have a very small window in which you can actually attack them, the first boss in the game in fact is a prime example of this and is a bit too steep of a difficulty curve if you ask me for being so soon in the game. Some bosses like the Bird, the Fire Dragon and the Ice Dragon just plain don’t fucking work with how the colisions are handled in that game.

The bird and his goddamn flipping panel still gives me nightmare to this day because of how annoying it is to fight, the Fire Dragon just happens to be really tanky for no discernable reasons which makes the fight drag for longer than it should be and the Ice Dragon isn’t difficult per say but you can feel that this boss was designed so you can make heavy use of the thunder ring invincibility frames which isn’t all that natural of a solution and his patters are kind of all over the damn place.

But other than these few bad apples, I found the good boss to be especially good, shoutouts to your second encounter with Chester which might actually be my favorite boss fight in the entire series. Ys isn’t really known for having boss fights against human opponents but the Ark Engine had more of them and Chester II is an excellent example of an epic showdown between two swordsmen, his patterns are fast but fair and overpowering him is very satisfying. I wish more bosses in the series were designed like the Chester fight cause it’s pretty damn good in my opinion.
I also really liked the other non-human bosses aside from the ones I’ve mentioned, on average I’d say the boss design can range from either annoying or really good but all of them are especially challenging for the reasons I’ve mentioned earlier.

As far as the gameplay goes, Oath in Felghana managed to fully understand what it means to be an Ys title in the modern age, the gameplay is a constantly flowing, never-stopping pumping action game which feels fresh, modern and exciting to play the whole way through. Every element of the gameplay just works and even if some people might still complain about minor things such as platforming not being that great once again, I can’t deny that the gameplay here is simply superb and easily the best the series has to offer.

But it wouldn’t be that amazing of a title if it didn’t also have something Ys has been known for since its first entry aka a solid story to motivate the player to uncover the mysteries of the lands. Much like the original game, the story here is rather straightforward and at first not really that interesting. The game follows the rough outline set by the original to a T, Dogi and Adol arrives in Felghana and meets up with Elena the local Adol James Bond Girl of the week, some tyrannical king is messing around trying to claim a bunch of artifact which could potentially awaken an ancient demon and Adol is on a wild goose chase to stop them while encountering his right-hand man Chester along the way.

It was a simple and basic story in 1989 and it’s still relatively as basic and simple in 2005 when the game came out, however I will say that the actual script of the game this time around isn’t nearly as hilariously bad as it was in the original. This is due in part to a much better localization work (courtesy of XSeed) but also a significantly enhanced and upgraded script to give the entire story a bit more flavor. One area in which we can see this improvement is with the main hub town of the game Redmont. Redmont in the original was a place you had to go back to from time to time to progress the story but as a place it wasn’t particularly interesting, NPC’s were forgettable and most of its iconic nature was due to its rather catchy music but here, the town got expanded significantly and is much more alive than in the original.

The game was released a solid year after the release of Trails in the Sky, the first game in the Trails series and it shows ! It’s in this game that the two series started to mutually influence each other and I will say that in the case of Oath in Felghana it’s definitely for the better here. What Felghana took from the Trails franchise is its intricate sense of detail within its script, each NPCs have their own name, their own life, their own routine and their dialogue changes for every advancement in the plot encouraging the player to check-in on them from time to time to experience micro-level story arcs or participate in side-quest.

However because the setting of the game is much smaller in scale, I think it works especially better here than in the Trails franchise, sure Trails has a more ambitious setting but if there’s one thing that I learned from playing those game is that the “Falcom Formula” tends to work better in the context of a small hub you come back to rather than an entire country which inhabitants kinda come and go and most thing they say enters one ear and come out the other. Another thing which reinforces this sentiment is the fact that each character has their own character portraits and even their own bit of voice acting which definitely helps imprinting Redmont as one of the more memorable Falcom towns in their catalog.

One thing I’m happy the game hasn’t taken from Trails (yet) is the way it handled side-quest, I haven’t really gone too deeply about side-content in this review but Ys Oath in Felghana kinda retains a very 90’s approach to going about side-content. From time to time as you check out on NPC or find new trinkets in dungeon, you can find side-quest none of which are particularly memorable (aside from one about an old lady losing her son and which was already a quest in the original game but much more developed here) but they add some cool content and some nice incentive to go explore and interact with the world as much as possible. While it’s true that it results it some content being missable, I never really truly mind that as it just feels more natural than putting those on a quest board which make side-content feels like chores instead of something you want to properly engage with and feel like a nice surprise when you find out about them.

I did mention that the game has voice acting which I will comment on, the game has both Japanese and English dubs, I went with both and I must admit that as much as the Japanese dub is excellent, I do like the somewhat goofier tone of the English voice acting which reminds me of how even goofier the original script was but one thing I think definitely sells it for me is the British Narrator !

See since Adol doesn’t talk, all of his interactions are written in green-text describing what he’s doing or saying but some genius at Xseed thought that it was worth adding voice acting over and it’s done through some Stanley Parable-esque narrator sarcastically reading the lines and I just find that fucking hilarious. The idea that everywhere Adol goes there’s an out-of-bound British dude hiding in the bushes narrating his entire life is just so perfect and so in-line with the idea we’re experiencing Adol story through his travel diaries that I wonder why it didn’t immediately became a mainstay of the franchise after this point.

As for the actual story however, I think it’s just simply told better, with more characters and more details to flesh out the setting and several other subtle things to tie it better to the rest of the franchise which started with Ys VI but continues here. Ys III was never meant to be an Ys game originally and so its story couldn’t really connect to the wider lore of the franchise and for the longest time it remained pretty separated from the rest as a standalone product. Here the game puts much more of an emphasis on its central prophecy and lore while putting Adol and Chester in the forefront of the story which is handled way better this time around. Even Dogi’s relationship with Elena and Chester is fleshed out more and it definitely feels like there’s an actual level of care and importance here.

Chester isn’t as goofy or as one note of an antagonist as he was in the original, he’s a goal oriented, cold as fuck motherfucker who’s ready to do anything to fulfill the prophecy in order to avenge his sister and his village. And it’s done with much more subtlety and finesse this time around, with climactic confrontation in the form of 2 boss fights which weren’t present in the original but also a lot of subtle foreshadowing about his true intentions as well as his doubts in carrying said plan. Even Elena is much better written this time around, she’s a sassy tomboy who cares deeply about her brother and Dogi’s well-being and is ready to pack a punch when deemed necessary.



Elena from Oath is one of the most underrated heroine in the franchise in my opinion and my only real regret is that all of these cool fanarts of her carrying Chester’s sword and armor isn’t an actual thing in the plot but some weird inside joke of the developers who likes to dress her up in many different outfits from across the series as a reward for completing boss rush mode in set difficulties (canonical cosplayer girl yippee !).

Even the progression of the story is slightly touched upon with some things arriving out of order from the original which lead me to talk about the overall structure and level design of the game which I think is one of the game's biggest strengths as well as its weakness. While the game is completely remade in 3D with that classic isometric view it is nonetheless mostly based on a 2D Action game which were separated in levels rather than a big world to explore. And even thought the game does a lot of effort to make the world feels less segmented (with the addition of a central overworld allowing you to listen to : “The Boys who had Wings” for more than 10 seconds), it nonetheless feels like a succession of random set pieces than a natural world which you can explore freely with tons of secrets to find.

Unlike Ys VI which took place on an Island and therefore could allow itself to be a bit more exploratory, here the exploration is kept to a minimum in favor of focusing on environments which feels more like levels than proper dungeon. This isn’t to say that it’s bad though, the game has definitely more of an arcadey feel than its predecessors already with the additions of all these combo meters to fill up and this structure definitely doesn’t feel at odds with the rest of the game. What does bother just a tad bit with the level design is that sometimes the game has troubles between being a 3D action game and wanting to pay homage to the original level design. While some areas take full advantage of the game being 3D, some areas definitely don’t have as much depth and are closer to 2.5 D than fully 3D environment, I like the attention to detail and you can point out some areas to how they were made in the original but it does create a bit of issues when it comes to the freedom of player movement.

The Ice Cave in particular is probably the worst area of the game, with lots of slipping surfaces, enemies that take way too much space and are way too aggressive which doesn’t mesh well with the 2.5d environments and a lot of pits you can fall into which brings you to a lower level and reminding you of the worse of Ys VI level design. But when the game hits, oh boy it does hit because now I need to talk about Valestein Castle !!!!

Valestein Castle was already the most iconic location of the original, featuring multiple paths, a spike in difficulty, multiple traps and hazards and literally the best fucking music in the entire goddamn franchise. But here everything about it screams pure fucking ludokino ! It’s easily to this day the best dungeon ever created by Falcom. When people tell me that Falcom can’t do good level design or even good dungeon design after witnessing their more modern output, I always point at this fucking dungeon in particular because it shows that back in the day Falcom was actually stacked with semi-competent level design which were able to put their whole pussy into making great and amazing dungeons to explore.

Valestein Castle has everything you could ask for, challenging combat encounters, a vast and open-ended structure, multiple subsections within it, a somewhat metroidvania style structure, memorable locales and set pieces with various traps, platforming challenges and lots of story events to keep you on your toe and of course that banging fucking soundtrack.

The Sight of Adol, this badass adventurer rushing to assault the castle of the local tyrannical king, jumping and slashing his way through countless corridors filled with traps and deadly enemies while rescuing the villagers you came to know and grew an attachment to and stopping Chester’s revenge plot from claiming more lives than necessary ending with a climatic climb on top of a clocktower, multiple boss encounters one of the best fight in the game with Chester and even the rare good instances of a good twist villain in Falcom’s history is truly awe inspiring and truly hype.

Valestein Castle is so massive and iconic that it feels like it could’ve easily been the climax of the game if it wasn’t for the aforementioned last minute twist which exist to tie the remake to the plotline of the original in some pretty clever way in my opinion at least, and while the final dungeon isn’t bad per say, it definitely pales in comparison to Valestein Castle in terms of how iconic the entire thing is and much like the original, the game ends on a somewhat less bombastic note but the final boss is actually pretty fun if I’m being honest so It’s aight.

I’ve praised the music of Valestein Castle, but the rest of the OST is also rather fantastic, one of the rare saving grace of the original was its soundtrack (to which you can listen to multiple version of it by switching it out in the pause menu) and here it’s still one of the best Falcom OST. Originally composed by Mieko Ishikawa which succeeded Yuzo Koshiro after its departure, the new arrangement were handled by Yukihiro Jindo and his team which did a fantastic job breeding new life into these tracks, in fact I’d say this is some of Falcom’s best arrangement work they’ve ever done when it comes to remaking a game. I also like the fact they didn’t play it safe and weren’t afraid to deviate from the original composition, Redmont theme is calmer and more whimsical, Boys had wings now has violins and Valestein Castle feels like the same track was put on steroid but even some of the less notable tracks were given a lot of care and if anything I just like the sheer variety of the composition here.

Oath in Felghana is what I personally consider to be the platonic ideal of the perfect Ys title, it’s a game which is short and to the point while remaining intense through on through. It’s a game which breathes with an air of adventure and freedom, it’s a game of constant motion rarely stopping to smell the roses, an all banger no filler affair which is fun, exciting, and amazing to play or even replay. Oath in Felghana is a game I often replay for fun because it’s simply just too damn fun and not wasting your time in doing so ! It has great level designs, amazing music and the most fun gameplay in the series yet !

The only real thing that stops Oath in Felghana from being a true JRPG classic much like its forefather is the things it unfortunately had to carry out of the original like a pretty barebone and unoriginal story which was modified to be better but only ends up as being serviceable. The setting of Felghana isn’t the most interesting one in the franchise either and I would even dare to say it’s a bit too vanilla for my taste despite the many improvements that were made to the script and overall direction to make it feel more lived in. It’s not a bad story but it’s clear that the gameplay, the level design, the music and just the general experience of playing the game does a lot of the heavy lifting to make it work.

But as it stands, it’s one of my favorite titles in the franchise and I even consider it to be one of its peak. But this isn’t the end of our journey with the Ark Engine as we still have one more game to cover, the 10th anniversary of the Ys franchise was arriving soon and as such it was time to go back in time ! Back to Ys’s Origins !! See you next time for another Falcom banger

I really dislike using this word to describe media but if I had to describe Ys: Oath in Felghana.. it would be "soul". There is nothing quite like Ys. Oath in Felghana especially is one of the standout titles in the franchises many entries. Felghana manages to provide really fun, tight and tense gameplay paired with fluid movement, beautiful sprite work and incredibly satisfying gameplay progression. And of course, that beautiful OST. Falcom provides yet another stunning OST with my absolute favorite here being, "Valestein Castle". UItimately, Oath in Felghana is a rather quick game but that does not detract from how it manages to be an incredibly enthralling and downright exciting experience.