Suffers from a clear desire for an 'adventurous' feel. The towns and outside areas in the first few hours are low on character or inventiveness. It's quite deflating walking into an NPC's house, being greeted with a lovely bit of art for them and then realising all they say is a couple dry lines of dialogue (respect to the snake charmer mind you, that's a great Ys NPC). Loved talking to every person multiple times in 1+2 just to see what cascade of goofy lines they would come out with but quickly gave up on that here. Same goes for some of the cutscenes which agan look great while conveying dull plot details that go straight in one ear and out the other. The ramshackle english fandub is a double-edged sword. It provides a lot of quality charm when at its silly best yet equally it can just be, yknow, amateurish in a way that isn't entertaining and hampers portentous moments that could otherwise imbue mystery into the proceedings. The details of the world as you move through it don't spark anything until about halfway through, at which point they start getting more playful in both writing and design. The dungeons never get crazy but they eventually pull some amusing tricks and the little esoteric interactions you can have within the world that made Ys 1 + 2 so likeable show up more as time goes on.
The change made to how bump slash works is theoretically a fine idea - both diagonal bumping and trapping an enemy against a wall were previously basically just an auto-win so let's neuter them and add some tension back into it. Problem is they didn't replace them with anything. Walking direct towards the enemy but slightly off-center is now the only reliable method of attack, which in addition to getting incredibly dull over the course of a full game becomes frustrating for two reasons: 1) you can now go from full health to dead in quite literally two seconds if you just happened to get caught against a wall by an offscreen enemy or their hitbox does something wonky, and 2) the speed at which some enemies move and the narrowness of the confines you often fight them within are not at all suited to this kind of positioning. It ends up being devoid of difficulty or spice and then all of a sudden it's game over for reasons you couldn't foresee. The bosses are mostly solid though, it's just this moment to moment action that grates.
The OST is fantastic, of course. They definitely had the right ideas in many respects but stretched them out too thin in the pursuit of something more grand. The first two games had a sense of marinating in a small set of lovely places with real charm to them. Goof NPCs you're sad to see go at the end. This one is too eager to move forward in an almost linear fashion and spends too much time on the perfunctory as a result. There's room for that approach in the bumpslash-era Ys format but the balance is off here
The change made to how bump slash works is theoretically a fine idea - both diagonal bumping and trapping an enemy against a wall were previously basically just an auto-win so let's neuter them and add some tension back into it. Problem is they didn't replace them with anything. Walking direct towards the enemy but slightly off-center is now the only reliable method of attack, which in addition to getting incredibly dull over the course of a full game becomes frustrating for two reasons: 1) you can now go from full health to dead in quite literally two seconds if you just happened to get caught against a wall by an offscreen enemy or their hitbox does something wonky, and 2) the speed at which some enemies move and the narrowness of the confines you often fight them within are not at all suited to this kind of positioning. It ends up being devoid of difficulty or spice and then all of a sudden it's game over for reasons you couldn't foresee. The bosses are mostly solid though, it's just this moment to moment action that grates.
The OST is fantastic, of course. They definitely had the right ideas in many respects but stretched them out too thin in the pursuit of something more grand. The first two games had a sense of marinating in a small set of lovely places with real charm to them. Goof NPCs you're sad to see go at the end. This one is too eager to move forward in an almost linear fashion and spends too much time on the perfunctory as a result. There's room for that approach in the bumpslash-era Ys format but the balance is off here
Peak of the classic games for me. None of the boss fights miss, both magic and bump combat get their fair share of use. Soundtrack is nuts and the game looks gorgeous. A shame it never came west.
There is an amazing fandub of this game. The only fan translation I can think of with an English dub.
O melhor dos Ys clássicos, a despedida do bump system!
Tudo isso feito com uma apresentação incrível, lindos gráficos, gameplay bem amarradinho e satisfatório, músicas incríveis e animações de tirar o fôlego!
Tudo isso feito com uma apresentação incrível, lindos gráficos, gameplay bem amarradinho e satisfatório, músicas incríveis e animações de tirar o fôlego!
The peak of Ys!!!!!! (It's not but it is like top 3)
Gameplays the best of the bump games by far, the music's great, it looks great and the story is just classic Ys. It's amazing.
Gameplays the best of the bump games by far, the music's great, it looks great and the story is just classic Ys. It's amazing.
It's too bad this is the last bump combat Ys game (from what I understand), as this was the most fleshed out and enjoyable incarnation of it. It's got cool boss battles, a couple anime cutscenes, glorious classic Falcom CD music, and now a charming fan English dub. Playing this game made me realize the SNES was obsolete earlier than I realized. It's a shame the Turbo CD didn't catch on here in the states.
Hot dang. This game is basically Ys book 1 and 2 but turned up to the absolute max. Theres a LOAD of visual polish all over the game, plenty of environments to explore, a bangin' soundtrack, and refined gameplay over the previous games. The only real problem I could say I have with it is that the games difficulty leans a bit on the high side for most of the game, in the "you constantly feel underlevelled" kind of way. It's still absolutely manageable and demands more skill over grinding to get to where you need to go, so it's not all that bad. The characters were all memorable and interesting, and while the plot is basic, it still does interesting things despite that. Definitely a highlight of 16-bit RPGs as a whole. This series does just seem to get more impressive with every installment.
this game is so lucky i like stupid stories and bump system because if i didnt it would suck ass (not as much as memories tho!!!)
if you liked the first 2 ys games, you'll likely hold this one to similar, if not higher regard. mask of the sun is far from a perfect game. it has the same highs and the same lows as the first 2. the simple, yet engaging bump combat, the bussin music, the interesting story, the lovable characters, its all here. and this game has a more 90s shonen anime style with cool animated cutscenes here and there. but with the good always comes the bad. and while this game has the same pros of the first 2 games, it also has the same cons. particularly the biggest problems the first 2 ys games had, which is the godawful labyrinthian level design of the endgame that just pads out your playtime as you wonder where the hell the game wants you to go. and while thats at its worst in the last...several dungeons.... the game can also be slightly obtuse on where to go or what to do next. by the end i wasnt going five steps without checking the guide or video walkthrough. and boy did they also help for the bosses. many of them were uhhhhh.... not the strongest in the series. it really makes you realize just how bad the grinding problem in this game is when one level is the difference between steamrolling and getting steamrolled, so you just kinda...grind for 10 minutes going back and forth doing nothing else. its monotonous. its also a lot longer than the first 2... that might be good to some, but personally i feel it overstayed its welcome
all in all, its still a fine game, arguably the "link to the past" to the first 2 games "zelda 1"
if you're playing the ys series for the first time and wondering which of the 5 versions you should experience (PCE/SNES/PS2/MoC/Manga)
well i cant say i dont recommend playing this version, but personally i quite liked memories of celceta but thats not a popular opinion i know. but look into this version at least and decide for yourself
all in all, its still a fine game, arguably the "link to the past" to the first 2 games "zelda 1"
if you're playing the ys series for the first time and wondering which of the 5 versions you should experience (PCE/SNES/PS2/MoC/Manga)
well i cant say i dont recommend playing this version, but personally i quite liked memories of celceta but thats not a popular opinion i know. but look into this version at least and decide for yourself
My Favorite YS Game
Great game and my favorite of the classic Ys (pre 6)
Excellent gameplay, story, characters, music, literally everything. Fan dub and patch were great and a welcome addition.
Excellent gameplay, story, characters, music, literally everything. Fan dub and patch were great and a welcome addition.
Ys 1 Chronicles is one of my favourite games of all time, but I was miserable while playing this, it just frustrated me to hell and back. The bump combat in this game is honestly disappointing, when you hit an enemy while moving diagonally, they seem to be bumped in a random cardinal direction and can often just hit you back after you bump them in a bad direction from that, which is just dumb and annoying. Someone also thought it was a good idea to include invisible enemies in areas before you get the ability to see them, meaning you can't stop to heal because you will get hit by an enemy you had no chance of seeing, an enemy that also infinitely respawns even when you're standing still. This game also has some of the worst bossfights I've had to put up with in any game, they all demand the most specific, unintuitive movements and often just left me to overlevel so I can just wipe them. Grinding to wipe a boss in an action game is the opposite of what I should be doing, but the game makes me underpowered and then overpowered after one level up compared to the boss. The music is pretty good, but the theme of the celcetan forest got grating after hours of misery in this garbage game. Overall, all the things I like about this game are things straight ripped from Ys 1 & 2, all the new things it does are for the worse, and the good parts are just not as good as they were in those games. This game also likes to kill you in less than a second if you get hit into a corner, as you seem to be able to take at least 1 hit per frame, which is stupid and just makes me savescum to save time. Overall, this is the worst Ys game I've played by far (though I haven't played every Ys game), it's far inferior to Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles, so if you liked those games and thought this would be similar you'd be dead wrong (at least in terms of quality, the actual design is quite similar to Ys 2 in particular, just way way worse).
Even though the bulk of this game was done by Hudson instead of Falcom, Dawn of Ys is a substantial technical and gameplay improvement over previous games in the series, although I suspect that may be more of a "because of" and not an "in spite of" thing considering imo Falcom didn't really get their footing as a developer until the 2000s but Hudson were making plenty of good games back in the 80s and early 90s.
The only issues that hold Dawn of Ys back is that it drags on a little, making the game overstay its welcome near the end and the two sections with partners following you are annoying as instead of actually helping you, they will steal your kills and deny you from getting exp. I was also hoping best girl Karna would show up more since I knew fans of this game gush about her characterisation but she barely shows up past the first couple of areas.
The only issues that hold Dawn of Ys back is that it drags on a little, making the game overstay its welcome near the end and the two sections with partners following you are annoying as instead of actually helping you, they will steal your kills and deny you from getting exp. I was also hoping best girl Karna would show up more since I knew fans of this game gush about her characterisation but she barely shows up past the first couple of areas.
Great game, slightly diminished by the terrible quality of the dubbing, which is a bit of a shame since it completely ruins a bunch of dramatic moments.
this is without a doubt my favorite ys game ive played so far (im currently playing through 6 so this might change) i dont even care this game isnt canon i love this game a LOT
im a huge sucker for games with 90s anime-style cutscenes and this game delivers that in spades, the spritework done in this game is probs straight up my favorite in a game from this console generation, the portraits and cutscenes are a HUGE stepup from 1&2
i know this game isnt canon but the way the story was presented in this game is just superb (which just made mask of the sun so much worse when i played that after this one), unlike in that game the sages and villains are ACTUALLY REOCCURING CHARACTERS and FEEL SIGNIFICANT and the way this game introduces characters feels so much less forced than in mask of the sun (MASK OF THE SUN MINIRANT OVER)
this game is a blast to play, unlike 1&2 i pretty much never felt lost in this game until i got to the teleport maze near the end of the game, the dungeons arent too simple to mindlessly walk through them but theyre not too obsurd to work your brain around and it makes for a really fun experience
bump combat was PERFECTED in this game, you have no idea how good it felt first time i found out this game lets you move DIAGONALLY :OOO (unironically), the combat in this game just flows so beautifully and this game offers up super fun boss fights too
just like 1&2 this game also has a killer ost (which is pretty much what ive come to expect from the pc engine at this point (SHOUTOUTS TO RONDO OF BLOOD)) and even remixes a few songs from 1&2
UNFORTUNATELY i couldnt get the english fandub patch to work so i cant comment on the voice acting in this game, but id assume its rly good :)
i dont even care that this game isnt considered canon anymore (or ever rly) this game is so great its STILL worth playing and im so glad i did <3
im a huge sucker for games with 90s anime-style cutscenes and this game delivers that in spades, the spritework done in this game is probs straight up my favorite in a game from this console generation, the portraits and cutscenes are a HUGE stepup from 1&2
i know this game isnt canon but the way the story was presented in this game is just superb (which just made mask of the sun so much worse when i played that after this one), unlike in that game the sages and villains are ACTUALLY REOCCURING CHARACTERS and FEEL SIGNIFICANT and the way this game introduces characters feels so much less forced than in mask of the sun (MASK OF THE SUN MINIRANT OVER)
this game is a blast to play, unlike 1&2 i pretty much never felt lost in this game until i got to the teleport maze near the end of the game, the dungeons arent too simple to mindlessly walk through them but theyre not too obsurd to work your brain around and it makes for a really fun experience
bump combat was PERFECTED in this game, you have no idea how good it felt first time i found out this game lets you move DIAGONALLY :OOO (unironically), the combat in this game just flows so beautifully and this game offers up super fun boss fights too
just like 1&2 this game also has a killer ost (which is pretty much what ive come to expect from the pc engine at this point (SHOUTOUTS TO RONDO OF BLOOD)) and even remixes a few songs from 1&2
UNFORTUNATELY i couldnt get the english fandub patch to work so i cant comment on the voice acting in this game, but id assume its rly good :)
i dont even care that this game isnt considered canon anymore (or ever rly) this game is so great its STILL worth playing and im so glad i did <3
I agree that this one is certainly more likable than Mask of the Sun. The cutscenes are very well done and the art for inside homes is very lovely
That being said, certain areas like the final area and the sanctuary are annoying due to the area design and enemies that do too much damage. Most of the boss fights are fair and fun, and you are actually able to level up if they're too challenging as well. It's solid
That being said, certain areas like the final area and the sanctuary are annoying due to the area design and enemies that do too much damage. Most of the boss fights are fair and fun, and you are actually able to level up if they're too challenging as well. It's solid
Game Review - originally written by (wraith)
After the dreadful, dreadful Ys III, it would appear that Falcom has gone back to the tried-and-true style of the first two Ys games: overhead view game play with Adol running at demons kamikaze-like. Seriously, it’s Ys. Aside from Ys III, Nihon has never really deviated from the same basic formula.
Now I know this is kind of confusing, but there are two Ys IV games. In addition to this one, there was also Ys IV: Mask of the Sun for SNES, which was released just about a month before this game came out. Strangely, Nihon, perhaps in a step to protect the innocent, pulled some kind of Bizarro-Dragnet stunt. They kept the names and the places fairly identical in the two games, but they changed the plots. Both games are Ys IV, however, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Now, in the various gaming circles of the INTERWEB, the argument of which game is better has raged for quite awhile, and I choose not to address that here. Most of the people who engage in such arguments most likely do not speak Japanese. Watching such things unfold on forums and IRC is kind of like watching a bunch of Canadians discussing American politics: nobody really knows what’s going on, so everyone involved looks like a [redacted].
In conclusion, this is a cool game. But so is Mask of the Sun. I just wish there more English in it at the moment.
After the dreadful, dreadful Ys III, it would appear that Falcom has gone back to the tried-and-true style of the first two Ys games: overhead view game play with Adol running at demons kamikaze-like. Seriously, it’s Ys. Aside from Ys III, Nihon has never really deviated from the same basic formula.
Now I know this is kind of confusing, but there are two Ys IV games. In addition to this one, there was also Ys IV: Mask of the Sun for SNES, which was released just about a month before this game came out. Strangely, Nihon, perhaps in a step to protect the innocent, pulled some kind of Bizarro-Dragnet stunt. They kept the names and the places fairly identical in the two games, but they changed the plots. Both games are Ys IV, however, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Now, in the various gaming circles of the INTERWEB, the argument of which game is better has raged for quite awhile, and I choose not to address that here. Most of the people who engage in such arguments most likely do not speak Japanese. Watching such things unfold on forums and IRC is kind of like watching a bunch of Canadians discussing American politics: nobody really knows what’s going on, so everyone involved looks like a [redacted].
In conclusion, this is a cool game. But so is Mask of the Sun. I just wish there more English in it at the moment.
Ys IV Part II : The Dawn of Peak Fiction
In the 80’s there were few developers who actually knew what they were doing more than Hudson Soft, these guys are probably single handedly responsible for Nintendo opening itself to third party developers to make the NES/Famicom the legendary console we know today. Hudson Soft first and foremost were people who didn’t just like video games as a way to make money on a newly expanding market, these guys were very passionate about new technology and the wonders of gaming as a whole.
But eventually, when you enjoy making games so much, you start to become ambitious and soon Hudson Soft will partner with NEC the prime micro-computer manufacturer (and creator of the famous “porn game machine” known as the PC-98) under a share common interest of building the game console of the future : The PC-Engine otherwise known as the Turbografx 16 outside of Japan. The PCE was a really impressive machine for the time and even today, I’m still kind of blown away by the technical capabilities of the console which only has an 8 bit processor but packs a lot of punch otherwise especially with the CD Add-on that they’ve adopted earlier than many other companies at the time.
However, they were releasing a new console on an highly competitive market, Sega and Nintendo were fiercely competing for domination and other companies who dared venture on hardware territory knew that it was complicated to stand out amongst the crowd and that’s when Hudson had a brilliant idea, they will partner with Falcom to port their classic Ys title to their console. Ys 1 and Ys 2 were already considered classic of NEC micro-computers system and they have already existed many ports of the game to pretty much all available platforms at the time including the NES and the Master System but Hudson’s version on their PC-Engine was going to be different, it wasn’t just going to be a port, it was going to be a full-on REMAKE !
Ys Book 1&2 took the first two games in the series and combined them together into a single one like it was originally planned for the first time and the game will receive the most premium treatment imaginable ! A graphical overhaul which put new life into the game, touched up gameplay that made the experience smoother to play, smoother leveling curves which mitigated the grinding, new tracks to accompany certain important moment with new remixes on the absurdly insane sounding PCE soundchip which was able to make freaking miracle happened, it had animated cutscenes and full fucking voice-acting for a game released in 1989 and they did it both in Japanese and in English as this was the first game in the series to be shipped internationally (not counting the weird European port of Ys 1 on the Master System) !
Everyone’s mind was freaking blown away by how much love and care was put into this new iteration, gamers who were alive to see it happen before their very eyes as children couldn’t believe their eyes ! It was a true epic adventure with all the proper care put into its presentation to heightened that sense of wonder. It’s clear that probably the reason why Ys even got so popular in the first place and managed to stay relevant was because of this port right there, the game was well received pretty much everywhere and magazines sang the tales of how Hudson made Ys 1 & 2 a legendary game going beyond its simple ambition !
And all of this before Zelda or any other company was able to release their next-gen titles !
The PC-Engine version of Ys 1&2 was a massive success and single-handedly was enough of a reason for people to even buy a PC-Engine in the first place. It was clear that Hudson Soft didn’t just enjoy Ys, they didn’t just like Ys heck they didn’t even love Ys ! THEY WERE TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT YS ! So much so that Hudson was allowed to port Ys III for the PC-Engine too with the same level of care and polish as what they did for Ys 1&2 even tho no amount of polish managed to make the game any good in the end and they botched the localization of it but oh well…
So when Falcom couldn’t make Ys IV themselves, Hudson seemed like the obvious choice to direct and create a new entry in their series ! But making a game from scratch with only a design document full of concept arts, a few guidelines and no lines of code or any prototype was a vastly different task than just taking an already existing game and polishing it to completion but unlike Tonkin House who was this small no-name company playing with their turds trying to make a barely playable game to satisfy the guideline, Hudson had something that they didn’t, they had experiences with making successful cult classic games but most importantly they had PASSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmsS8eD_XY
From the moment you boot up the game you understand that the level of production value here is through the fucking roof ! You ain’t playing some dinky ass, poopy ass, budget ass, Tonkin Ass, Cold Steel Era Falcom ass “product” ! YOU ARE PLAYING A REAL VIDEOGAME ! MADE BY REAL DEVELOPERS ! WITH REAL TALENT ! REAL PASSION AND A REAL BUDGET TO GIVE THEM THE MEAN TO PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE AND YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY WERE GONNA TAKE THE CHANCE ! THERE IS NO BRAKE ON THIS TRAIN ! DAWN OF YS IS A GAME THAT’S GOING TO SHOW MODERN FALCOM PLAYERS HOW WE USED TO DO IT BACK IN THE 9 TO THE TIES ! A PRODUCT MOLD IN THE VOLCANO OF LOVE AND FORGED BY THE FINEST SOUL-MAKER IN THE INDUSTRY !
What made Ys 1&2 so legendary already was the visual presentation of it all, it made the original script of those games popped even more than they originally did in spite of the limited presentation and the added animated character portrait, voice acting and even cutscenes really added a lot of flair to the original two games. But Ys 1&2 Hudson was merely adding on top of the original game. With Dawn of Ys, they had full control over the game's presentation and how it would fit inside of the game ! And I’m happy to report they did a phenomenal job on just the visual presentation and scene direction level !
The first few minutes of Dawn of Ys already introduce the game in a much better way than Tonkin's version did. After coming back from one of their travels, Adol and Dogi stop by Esteria. It's been 2 years since the event of their adventure there and everyone is waiting for them ! A lot of things have changed already, Goban has opened a shop, Lilia now lives among the people of Esteria and is constantly waiting for Adol’s return and her health got better too ! Sarah is alive and managed to survive the assault of Dark Fact and his army after mysteriously disappearing in Ys 1 ! As you walk toward the city, the title of the game fades on top of the screen, everyone is celebrating Adol’s return ! This section feels like a genuine victory lap and a great way to welcome us back to the world of Ys after so long and I love every single minute of it and it’s all done really well !
One thing that’s clear from the game’s visual presentation is that the game will put more of an emphasis on its narration and especially how it’s going to be told through its visuals, you have much more scripted events the likes of other RPGs at the time where you lose control of Adol’s character for a moment to witness dialogues and scenes ! The general artstyle of the game oozes of that timeless 90’s anime charm, the character design is pretty damn excellent and on par with the striking designs of the original game, many characters from the first two games even got a face lift for the occasion, each of the game’s portrait and cutscenes are superbly animated and full of details ! That recreation of Ys II final battle is only a technical flex before the game bombards you with an avalanche of colors which pops out of your screen and invites you to live the adventure of a lifetime !
While the in-game graphics might be less impressive than the anime style portrait, cg’s and animation I just love how colorful the game looks which complimented by the extremely varied environments the game make you go through from lush forest to snowy mountains to a creepy abandoned mansion and even more, the visuals manage sometimes to pull off some really cool things with the environment and it definitely make the journey feel more alive than ever !
One particularly impressive thing about Dawn of Ys is that while text boxes are still the norm for dialogues with regular NPC’s most of the big story scene are entirely dubbed with animated character portraits popping on the screen and sometimes even CG’s much like in visual novel to highlight some of the more important moments, the original Japanese performance is honestly pretty stellar and I’m still shocked at how cleanly the voice acting sound on such an old hardware.
However this raised an issue when it came to the availability of the game for the longest time as much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys remained a Japanese exclusive and in the case of Dawn while an english fan translation already existed for a while most of the important dialogue remained untranslated simply because they couldn’t display subtitles during the game numerous voiced only segments. Thankfully nowadays this is no longer an issue thanks to a group of talented but amateurish voice actors who banded together with the goal to bring a fandub of the entire game !
While it’s not quite as professionally well made as the official dub of Ys 1&2 with the only professional voice actor here being Alan Oppenheimer, third cousin of THE Oppenheimer and voice of Skeletor in the He-Man series giving his voice to Darm in the intro of the game. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the crew delivered a hack job and I think that on average, they did manage to at least capture the feel of that era of voice-acting. I think it was probably something the dubbing team wanted to transmit with their performance, something that sound like it was recorded by a bunch of voice actors going off way too much in a at times goofy, at times overly serious and badass tone and I just think it works really well and definitely feel like the game actually did came out in the west. The only issue with the English Dub however is that the general audio mixing is rather poor, you can feel each member of the team had different mike quality and the voice acting can sometimes be a bit muffled by the music or sound effect playing in the background and with no option to arrange the audio mixing yourself in the settings you’ll have to sometimes open your ear wide to understand what the hell are they saying. Be sure to check their website at : https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/Ys%20IV%20Dub%20Readme/readme.html
But back to the story, as Adol is celebrating with his friends, Sara the local fortune teller tells him about the distant land of Celceta. While she was escaping the forces of Dark Fact she discovered a connection between the black pearl and some ruins recently found on the mainland and she asked Adol to investigate it ! Without losing a single minute, Adol answered the call to adventure and in the dark of night set out to Celceta the mysteries of this ancient land ! But in the shadows, a sinister group of individual are trying to perform a dark ritual shown in a metal as fuck way too fucking gory for this franchise animated cutscenes before the game starts off with this absolute BANGER !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9JTh0gAXs
GODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN MY DUDE THESE SAXOPHONES ARE MAKING MY ASS WETTER THAN A FOUNTAIN ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON JESUS CHRIST !
One of the strongest aspect of the Ys series ever since its infancy has always been its amazing soundtrack, baring some exceptions, you know that an Ys game is going to own several asses just going by the soundtrack alone and I must report that the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys is once again completely out of this world ! For the first time in the history of the franchise, it’s the Falcom Sound JDK team handling the soundtrack. The Falcom JDK team is Falcom's very own personal rock-band. Composed of many prominent members joining in and out as the company evolve with time, the JDK team was originally founded to make CD quality audio version of Falcom’s soundtrack to sell them as promotional material but eventually, the JDK team took a more prominent role in development and as the advent of technology and sound quality went on, the JDK team now started actually composing for Ys as well as other Falcom titles.
Ys IV soundtrack was composed before the game ever began development and most of the music were made on CD’s that were later released as the “Ys IV Perfect Collection” but while the original album is freaking phenomenal on its own, that doesn’t take away the excellent instrumentalisation that went into translating the original composition into something that could be played by the PCE absolutely insane sound chip ! It’s simple, the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys might be my favorite soundtrack in the entire series ! While Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack for the original 2 Ys games was already an absolute joy for the ear, his departure didn’t mean that the JDK team couldn’t up the ante and provide a soundtrack which tells a million words with only a few notes !
The synths, the guitars, the FREAKING SAXOPHONE in the intro of the game, everything about this OST oozes from pure 90’s funk and pop with a lot variety in the composition, of course you get your adventure tracks that make you pump to rush into battle like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYZDs0ARqg but you also get more ambient music that makes you feel like you’re adventuring in a scary yet sacred place and you don’t belong there with ominous sound reverberating through the room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRx_ZBoSrE then you fight a boss and the music goes : https://youtu.be/4HNEPXbNEK4?si=oaBREVaNcJIG7zqj !
There is so much variety and energy to the soundtrack that to me it easily rivals some of the greats like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Castlevania or even Donkey Kong Country with which Dawn of Ys shares its sense of harmony and insane instrumentalisation which seems impossible to do on such ancient hardware but yet it does !
And I even like a lot of the creative choice they make when remaking old tracks, Fountain of Love, Tears of Sylph and the Syonin for example is composed with an instrumentalisation closer to that of the PC-98 instead of how it was in the PCE version of Ys 1 to clearly separate the homely, familiar and old-school feeling of Adol’s quasi home-town which contrasts with the rest of the adventures which uses more elaborate instrumentalisation as Adol dives into the unknown, the same way Adol evolves and his adventure get more grandiose and epic, the soundtrack get crazier and more complex in return !
Heck at some point in the game, you return to Darm Tower which is about to crumble and fall, they could’ve done some weird melancholic version of the tune but nah, your return to Darm Tower is accompanied by some funky, jazzy upbeat version of the original tune, what once used to be the base of operation of a great evil and Adol’s greatest challenge yet is now a freaking dance party !!! You’re dancing to the beat of your old enemies main theme and desecrate their corpses because that’s how strong and confident Adol became through his adventure and to him the Darm Tower isn’t a place of challenge to him but a leisurely walk to the DANCEFLOOR BABY : https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI?si=mxLh4IP0a_1t2QcR
Theme of Adol 1993, Field, A Great Ordeal, Temple of The Sun, Karna, A Kiss from Eldeel, so many great tracks henched into my brain thanks to Ryo Yonemitsu exquisite arrangements of the JDK’s masterclass of a soundtrack for the PC-Engine ! I’m not a music theorist so I can’t really explain with technical terms how and why these tracks work for me but the vibes are genuinely immaculate !
The Ys franchise is first and foremost about adventure, about this intoxicating feeling of wanting to give everything up, grab our bags and journey to places unknown ! Pushing with relentless motion through the different places Adol visits on his journey and a soundtrack this energetic and varied only emphasize that feeling even more !
But fear not my friend because Dawn of Ys isn’t just a really cool aesthetic served on silver platter of banger tracks, it’s also first and foremost an EXCELLENT videogame ! Once again, we’re back to Bump Combat and I know that after everything I’ve just said that might’ve gotten you a little bit too excited you’ll probably say something of the likes of : “Oh really ? We’re doing this ancient ass, clunky ass, stupid ass bump system again ?” and ladies and gentle straw men who live in my head, I’ve heard your plight !
After all, Bump Combat is such an acquired taste that I had to spend two whole reviews talking about the strengths of a well executed version of such a system as well as its merits when it comes to the flow and the momentum of the game and the cracks that shows when this balance isn’t respected by badly coded hitboxes, stilted movement, terrible boss design and so forth. But Ok I know this can be a turn-off to some people but once again put your bias aside because Dawn of Ys took Bump Combat and made it EXCELLENT ! It’s easily the best game featuring bump combat in the entire series (it’s also the last one if we don’t count all of the countless ports of Ys 1&2 for modern platforms).
Dawn of Ys, much like Mask of The Sun, decides to take the same basic moveset as Ys II, with the same sets of magic to unlock too. One might think of this decision as lazy since the game doesn’t really offer much novelty from a strict gameplay sense but while your toolkit may be the same, the way Hudson uses that toolkit is much more different and the game is full of surprises at every turn. The only real difference now is that you now possess the power of DIAGONAL movement which is an actual god sent for fighting enemies or just traversing the map and offers a greater degree of freedom when it comes to positioning and even puzzles !
Unlike Tonkin House who understood so little of the appeal of the bump combat system they implemented elements of game design which came in contradiction to it, Hudson decided to play with that element of constant motion with sometimes really clever movement based puzzle making almost each dungeon in the game pop with creativity and flair they couldn’t really achieve back then. Like I said in my first review, the secret of the early Ys games was their simplicity and ease of access but also its constant sense of motion which made you rush into battle to the tunes of power metal ! But while simplicity is indeed charming, ambition is definitely more enthralling !
While Ys II chose the route of streamlining the game to be more accessible and focus more greatly on its narration by designing their game in a more linear fashion, Hudson decided to take the freedom of Ys 1 and the varied setpieces of Ys 2 to create the perfect synthesis of the Ys formula imaginable. Dawn of Ys is a game which never stops going and always comes up with new and exciting ideas for your adventure !
When you arrive on the mainland to start your adventure, boom you’re confronted by the Romun Empire and sent to prison where they take your cool ass equipment from your adventures in Ys II and you’re mad as shit about this but you break-out with the help of cool characters such as Durgen and Karna and you realize that sometimes the game will make you fight with ally who also deals with enemies the same as you ! One time you’re on a raft and have to survive an onslaught of enemies, one time you’re in a volcano ! One time you’re turned into a monster and have to find a way to turn back to normal ! One time you’re in Esher Space and the gravity is flipped upside down and so much more !
What about the bosses tho ? Well Hudson also pushed themselves on that front, Dawn of Ys possesses more than 15 bosses compared to Mask of The Sun mere 9 and it’s one more boss than both Ys 1&2 combined (proving once again that Dawn of Ys is the true Ys II if the first two games are combined into one complete experience). With bump combat and magic available much like in Ys II we can imagine that there would be an imbalance between the two mechanics but nope, each boss of Dawn of Ys is extremely well designed and fun to fight !
All of the bosses strike a good balance between having to use bump combat and magic to defeat them and when it comes to pattern and all, I have absolutely nothing to complain about here, some of the later bosses are true marvel of boss design which fully plays into the strength of the somewhat simple yet effective battle system of the series so far ! A friend of mine once told me that the Twin Head boss in Ys 1 was the best they could do with Bump Combat and he was immediately proven wrong upon playing Dawn of Ys for the first time and realizing that even the first boss of that games tops any boss from either Ys 1 or Ys 2. Dawn of Ys is a game of constant wonder that always finds a way to surprise you at every turn with its setpieces, and each one of them go by so fast that you don’t get to see the time pass ! This game's sense of flow and pacing is so immaculate that not a single moment of it is boring and you feel like you’re living a really epic adventure with twists and turns and revelations at every corner ! The game may be short, it can be completed in a little over 10 h but these 10h are so intense and filled with stuff that you feel like the adventure is 10 times more epic and grand than what you can imagine !
And this proves that a game can make us feel and experience many things with more intensity no matter the actual game time, something that Falcom seems to have forgotten with time ! It’s not about how long and how stuffed with content a game is, it’s not about how much you can pad out a game to give the illusion of something richer, deeper and more interesting. It’s about making the most of what the content you have to truly impact the minds of the player who experiences your art ! And if length and only length was a determining factor some medium like films wouldn’t be so successful and Hudson understood it perfectly.
The story of Dawn of Ys is also one that I wanted to give a lot of credit towards. While Mask of The Sun followed the guideline of the design document to a T without attempting anything fancy (and with how awkwardly the story was told here, they didn’t attempt to even follow it right imo), Hudson took the idea of a direct sequel to Ys 1&2 further and did a lot of really cool things with the continuity and the established lore at the time ! The game is called “The Dawn of Ys” because more than just a new adventure in a brand new land, Adol was about to discover the secret of what he went through in the first two games ! It seems that Celceta holds the answers to all the events that lead to the corruption of the Black Pearl and the fall of Ys before Adol’s arrival in the first game and as you explore Celceta, you find yourself uncovering these answers and I absolutely love the connections they made here !
From the relationship the twin goddesses had with the inhabitant of Celceta, to the origins of Darm and the Black Pearl, to how certain things in Esteria and Ys relate to things in Celceta and how everything played into one another. One of my absolute favorite moment of the game is when during one of the game many info-dump flashbacks, you not only learn the real name of Dark Fact but also it’s revealed to you that one of the items you’ve been using in Ys 1 is actually a super important item in the global lore of the series ! Meaning that you now have to depart for Esteria and revisit the map of Ys 1 now free of all the demons ! Can you imagine the absolute flex that it is ? They didn’t have to do this and yet they did ! And it’s so good seeing all the characters from the first two games but also the different places and what they became after Adol’s departure, Ys 1 which used to be so simple, is now relegated to a small chapter inside of a much more ambitious whole ! Sure, it’s not on the level of say, the second half of DQ3 or the Kanto reveal in Pokemon Gold and Silver to name a similar exemple but man I’m a sucker for that type of stuff !
Everything about Dawn of Ys to its presentation, to its music, to its story, to level design, to the way the game builds on the basis of Ys 1&2 and plays with its continuity make the game feel like a non-stop constantly moving grand epic to which we never see the time passes ! They took everything that made Ys 1&2 so iconic and perfected it, Hudson didn’t just want to create yet another title in the prestigious Ys saga, they wanted to create the Ultimate Ys game !
The game is a love letter to the series and what Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, now too busy to work on their own project accomplished years ago and in many ways they managed to surpass them (well at least as far as making a Ys game goes !) and I believe that no one understood the appeal of Ys more than the team at Hudson Soft.
However, Falcom had other plans for the franchises and didn’t want to let go of Adol and the series and with Hudson hopping a bit too much above the initial guidelines to make a conclusion to the series instead of yet another episode, they decided that the game would now be considered not canon and Mask of The Sun will therefore be the version of reference for every subsequent Ys title. On one hand, I get it, this isn’t Hudson’s series, it was Falcom’s and if they wanted to continue with this series they just couldn’t let something like the ending of Dawn of Ys happen and give the series the proper closure it deserves.
Personally speaking, while what Hudson Soft did can be compared to mere fanfiction, it’s really good fanfiction and aside from coming into conflicts with the modern lore of the series and offering an epilogue that could have easily been acknowledged by Falcom without actually hurting the continuity, I think that what Hudson did here is phenomenal, the ending of Dawn of Ys is perhaps my favorite ending in the series despite and never fail to make me emotional. So many of Hudson’s ideas for the lore and continuity of the series at least in my opinion could’ve been reworked into the main timeline as I do think that some ideas here are actually better than what Falcom will eventually do with them !
Much to my dismay, that means that for how excellent Dawn of Ys is, its legacy is now forgotten, even Falcom seems to be really keen on ignoring the game’s existence or any influence Hudson might’ve had on the franchise (in fact : in the modern port of the older titles, you can play every OST’s of each version of Ys 1,2 and 3 but not the PC-Engine version but I bet it’s due to copyright issues rather than pettiness) and I think this is a great injustice.
I really do implore you, if you enjoy Ys especially Ys 1&2, I urge yourself to try out Dawn of Ys even more so if you were disappointed by Falcom’s own take on the game they did 20 years later with “Memories of Celceta” (but that will be a story for another time !). It’s really a masterpiece and easily amongst the best the series has to offer, a true labor of love and passion made by people who probably loved and understood Ys more than its original creators.
The next game in the series will be handled by Falcom themselves and who knows, maybe they won’t fuck it up… right ?
See you next time, as we take a look at “Ys V” the game, the game which almost killed the Ys franchise !
In the 80’s there were few developers who actually knew what they were doing more than Hudson Soft, these guys are probably single handedly responsible for Nintendo opening itself to third party developers to make the NES/Famicom the legendary console we know today. Hudson Soft first and foremost were people who didn’t just like video games as a way to make money on a newly expanding market, these guys were very passionate about new technology and the wonders of gaming as a whole.
But eventually, when you enjoy making games so much, you start to become ambitious and soon Hudson Soft will partner with NEC the prime micro-computer manufacturer (and creator of the famous “porn game machine” known as the PC-98) under a share common interest of building the game console of the future : The PC-Engine otherwise known as the Turbografx 16 outside of Japan. The PCE was a really impressive machine for the time and even today, I’m still kind of blown away by the technical capabilities of the console which only has an 8 bit processor but packs a lot of punch otherwise especially with the CD Add-on that they’ve adopted earlier than many other companies at the time.
However, they were releasing a new console on an highly competitive market, Sega and Nintendo were fiercely competing for domination and other companies who dared venture on hardware territory knew that it was complicated to stand out amongst the crowd and that’s when Hudson had a brilliant idea, they will partner with Falcom to port their classic Ys title to their console. Ys 1 and Ys 2 were already considered classic of NEC micro-computers system and they have already existed many ports of the game to pretty much all available platforms at the time including the NES and the Master System but Hudson’s version on their PC-Engine was going to be different, it wasn’t just going to be a port, it was going to be a full-on REMAKE !
Ys Book 1&2 took the first two games in the series and combined them together into a single one like it was originally planned for the first time and the game will receive the most premium treatment imaginable ! A graphical overhaul which put new life into the game, touched up gameplay that made the experience smoother to play, smoother leveling curves which mitigated the grinding, new tracks to accompany certain important moment with new remixes on the absurdly insane sounding PCE soundchip which was able to make freaking miracle happened, it had animated cutscenes and full fucking voice-acting for a game released in 1989 and they did it both in Japanese and in English as this was the first game in the series to be shipped internationally (not counting the weird European port of Ys 1 on the Master System) !
Everyone’s mind was freaking blown away by how much love and care was put into this new iteration, gamers who were alive to see it happen before their very eyes as children couldn’t believe their eyes ! It was a true epic adventure with all the proper care put into its presentation to heightened that sense of wonder. It’s clear that probably the reason why Ys even got so popular in the first place and managed to stay relevant was because of this port right there, the game was well received pretty much everywhere and magazines sang the tales of how Hudson made Ys 1 & 2 a legendary game going beyond its simple ambition !
And all of this before Zelda or any other company was able to release their next-gen titles !
The PC-Engine version of Ys 1&2 was a massive success and single-handedly was enough of a reason for people to even buy a PC-Engine in the first place. It was clear that Hudson Soft didn’t just enjoy Ys, they didn’t just like Ys heck they didn’t even love Ys ! THEY WERE TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT YS ! So much so that Hudson was allowed to port Ys III for the PC-Engine too with the same level of care and polish as what they did for Ys 1&2 even tho no amount of polish managed to make the game any good in the end and they botched the localization of it but oh well…
So when Falcom couldn’t make Ys IV themselves, Hudson seemed like the obvious choice to direct and create a new entry in their series ! But making a game from scratch with only a design document full of concept arts, a few guidelines and no lines of code or any prototype was a vastly different task than just taking an already existing game and polishing it to completion but unlike Tonkin House who was this small no-name company playing with their turds trying to make a barely playable game to satisfy the guideline, Hudson had something that they didn’t, they had experiences with making successful cult classic games but most importantly they had PASSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmsS8eD_XY
From the moment you boot up the game you understand that the level of production value here is through the fucking roof ! You ain’t playing some dinky ass, poopy ass, budget ass, Tonkin Ass, Cold Steel Era Falcom ass “product” ! YOU ARE PLAYING A REAL VIDEOGAME ! MADE BY REAL DEVELOPERS ! WITH REAL TALENT ! REAL PASSION AND A REAL BUDGET TO GIVE THEM THE MEAN TO PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE AND YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY WERE GONNA TAKE THE CHANCE ! THERE IS NO BRAKE ON THIS TRAIN ! DAWN OF YS IS A GAME THAT’S GOING TO SHOW MODERN FALCOM PLAYERS HOW WE USED TO DO IT BACK IN THE 9 TO THE TIES ! A PRODUCT MOLD IN THE VOLCANO OF LOVE AND FORGED BY THE FINEST SOUL-MAKER IN THE INDUSTRY !
What made Ys 1&2 so legendary already was the visual presentation of it all, it made the original script of those games popped even more than they originally did in spite of the limited presentation and the added animated character portrait, voice acting and even cutscenes really added a lot of flair to the original two games. But Ys 1&2 Hudson was merely adding on top of the original game. With Dawn of Ys, they had full control over the game's presentation and how it would fit inside of the game ! And I’m happy to report they did a phenomenal job on just the visual presentation and scene direction level !
The first few minutes of Dawn of Ys already introduce the game in a much better way than Tonkin's version did. After coming back from one of their travels, Adol and Dogi stop by Esteria. It's been 2 years since the event of their adventure there and everyone is waiting for them ! A lot of things have changed already, Goban has opened a shop, Lilia now lives among the people of Esteria and is constantly waiting for Adol’s return and her health got better too ! Sarah is alive and managed to survive the assault of Dark Fact and his army after mysteriously disappearing in Ys 1 ! As you walk toward the city, the title of the game fades on top of the screen, everyone is celebrating Adol’s return ! This section feels like a genuine victory lap and a great way to welcome us back to the world of Ys after so long and I love every single minute of it and it’s all done really well !
One thing that’s clear from the game’s visual presentation is that the game will put more of an emphasis on its narration and especially how it’s going to be told through its visuals, you have much more scripted events the likes of other RPGs at the time where you lose control of Adol’s character for a moment to witness dialogues and scenes ! The general artstyle of the game oozes of that timeless 90’s anime charm, the character design is pretty damn excellent and on par with the striking designs of the original game, many characters from the first two games even got a face lift for the occasion, each of the game’s portrait and cutscenes are superbly animated and full of details ! That recreation of Ys II final battle is only a technical flex before the game bombards you with an avalanche of colors which pops out of your screen and invites you to live the adventure of a lifetime !
While the in-game graphics might be less impressive than the anime style portrait, cg’s and animation I just love how colorful the game looks which complimented by the extremely varied environments the game make you go through from lush forest to snowy mountains to a creepy abandoned mansion and even more, the visuals manage sometimes to pull off some really cool things with the environment and it definitely make the journey feel more alive than ever !
One particularly impressive thing about Dawn of Ys is that while text boxes are still the norm for dialogues with regular NPC’s most of the big story scene are entirely dubbed with animated character portraits popping on the screen and sometimes even CG’s much like in visual novel to highlight some of the more important moments, the original Japanese performance is honestly pretty stellar and I’m still shocked at how cleanly the voice acting sound on such an old hardware.
However this raised an issue when it came to the availability of the game for the longest time as much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys remained a Japanese exclusive and in the case of Dawn while an english fan translation already existed for a while most of the important dialogue remained untranslated simply because they couldn’t display subtitles during the game numerous voiced only segments. Thankfully nowadays this is no longer an issue thanks to a group of talented but amateurish voice actors who banded together with the goal to bring a fandub of the entire game !
While it’s not quite as professionally well made as the official dub of Ys 1&2 with the only professional voice actor here being Alan Oppenheimer, third cousin of THE Oppenheimer and voice of Skeletor in the He-Man series giving his voice to Darm in the intro of the game. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the crew delivered a hack job and I think that on average, they did manage to at least capture the feel of that era of voice-acting. I think it was probably something the dubbing team wanted to transmit with their performance, something that sound like it was recorded by a bunch of voice actors going off way too much in a at times goofy, at times overly serious and badass tone and I just think it works really well and definitely feel like the game actually did came out in the west. The only issue with the English Dub however is that the general audio mixing is rather poor, you can feel each member of the team had different mike quality and the voice acting can sometimes be a bit muffled by the music or sound effect playing in the background and with no option to arrange the audio mixing yourself in the settings you’ll have to sometimes open your ear wide to understand what the hell are they saying. Be sure to check their website at : https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/Ys%20IV%20Dub%20Readme/readme.html
But back to the story, as Adol is celebrating with his friends, Sara the local fortune teller tells him about the distant land of Celceta. While she was escaping the forces of Dark Fact she discovered a connection between the black pearl and some ruins recently found on the mainland and she asked Adol to investigate it ! Without losing a single minute, Adol answered the call to adventure and in the dark of night set out to Celceta the mysteries of this ancient land ! But in the shadows, a sinister group of individual are trying to perform a dark ritual shown in a metal as fuck way too fucking gory for this franchise animated cutscenes before the game starts off with this absolute BANGER !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9JTh0gAXs
GODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN MY DUDE THESE SAXOPHONES ARE MAKING MY ASS WETTER THAN A FOUNTAIN ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON JESUS CHRIST !
One of the strongest aspect of the Ys series ever since its infancy has always been its amazing soundtrack, baring some exceptions, you know that an Ys game is going to own several asses just going by the soundtrack alone and I must report that the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys is once again completely out of this world ! For the first time in the history of the franchise, it’s the Falcom Sound JDK team handling the soundtrack. The Falcom JDK team is Falcom's very own personal rock-band. Composed of many prominent members joining in and out as the company evolve with time, the JDK team was originally founded to make CD quality audio version of Falcom’s soundtrack to sell them as promotional material but eventually, the JDK team took a more prominent role in development and as the advent of technology and sound quality went on, the JDK team now started actually composing for Ys as well as other Falcom titles.
Ys IV soundtrack was composed before the game ever began development and most of the music were made on CD’s that were later released as the “Ys IV Perfect Collection” but while the original album is freaking phenomenal on its own, that doesn’t take away the excellent instrumentalisation that went into translating the original composition into something that could be played by the PCE absolutely insane sound chip ! It’s simple, the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys might be my favorite soundtrack in the entire series ! While Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack for the original 2 Ys games was already an absolute joy for the ear, his departure didn’t mean that the JDK team couldn’t up the ante and provide a soundtrack which tells a million words with only a few notes !
The synths, the guitars, the FREAKING SAXOPHONE in the intro of the game, everything about this OST oozes from pure 90’s funk and pop with a lot variety in the composition, of course you get your adventure tracks that make you pump to rush into battle like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYZDs0ARqg but you also get more ambient music that makes you feel like you’re adventuring in a scary yet sacred place and you don’t belong there with ominous sound reverberating through the room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRx_ZBoSrE then you fight a boss and the music goes : https://youtu.be/4HNEPXbNEK4?si=oaBREVaNcJIG7zqj !
There is so much variety and energy to the soundtrack that to me it easily rivals some of the greats like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Castlevania or even Donkey Kong Country with which Dawn of Ys shares its sense of harmony and insane instrumentalisation which seems impossible to do on such ancient hardware but yet it does !
And I even like a lot of the creative choice they make when remaking old tracks, Fountain of Love, Tears of Sylph and the Syonin for example is composed with an instrumentalisation closer to that of the PC-98 instead of how it was in the PCE version of Ys 1 to clearly separate the homely, familiar and old-school feeling of Adol’s quasi home-town which contrasts with the rest of the adventures which uses more elaborate instrumentalisation as Adol dives into the unknown, the same way Adol evolves and his adventure get more grandiose and epic, the soundtrack get crazier and more complex in return !
Heck at some point in the game, you return to Darm Tower which is about to crumble and fall, they could’ve done some weird melancholic version of the tune but nah, your return to Darm Tower is accompanied by some funky, jazzy upbeat version of the original tune, what once used to be the base of operation of a great evil and Adol’s greatest challenge yet is now a freaking dance party !!! You’re dancing to the beat of your old enemies main theme and desecrate their corpses because that’s how strong and confident Adol became through his adventure and to him the Darm Tower isn’t a place of challenge to him but a leisurely walk to the DANCEFLOOR BABY : https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI?si=mxLh4IP0a_1t2QcR
Theme of Adol 1993, Field, A Great Ordeal, Temple of The Sun, Karna, A Kiss from Eldeel, so many great tracks henched into my brain thanks to Ryo Yonemitsu exquisite arrangements of the JDK’s masterclass of a soundtrack for the PC-Engine ! I’m not a music theorist so I can’t really explain with technical terms how and why these tracks work for me but the vibes are genuinely immaculate !
The Ys franchise is first and foremost about adventure, about this intoxicating feeling of wanting to give everything up, grab our bags and journey to places unknown ! Pushing with relentless motion through the different places Adol visits on his journey and a soundtrack this energetic and varied only emphasize that feeling even more !
But fear not my friend because Dawn of Ys isn’t just a really cool aesthetic served on silver platter of banger tracks, it’s also first and foremost an EXCELLENT videogame ! Once again, we’re back to Bump Combat and I know that after everything I’ve just said that might’ve gotten you a little bit too excited you’ll probably say something of the likes of : “Oh really ? We’re doing this ancient ass, clunky ass, stupid ass bump system again ?” and ladies and gentle straw men who live in my head, I’ve heard your plight !
After all, Bump Combat is such an acquired taste that I had to spend two whole reviews talking about the strengths of a well executed version of such a system as well as its merits when it comes to the flow and the momentum of the game and the cracks that shows when this balance isn’t respected by badly coded hitboxes, stilted movement, terrible boss design and so forth. But Ok I know this can be a turn-off to some people but once again put your bias aside because Dawn of Ys took Bump Combat and made it EXCELLENT ! It’s easily the best game featuring bump combat in the entire series (it’s also the last one if we don’t count all of the countless ports of Ys 1&2 for modern platforms).
Dawn of Ys, much like Mask of The Sun, decides to take the same basic moveset as Ys II, with the same sets of magic to unlock too. One might think of this decision as lazy since the game doesn’t really offer much novelty from a strict gameplay sense but while your toolkit may be the same, the way Hudson uses that toolkit is much more different and the game is full of surprises at every turn. The only real difference now is that you now possess the power of DIAGONAL movement which is an actual god sent for fighting enemies or just traversing the map and offers a greater degree of freedom when it comes to positioning and even puzzles !
Unlike Tonkin House who understood so little of the appeal of the bump combat system they implemented elements of game design which came in contradiction to it, Hudson decided to play with that element of constant motion with sometimes really clever movement based puzzle making almost each dungeon in the game pop with creativity and flair they couldn’t really achieve back then. Like I said in my first review, the secret of the early Ys games was their simplicity and ease of access but also its constant sense of motion which made you rush into battle to the tunes of power metal ! But while simplicity is indeed charming, ambition is definitely more enthralling !
While Ys II chose the route of streamlining the game to be more accessible and focus more greatly on its narration by designing their game in a more linear fashion, Hudson decided to take the freedom of Ys 1 and the varied setpieces of Ys 2 to create the perfect synthesis of the Ys formula imaginable. Dawn of Ys is a game which never stops going and always comes up with new and exciting ideas for your adventure !
When you arrive on the mainland to start your adventure, boom you’re confronted by the Romun Empire and sent to prison where they take your cool ass equipment from your adventures in Ys II and you’re mad as shit about this but you break-out with the help of cool characters such as Durgen and Karna and you realize that sometimes the game will make you fight with ally who also deals with enemies the same as you ! One time you’re on a raft and have to survive an onslaught of enemies, one time you’re in a volcano ! One time you’re turned into a monster and have to find a way to turn back to normal ! One time you’re in Esher Space and the gravity is flipped upside down and so much more !
What about the bosses tho ? Well Hudson also pushed themselves on that front, Dawn of Ys possesses more than 15 bosses compared to Mask of The Sun mere 9 and it’s one more boss than both Ys 1&2 combined (proving once again that Dawn of Ys is the true Ys II if the first two games are combined into one complete experience). With bump combat and magic available much like in Ys II we can imagine that there would be an imbalance between the two mechanics but nope, each boss of Dawn of Ys is extremely well designed and fun to fight !
All of the bosses strike a good balance between having to use bump combat and magic to defeat them and when it comes to pattern and all, I have absolutely nothing to complain about here, some of the later bosses are true marvel of boss design which fully plays into the strength of the somewhat simple yet effective battle system of the series so far ! A friend of mine once told me that the Twin Head boss in Ys 1 was the best they could do with Bump Combat and he was immediately proven wrong upon playing Dawn of Ys for the first time and realizing that even the first boss of that games tops any boss from either Ys 1 or Ys 2. Dawn of Ys is a game of constant wonder that always finds a way to surprise you at every turn with its setpieces, and each one of them go by so fast that you don’t get to see the time pass ! This game's sense of flow and pacing is so immaculate that not a single moment of it is boring and you feel like you’re living a really epic adventure with twists and turns and revelations at every corner ! The game may be short, it can be completed in a little over 10 h but these 10h are so intense and filled with stuff that you feel like the adventure is 10 times more epic and grand than what you can imagine !
And this proves that a game can make us feel and experience many things with more intensity no matter the actual game time, something that Falcom seems to have forgotten with time ! It’s not about how long and how stuffed with content a game is, it’s not about how much you can pad out a game to give the illusion of something richer, deeper and more interesting. It’s about making the most of what the content you have to truly impact the minds of the player who experiences your art ! And if length and only length was a determining factor some medium like films wouldn’t be so successful and Hudson understood it perfectly.
The story of Dawn of Ys is also one that I wanted to give a lot of credit towards. While Mask of The Sun followed the guideline of the design document to a T without attempting anything fancy (and with how awkwardly the story was told here, they didn’t attempt to even follow it right imo), Hudson took the idea of a direct sequel to Ys 1&2 further and did a lot of really cool things with the continuity and the established lore at the time ! The game is called “The Dawn of Ys” because more than just a new adventure in a brand new land, Adol was about to discover the secret of what he went through in the first two games ! It seems that Celceta holds the answers to all the events that lead to the corruption of the Black Pearl and the fall of Ys before Adol’s arrival in the first game and as you explore Celceta, you find yourself uncovering these answers and I absolutely love the connections they made here !
From the relationship the twin goddesses had with the inhabitant of Celceta, to the origins of Darm and the Black Pearl, to how certain things in Esteria and Ys relate to things in Celceta and how everything played into one another. One of my absolute favorite moment of the game is when during one of the game many info-dump flashbacks, you not only learn the real name of Dark Fact but also it’s revealed to you that one of the items you’ve been using in Ys 1 is actually a super important item in the global lore of the series ! Meaning that you now have to depart for Esteria and revisit the map of Ys 1 now free of all the demons ! Can you imagine the absolute flex that it is ? They didn’t have to do this and yet they did ! And it’s so good seeing all the characters from the first two games but also the different places and what they became after Adol’s departure, Ys 1 which used to be so simple, is now relegated to a small chapter inside of a much more ambitious whole ! Sure, it’s not on the level of say, the second half of DQ3 or the Kanto reveal in Pokemon Gold and Silver to name a similar exemple but man I’m a sucker for that type of stuff !
Everything about Dawn of Ys to its presentation, to its music, to its story, to level design, to the way the game builds on the basis of Ys 1&2 and plays with its continuity make the game feel like a non-stop constantly moving grand epic to which we never see the time passes ! They took everything that made Ys 1&2 so iconic and perfected it, Hudson didn’t just want to create yet another title in the prestigious Ys saga, they wanted to create the Ultimate Ys game !
The game is a love letter to the series and what Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, now too busy to work on their own project accomplished years ago and in many ways they managed to surpass them (well at least as far as making a Ys game goes !) and I believe that no one understood the appeal of Ys more than the team at Hudson Soft.
However, Falcom had other plans for the franchises and didn’t want to let go of Adol and the series and with Hudson hopping a bit too much above the initial guidelines to make a conclusion to the series instead of yet another episode, they decided that the game would now be considered not canon and Mask of The Sun will therefore be the version of reference for every subsequent Ys title. On one hand, I get it, this isn’t Hudson’s series, it was Falcom’s and if they wanted to continue with this series they just couldn’t let something like the ending of Dawn of Ys happen and give the series the proper closure it deserves.
Personally speaking, while what Hudson Soft did can be compared to mere fanfiction, it’s really good fanfiction and aside from coming into conflicts with the modern lore of the series and offering an epilogue that could have easily been acknowledged by Falcom without actually hurting the continuity, I think that what Hudson did here is phenomenal, the ending of Dawn of Ys is perhaps my favorite ending in the series despite and never fail to make me emotional. So many of Hudson’s ideas for the lore and continuity of the series at least in my opinion could’ve been reworked into the main timeline as I do think that some ideas here are actually better than what Falcom will eventually do with them !
Much to my dismay, that means that for how excellent Dawn of Ys is, its legacy is now forgotten, even Falcom seems to be really keen on ignoring the game’s existence or any influence Hudson might’ve had on the franchise (in fact : in the modern port of the older titles, you can play every OST’s of each version of Ys 1,2 and 3 but not the PC-Engine version but I bet it’s due to copyright issues rather than pettiness) and I think this is a great injustice.
I really do implore you, if you enjoy Ys especially Ys 1&2, I urge yourself to try out Dawn of Ys even more so if you were disappointed by Falcom’s own take on the game they did 20 years later with “Memories of Celceta” (but that will be a story for another time !). It’s really a masterpiece and easily amongst the best the series has to offer, a true labor of love and passion made by people who probably loved and understood Ys more than its original creators.
The next game in the series will be handled by Falcom themselves and who knows, maybe they won’t fuck it up… right ?
See you next time, as we take a look at “Ys V” the game, the game which almost killed the Ys franchise !
The last of the bump combat entries is a swansong for the gameplay. The magic from Ys II is back and I found it much better balanced than before. There's now a more even balance of bump combat and usage of magic, especially in the bossfight department where there is a better split between bosses that require bump and those that require attack magic to defeat. Despite being the largest of the PCE entries, the world and progression feel very cohesive and natural to navigate. The places you need to go to and what you need in order to get there are signposted very well which helps keep the pace consistently swift throughout even outside of combat dungeons. The story is also one of the more memorable ones the series has to offer, building off of the mythos that Books I and II established in clever ways. For a PCE game, it stands out with its impressive background and cutscene art. It wouldn't be an Ys review without me mentioning the soundtrack either, which in this case is one of the most memorable aspects about the game. Both the action and non-action tracks get time to shine and they're all great pieces, a few of which are my favorites across the whole series. I would not recommend this as an entry to the series; go play Books I and II first. This is arguably the only game in the series (outside of II) that you'll need any sort of story context for, and the game puts up a decent challenge on occasions, both in normal combat and in some of the boss fights which can HIT HARD even when adequately leveled. All in all, this is a more-than-complete package and one of the best Ys games.
More like Ys IV: The Peak of Ys
Imagine a polished and expanded version of Ys I&II, with the strongest graphics, animation, and music of its time.
Gameplay
Needless to say, this is the best bump combat Ys. It undoubtedly combines the strengths and removes the weaknesses of Ys1&2. The combat of Ys I was pretty clunky, while Ys 2 went overcorrect and made it too easy. The dawn of Ys is just at the middle point, it feels good to control but is still challenging.
BOSS Fights
It's Amazing. Not only the amount but the quality. I really love the magic system of Ys 2, but they abused it in the boss fights. But in this game, bosses that require magic and bump combat appear in turn. So you'll never feel monotonous. Balance is also very well done, fighting the boss at different levels is like choosing different difficulties, But whichever difficulty you choose it's just fun and challenging.
Story
As we know classic Ys never get an impressive story. But even so, this game is very different. Most Ys stories have a town or city as the center, and the dungeons are spread around it. But The Dawn of Ys has plural towns, each of which can serve as the center of one of the adventures, and which you'll revisit as the story progresses. This makes for a larger and wider world map, and more characters involved in the story, which makes Ys IV feel like a real big-budget jrpg. Also there are many fan services of Ys1&2.
Graphic and Music
PCE CD is fucking incredible, even if the pixel art isn't the best, all that elegant animation and voice acting is good as hell. PC-98 is great for me, but PCE is more suitable for Ys without a doubt.
As for the OST, You must be crazy if you don't like it.
The game isn't perfect for sure, there are a few things that are aged well. The dungeon design has the same problem as Ys1&2, the non-guide playthrough is very annoying, too much trial-and-error. Besides, you have to admit escort missions are shitty.
It's also interesting that best Ys is not made by Falcom and they try to erase the existence of this game
Imagine a polished and expanded version of Ys I&II, with the strongest graphics, animation, and music of its time.
Gameplay
Needless to say, this is the best bump combat Ys. It undoubtedly combines the strengths and removes the weaknesses of Ys1&2. The combat of Ys I was pretty clunky, while Ys 2 went overcorrect and made it too easy. The dawn of Ys is just at the middle point, it feels good to control but is still challenging.
BOSS Fights
It's Amazing. Not only the amount but the quality. I really love the magic system of Ys 2, but they abused it in the boss fights. But in this game, bosses that require magic and bump combat appear in turn. So you'll never feel monotonous. Balance is also very well done, fighting the boss at different levels is like choosing different difficulties, But whichever difficulty you choose it's just fun and challenging.
Story
As we know classic Ys never get an impressive story. But even so, this game is very different. Most Ys stories have a town or city as the center, and the dungeons are spread around it. But The Dawn of Ys has plural towns, each of which can serve as the center of one of the adventures, and which you'll revisit as the story progresses. This makes for a larger and wider world map, and more characters involved in the story, which makes Ys IV feel like a real big-budget jrpg. Also there are many fan services of Ys1&2.
Graphic and Music
PCE CD is fucking incredible, even if the pixel art isn't the best, all that elegant animation and voice acting is good as hell. PC-98 is great for me, but PCE is more suitable for Ys without a doubt.
As for the OST, You must be crazy if you don't like it.
The game isn't perfect for sure, there are a few things that are aged well. The dungeon design has the same problem as Ys1&2, the non-guide playthrough is very annoying, too much trial-and-error. Besides, you have to admit escort missions are shitty.
It's also interesting that best Ys is not made by Falcom and they try to erase the existence of this game
Dawn of Ys has to be my favorite classic Ys game, hands down. The story has its moments even if it’s not considered “canon” (since Memories of Celceta takes more inspiration from Mask of the Sun, the other Ys IV, instead of this one) and the voice-acting is a bit goofy and over-the-top (I won’t judge too harshly since I played with the English fan-dub), but the game is worth playing for the improved bump combat alone… certainly a sentence that I did not expect to say in my life. Take my opinion with a grain of salt here, since I’ve only played Ys I + II Chronicles, but I found the bump combat to be a bit inconsistent regarding its angle calculations in Ys I Chronicles + while Ys II Chronicles + significantly streamlined it, but made bump combat pretty free since I just needed to walk into enemies diagonally and corner them against walls. I find Dawn of Ys to hit a nice medium between these two extremes: walking diagonally into enemies will likely successfully damage opponents, but you can’t just walk and knock back enemies diagonally since they’ll get knocked horizontally/vertically instead. As a result, the optimal strategy is instead to carefully position yourself just off-center of the enemy’s character model center, and then walk into them horizontally/vertically, taking care not to run into walls because Dawn of Ys has no invincibility frames and squeezing enemies into walls will cause Adol to contact their center and take tons of damage. All the while, enemies are constantly repositioning themselves and trying to maneuver around you so they can strike you with their center, making Dawn of Ys’s bump combat a more intricate spacing game of you + enemies trying to correctly run at each other. It’s certainly a much more engaging way to pass the time while grinding for levels to scale up to bosses, since single levels make a huge difference for stat gains to increase your margin of error. Regardless, thanks to a few late game abilities/items such as the Timer Ring (to slow down enemies) and the Solomon Shoes (instakilling foes in exchange for slowing your movement) that make bump combat quicker (but not necessarily mindless due to better AI pathing and lack of cornering) alongside instant enemy respawns once their spawn position is off-screen, I found grinding to be a lot more enjoyable this time around.
I find myself with very few complaints this time around, mainly because Dawn of Ys strikes a nice balance in taking what I like from Ys I and what I like from Ys II, and often improving upon that to boot. There’s a good mix of magic focused bullet-hell shmup-esque fights resembling those of Ys II and more bump-combat heavy fights resembling those of Ys I, and none of them felt unfair: good positioning and quick hazard awareness go pretty far, and you can usually spot enemy attacks and patterns soon enough to successfully dodge practically every attack if you space correctly. Dungeon designs are again, a good balance between straight linear tunnels and sprawling labyrinths; the best dungeons are never pure straight-shots, but also don’t waste your time with excess empty & isolated rooms so you can quickly figure out the correct path and get back on track. The adventure game elements of figuring what to collect and where to use corresponding key items often made the first two Ys games a bit esoteric without a guide, but I find that to not be the case at all here: tells are pretty evident, with tons of context clues dictated by environmental features + nearby NPC dialogue, and the overworld unlocks pretty naturally with backtracking very heavily stressed when necessary (and is fairly quick thanks to warp magic). I’ve heard complaints that Dawn of Ys is a bit long too, but if you compare the total run-time to Ys I and Ys II combined (since they’re essentially two parts of a bigger product meant to be played back to back), then it’s not too bad (10-14 hours for Dawn of Ys compared to 14-17 hours for Ys I + II Chronicles according to howlongtobeat) as long as you don’t spend too much time bumbling about and minimizing downtime from healing + excess grinding with the right strategies.
My only prevalent gripe is that I found the game to be a bit on the easy side (an opinion which I think I’m in the minority for), particularly regarding the last couple of hours. A few of the endgame bosses can be somewhat cheesed with Power Ring + Shield Magic to chip away most/all of their health bar, the final dungeon is extremely short (just a line of singular tunnels that take less than five minutes to run through), and I personally found the final boss to be a letdown: the final phase is a joke once you figure out the obvious blind spots, and I ended up winning on my first try even though it’s always taken me multiple tries to clear the final boss in the other Ys games. In addition, you get a lot of leeway with the Herb + Elixir providing two possible full health restores for most fights, so it tends to be a pretty forgiving game. If I really had to nitpick further, I’d also say that money tends to feel superfluous considering how few items there were to purchase compared to how much money I gained from slaying monsters; Hudson probably could have done away with money in the game entirely and just focused on locking items behind necessary dungeon treasure chests and NPCs as part of progression.
Aside from that, I found Dawn of Ys to be a really pleasant experience. The spritework + animated cutscenes still hold up pretty well, the soundtrack continues to kick major ass because Falcom Sound Team JDK have phenomenal composition embedded in their blood, and the side characters and villains get really great screentime in comparison to Ys I + II (where the villains are mostly in the background doing mysterious shadowy things). I’m gonna miss Dogi when I get back around to running through Memories of Celceta, that’s for sure. All in all, I’m a little surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this considering my more qualified praise regarding the remakes of the originals, and I definitely think it’s worth going out of your way for if you’re a hardcore Ys fan and enjoy the quick bump combat of classic Ys.
I find myself with very few complaints this time around, mainly because Dawn of Ys strikes a nice balance in taking what I like from Ys I and what I like from Ys II, and often improving upon that to boot. There’s a good mix of magic focused bullet-hell shmup-esque fights resembling those of Ys II and more bump-combat heavy fights resembling those of Ys I, and none of them felt unfair: good positioning and quick hazard awareness go pretty far, and you can usually spot enemy attacks and patterns soon enough to successfully dodge practically every attack if you space correctly. Dungeon designs are again, a good balance between straight linear tunnels and sprawling labyrinths; the best dungeons are never pure straight-shots, but also don’t waste your time with excess empty & isolated rooms so you can quickly figure out the correct path and get back on track. The adventure game elements of figuring what to collect and where to use corresponding key items often made the first two Ys games a bit esoteric without a guide, but I find that to not be the case at all here: tells are pretty evident, with tons of context clues dictated by environmental features + nearby NPC dialogue, and the overworld unlocks pretty naturally with backtracking very heavily stressed when necessary (and is fairly quick thanks to warp magic). I’ve heard complaints that Dawn of Ys is a bit long too, but if you compare the total run-time to Ys I and Ys II combined (since they’re essentially two parts of a bigger product meant to be played back to back), then it’s not too bad (10-14 hours for Dawn of Ys compared to 14-17 hours for Ys I + II Chronicles according to howlongtobeat) as long as you don’t spend too much time bumbling about and minimizing downtime from healing + excess grinding with the right strategies.
My only prevalent gripe is that I found the game to be a bit on the easy side (an opinion which I think I’m in the minority for), particularly regarding the last couple of hours. A few of the endgame bosses can be somewhat cheesed with Power Ring + Shield Magic to chip away most/all of their health bar, the final dungeon is extremely short (just a line of singular tunnels that take less than five minutes to run through), and I personally found the final boss to be a letdown: the final phase is a joke once you figure out the obvious blind spots, and I ended up winning on my first try even though it’s always taken me multiple tries to clear the final boss in the other Ys games. In addition, you get a lot of leeway with the Herb + Elixir providing two possible full health restores for most fights, so it tends to be a pretty forgiving game. If I really had to nitpick further, I’d also say that money tends to feel superfluous considering how few items there were to purchase compared to how much money I gained from slaying monsters; Hudson probably could have done away with money in the game entirely and just focused on locking items behind necessary dungeon treasure chests and NPCs as part of progression.
Aside from that, I found Dawn of Ys to be a really pleasant experience. The spritework + animated cutscenes still hold up pretty well, the soundtrack continues to kick major ass because Falcom Sound Team JDK have phenomenal composition embedded in their blood, and the side characters and villains get really great screentime in comparison to Ys I + II (where the villains are mostly in the background doing mysterious shadowy things). I’m gonna miss Dogi when I get back around to running through Memories of Celceta, that’s for sure. All in all, I’m a little surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this considering my more qualified praise regarding the remakes of the originals, and I definitely think it’s worth going out of your way for if you’re a hardcore Ys fan and enjoy the quick bump combat of classic Ys.
Something of a last bow for the classic era of Ys, Dawn of Ys is a strict-but-lavish take on the formula established by the first two games. It brings back bump combat, and like the first two games, the simple combat and excellent soundtrack combine for a game that is great to just vibe to. But it also goes bigger - it's longer than the first two games combined, with more dungeons, more boss fights, plenty of returning characters, loads of cutscenes (some of which feature limited but very impressive animation), voice acting, and lavish character portraits.
The effect of the larger scale and scope is a little bit mixed, though. The classic Ys formula is simple and fast-paced, and thrives on being lean. Ys I gets you in and out before you can even blink, and while Ys II is longer, it's still a short game, helping prevent the simplicity from tipping over too much into repetition.
Dawn of Ys is, to be honest, too long, and feels a little bloated. The later boss fights are cool but by that point the scale has tipped too far into repetition. Frustratingly labyrinthine dungeon design in the latter areas is a problem in the first two games as well, but it grates harder here. There's an entire section involving a return to Esteria and whole sequences involving a Romn general that feel unnecessary.
Still, I don't want to be too harsh on it - it's a pretty well-executed take on classic Ys, and still a lot of fun to play. Despite the bloat, I had a great time with it and I think it's very much worth a play for fans of the first two
The effect of the larger scale and scope is a little bit mixed, though. The classic Ys formula is simple and fast-paced, and thrives on being lean. Ys I gets you in and out before you can even blink, and while Ys II is longer, it's still a short game, helping prevent the simplicity from tipping over too much into repetition.
Dawn of Ys is, to be honest, too long, and feels a little bloated. The later boss fights are cool but by that point the scale has tipped too far into repetition. Frustratingly labyrinthine dungeon design in the latter areas is a problem in the first two games as well, but it grates harder here. There's an entire section involving a return to Esteria and whole sequences involving a Romn general that feel unnecessary.
Still, I don't want to be too harsh on it - it's a pretty well-executed take on classic Ys, and still a lot of fun to play. Despite the bloat, I had a great time with it and I think it's very much worth a play for fans of the first two
Excluding remakes and ports, this was the last Ys game to use bump combat, and it ends the series trend on a high note. Hudson's take on Ys IV wipes the floor with Mask of the Sun, not only thanks to the benefits of being on a disc as opposed to a cartridge but from a pure game design stand point. There's way less grinding, means of progressing are intuitive and make sense (for the most part), and actual qol improvements are made over the first two games. Adol can walk diagonally now and that makes bump combat feel so much better, finding herbs in chests gives you the option to leave them until later if you already have one, hitboxes are vastly improved, all that good stuff that Mask of the Sun should have done. Huge shame that this wound up as non canon despite being the far superior game.
I also really want to draw attention to the game's presentation, because, much like the previous Ys games on the PC Engine CD, there's a ton of voice acting and redbook audio tracks, detailed character stills and a couple really good cutscenes. That soundtrack though, goddamn. Just listen to these:
https://youtu.be/ZLvOEXoAiuc
https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI
Very unexpected but nonetheless very much appreciated takes on Falcom's J.D.K sound team's original compositions.
Regarding voice acting, you'll likely have to play with the English fandub since the game has no form of subtitles, because this game never even got a western release, for some reason. I'm really grateful that the team went out of their way to get English voices in the game, as it allows for full comprehension of the game's plot, for free no less, but I do think that the Japanese voices are far and away more preferable. Clear effort went into it, but some of the English VA sounds really goofy, and at times made it hard for me to take the game's plot seriously...I can at least say it has some charm to it. There is, however, the issue of one of the va's being potentially involved in the death of Near/byuu, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and makes me wish for someone to get subtitles working more than ever..but alas. Rest in peace, Near. You did so much for game preservation and translations, and deserved so much better.
I also really want to draw attention to the game's presentation, because, much like the previous Ys games on the PC Engine CD, there's a ton of voice acting and redbook audio tracks, detailed character stills and a couple really good cutscenes. That soundtrack though, goddamn. Just listen to these:
https://youtu.be/ZLvOEXoAiuc
https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI
Very unexpected but nonetheless very much appreciated takes on Falcom's J.D.K sound team's original compositions.
Regarding voice acting, you'll likely have to play with the English fandub since the game has no form of subtitles, because this game never even got a western release, for some reason. I'm really grateful that the team went out of their way to get English voices in the game, as it allows for full comprehension of the game's plot, for free no less, but I do think that the Japanese voices are far and away more preferable. Clear effort went into it, but some of the English VA sounds really goofy, and at times made it hard for me to take the game's plot seriously...I can at least say it has some charm to it. There is, however, the issue of one of the va's being potentially involved in the death of Near/byuu, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and makes me wish for someone to get subtitles working more than ever..but alas. Rest in peace, Near. You did so much for game preservation and translations, and deserved so much better.
Despite the issues I had with it, I can't deny the game has a stellar presentation, with some great music and animated scenes being really quite impressive. The remake is clearly the definitive way to experience the story, but I enjoyed my time with this original vision regardless of its faults.
Listen I can understand why a lot of people love this game I really can and I do respect that. But it's just not for me. I got to around the 4th follower of Lefance before I got bored.
Game's just way too long and has a nasty habit of padding itself out arbitrarily the worst example being the trip back to Estaria which honestly kinda just comes out of nowhere and while it was cool seeing the Esteria cast again it just feels tacked on.
I'm so happy this game's plot is non canon because if it wasn't it'd blast open a shit ton of plot holes in the first 2 games. For example let me get this straight Dark Fact is like 700+ years old? then why did he take so long to start gathering the books of Ys. If the Mask of Eyes is actually the Mask of the Moon then why would he let Adol anywhere near it. Also how the hell is the Black Pearl back!? Just stuff like that gets really annoying really fast to me.
Also the non plot hole creating stuff isn't that great either. Like the villains don't feel very intimitating at all beside Eldeel and practically feel like Team Rocket from the Pokemon anime rather then competent threats and yes I know the entire plot of this game thanks to watching a friend play through the game and well...A huge part of the Clan of Darkness's plan is really fucking stupid. Without spoiling anything it has to do with the final boss.
Most of the characters were unintresting to me. Besides Eldeel, Gruda, and Duren. Nobody really sticks out in my mind. Everyone is just so one note and characters just kinda show up for the 2 seconds they're needed then go away. I get that it's an RPG from the 90s and all but this game really seems like it wants me to care about the people around Adol and I just don't.
Not to mention that this just feels like a rehash of Ys 2 at several points. I'll admit it's better then Mask of the Sun but that's really not a high bar in the slightest. I genuinely think this is a weaker Ys plot.
I'm not going to judge the fan dub too harshly since well it's a fan dub you kinda have to take what you can get although the lack of subtitles is really annoying although this was a 90s game so it's forgiven. Music is really good which is to be expected from Ys.
Gameplay wise it's pretty alright. I'll admit while I like the Bump system it's probably my least favorite Ys system besides Wanderers's Zelda 2 clone and it's probably at it's second best here only behind Chronicles. Bosses range from completely unmemorable to extremely annoying. I don't know just didn't do much for me this time.
I'm going to be honest at least currently I think Memories of Celceta is a better game. At least at the time of writing this I think it has better character writing and gameplay (I'm a big DMC fan so that probably helps tip the scales in it's favor). Although we'll see how well that holds up once I do my third playthrough at somepoint and I'll be sure to add an addendum to this review then.
Game's just way too long and has a nasty habit of padding itself out arbitrarily the worst example being the trip back to Estaria which honestly kinda just comes out of nowhere and while it was cool seeing the Esteria cast again it just feels tacked on.
I'm so happy this game's plot is non canon because if it wasn't it'd blast open a shit ton of plot holes in the first 2 games. For example let me get this straight Dark Fact is like 700+ years old? then why did he take so long to start gathering the books of Ys. If the Mask of Eyes is actually the Mask of the Moon then why would he let Adol anywhere near it. Also how the hell is the Black Pearl back!? Just stuff like that gets really annoying really fast to me.
Also the non plot hole creating stuff isn't that great either. Like the villains don't feel very intimitating at all beside Eldeel and practically feel like Team Rocket from the Pokemon anime rather then competent threats and yes I know the entire plot of this game thanks to watching a friend play through the game and well...A huge part of the Clan of Darkness's plan is really fucking stupid. Without spoiling anything it has to do with the final boss.
Most of the characters were unintresting to me. Besides Eldeel, Gruda, and Duren. Nobody really sticks out in my mind. Everyone is just so one note and characters just kinda show up for the 2 seconds they're needed then go away. I get that it's an RPG from the 90s and all but this game really seems like it wants me to care about the people around Adol and I just don't.
Not to mention that this just feels like a rehash of Ys 2 at several points. I'll admit it's better then Mask of the Sun but that's really not a high bar in the slightest. I genuinely think this is a weaker Ys plot.
I'm not going to judge the fan dub too harshly since well it's a fan dub you kinda have to take what you can get although the lack of subtitles is really annoying although this was a 90s game so it's forgiven. Music is really good which is to be expected from Ys.
Gameplay wise it's pretty alright. I'll admit while I like the Bump system it's probably my least favorite Ys system besides Wanderers's Zelda 2 clone and it's probably at it's second best here only behind Chronicles. Bosses range from completely unmemorable to extremely annoying. I don't know just didn't do much for me this time.
I'm going to be honest at least currently I think Memories of Celceta is a better game. At least at the time of writing this I think it has better character writing and gameplay (I'm a big DMC fan so that probably helps tip the scales in it's favor). Although we'll see how well that holds up once I do my third playthrough at somepoint and I'll be sure to add an addendum to this review then.
Amazing graphics. Crappy voice acting (at least they tried). Beautiful music. Fun as hell gameplay. Not canon. This game is fucking great.
Honestly one of the best Ys games
a bit too long for its own good but holy shit this game fucks
Best Ys IV and best Ys