Ys Seven, the first three party member game iirc. Honestly it's quite good for having been an entirely new concept, and it's nice to see that the devs are willing to experiment. The story was good, I'd say about average for a Ys game, the gameplay was also, about average. Honestly probably not the best starting point if you have the option to choose between the games, my personal recommendation being Ys 8, unless you're looking for one of the other combat systems. Small side note, that throughout the whole game I didn't particularly have to grind or spend more time in an area then the story required me to, bar the final area, got caught on a road-block at the second to last boss and had to grind a bit to catch up. But besides that, it's quite a solid game.

J'ai adoré ce jeu tellement, perso l'engine Seven c'est mon engine pref alors le gameplay c'était incroyablement fun et extrêmement addictif, l'artstyle et graphismes sont BEAUX et le character design d'Adol dans ce jeu est magnifique (regardez son écharpe, c'est génial ptn). BORDEL L'OST EST INCROYABLE DANS CE JEU et oui je dis ça dans chaque avis de jeu Ys mais croyez-moi l'OST de ce jeu est particulièrement magnifique il y a que bangers. Le scénario était un peu prévisible mais c'était bien, et finalement J'ADORE MISHERA ELLE EST TELLEMENT BELLE BON SANG (ah et heureusement Dogi est enfin jouable)

8/10

Limitação X Simplicade X Execução.

Ys seven é um caso curioso.

Ys seven soa muito como um protótipo ou beta de mecânicas e leve design de ys 8 e de plot tbm apesar de não tudo.
A introdução do sistema de ataque terem tipos, slash, pierce and smash, sistema similar a pedra papel tesoura, tem certos inimigos mais fracos a um personagem com dano slash, outros com dano piece e por aí vai.
Quando um inimigo fica atordado, mesmo ele so recebendo dano de um tipo de ataque específico, nesse momento tá liberado a farra até ele se recuperar.

Porém o fluxo de gameplay é muito estável, com só um botão tu troca de personagem, possibilita manter o dinamismo da ação e efetivar estratégias de X formas.

Sem dúvida, o psp é um console que limita bastante o potencial do jogo gráficos, dublagem e etc, mas a falcomm não é lá uma grande empresa, principalmente nessa época, mas eles conseguiram realizar algo muito bem condensado nesse portátil. ( a falcomm acerta bastante na simplicidade dos jogos que ela faz, menos tokyo xanadu).

Muitas fases sofrem da limitação do psp, ainda assim existe uma boa mão que conduz as coisas de forma constante e contínua, a exploração desse jogo nao é absurda, ainda assim é suficiente para levar o jogador a ir atrás dos itens.

(Se jogado no hard esse jogo se torna muito mais divertido.)

Este jogo vai melhorando gradualmenteo nas 5 horas iniciais em diante.

A conectividade das fases, pegar um artefato pra passar de um obstáculo e refazer todo o caminho pra pegar recompensas, achar um item pra entrar na boss fight é feito na maioria das dungeons de forma dinâmica, existe um lampejo forte daquilo que iria fazer ys 8 ser tão bom.

O combate é absurdamente simples, porém funcional o suficiente, ainda que tenha uma baixa variação, as boss fights e algumas gimmicks que o jogo acrescenta dão um consistência maior.

A trilha sonora é ok pra boa.
Não é tão memorável quanto ys origin, ys 3, ys 8, ys 2, mas com certeza é melhora que ys celceta, ys 1 e ys 6.

Innocent primeveral é boa, yukihiro jindo meu herói.
Vacant interference tem seu brilho nas batalhas mais intensas
Mother altago é interessante
Tia é uma ost muito boa
As outras são boas e muitas bem ok.

Citarei as 3 fases iniciais e por que gostei.

A fase do cristal do vento é muito interessante pelo seu fluxo, os inimigos nessa área dão mais dano, mas o caminho é muito simples, com poucas divergências no caminho, mas uma conectividade muito sólida.
E por fim a boss fight é intensa o suficiente

A fase do fogo é ok, mas tem um fluxo muito estável e recompensas boas, junto com uma boss fight bacana, mas padrão.

A fase da floresta a exploração de fato valeu a pena, tudo se conecta bem o suficiente, ainda assim o fluxo dela é um menor, mas ainda assim é ótimo.

A batalha contra o boss dessa área demanda que você saiba utilizar bem os ataques e os personagens e seus atributos especiais.

Menção a dungeon final que é excelente, um verdadeiro chamativo desse jogo e um boss final intenso e trágico.

Claro o psp limita muito mesmo o potencial desse jogo, mas a falcomm conseguiu fazer algo interessante mesmo nesse portátil, parabéns.

Agora vamos a história...
Eu falei que esse jogo soava um protótipo de ys 8, então até na história tem conceitos interessantes ainda que fracos, junto a uma narrativa que particularmente acho ok, podia ser melhor, mas é a vida.

Toda a conexão dos dragões, da febre iskan, do plot final, em conceito são muito interessantes, a execução deixa a desejar, algo que ys 8 abordou melhor.

Não hei de comentar mais sobre a história ou sua narrativa.

Concluindo, foi uma experiência muito divertida e no fim do dia hei de lembrar, afinal o final foi bem bonito e senti que valeu meu tempo.

Ys Seven : The Odd Duck

During the late 2000’s and early 2010’s Falcom pretty much found a new home with the PSP, it was the perfect niche to set in and be the small but surprising developer people were following out of cult following rather than because they broke new ground. And while we’ll be getting that era of Falcom a bit later over here in the west (mostly through word of mouth and the success of the Cold Steel titles) in Japan, Falcom was still going strong releasing new games and experimenting a lot with them.

Ys will be taking a bit of a backseat in the two years following Ys Origins release, most likely to try and come up with a way to bring Ys to new heights and shake the formula of the franchise so as to not make it redundant. With Felghana and Origins, it was clear to many that Ys had found what is essentially its best formula yet but after Origins already tried to spice things up with additional character to play and a bigger emphasis on lore, worldbuilding and narration, the Ark System was pretty much perfected and Falcom was ready to move on from it as to not make the series redundant.

Ys Seven released in 2009 was in fact the first game since Ys VI in 2006 to actually propel the story of Adol forward in time instead of going back in time and explore other unexplored parts of Adol’s life and in fact it would be the last until Ys IX in 2019 ! But Ys Seven was a big step for Ys for two other reasons, first of all it’s the first fully 3D Ys games ! While the series has dabbled in 3D in the past with the Ark Engine, here the entire game is in 3D, 3D Towns, 3D characters, 3D enemies, 3D environments !

This does give the game a significant boost when it comes to its presentation in my opinion, of course it’s still a dinky ass looking PSP game made on a sandwich budget but for once I can commend the general artstyle of the game hard-carrying the entire package. The game is colorful and full of life and the region of Altago is surprisingly pretty to look at and really varied in its environments taking place in this world equivalent to North Africa, there’s a lot of different locales and inspirations from the fauna and floras of the African continent as a whole from rocky mountainous mountains to huge plains and savannah and I personally just enjoy how much everything pops ! The game has some pretty stunning looking environments at times (but I mean, I like low poly games and old games in general so it doesn’t bother me, just throw pretty colors at me and I’m game !) and even the character models are pretty cool looking, I especially like Adol’s design in Ys Seven, it’s easily my favorite Adol design in the series and I think the scarf really does add a lot to his character.

But the other big change about Ys Seven is the gameplay system which is just so much more than a simple gameplay change but also a change in game design philosophy and narrative interpretation of Adol’s character because for the first time Adol wasn’t going to explore the land of Altago alone but alongside a couple of other characters tagging along the line. As expected it’s a change that was received quite coldly at first and in fact still divides the fandom to this very day much like how some people think that bump combat was the core identity of the series and they should’ve kept it and experimented on it.

See, the entire meta-narrative of the franchise is that we follow Adol on his journey through an interpretation of him rather than an actual person and every game design decision made for the series up to that point actually matched that philosophy.
Personally and even if I got used to it after 4 games, I still feel iffy about the party system not just mechanically speaking but also in terms of consistency and just overall “vibe” so to speak. Adol in the previous game was a mute protagonist and he still is to some degree in the modern titles which gives him dialogue option even if giving dialogue option to a mute character has never been a substitute for proper characterization in my opinion. In fact most of his characterization (outside of the two oddball titles that were Mask and III) was done mostly through the prism of the gameplay and overall presentation of the game !

As early as Ys 1, Adol is presented as a brave adventurer thirsty for freedom and curious about all things. The manual tells you how you’re looking at him through the different travel diaries he left throughout his lifetime until he died at the age of 63 while trying to reach the North Pole which at least set like a “plan” for Adol’s adventure. As such Ys 1 was all about imitating that flow and over the years, the series has had the reputation of just being a faster take on Zelda. Adol in all the previous games is represented as this absolute unstoppable unit of man ready to storm a castle and rush through its corridors, jumping and slashing his way to the tune of death metal ! Adol was a one-man-unit, he was the man of the situation and even if he met a lot of people along the way like his trusted companion Dogi most of his most notable feats were done through his hand alone.

There’s no reason to imagine that Adol would travel the world with a party of people, it’ll just slow him down and really if Adol isn’t capable of doing all the cool shit he can usually pull off on his own, is he still as awesome of a character as he used to be ? Of course, Adol isn’t a loner but he’s first and foremost a machine built for exploring ancient ruins and uncovering secrets, it’s hard to imagine him being the main character of a party where he’ll just be the main swordsman dealing most of the DPS and doing most of the leg work. Also due to his nature as a mute protagonist which was only previously characterized by his action, he is the perfect narrative vessel for projecting your own fantasy of being a cool adventurer !

And that’s to me the core of the issue, because by being part of a party of characters that means that Adol need to transform and become more of an actual character, he needs not to be an avatar, nor an idealized representation of his adventure where he may or may not over-exaggerate certain points, he needs to be a proper human being. And that’s where the party system game to me falls a bit flat when it comes to Adol because he now falls in all the trappings of the “mute protagonist” people like to complain about.

Because he is a mute protagonist with only a couple of dialogue choices that means that his arc is going to be by default very flat and his interactions with the rest of his crewmates are going to be flatter too with no meaningful character conflicts between him and the rest of his crewmate who are going to either worship him like a god or just have a slight aversion to him that’s gonna be solved in no time by Adol doing something cool. The reason mute protagonists are often frowned upon outside of the lack of direct characterization through text is also because they don’t really add much to the overall dynamic of the cast and mostly serve to gas up the players. When it comes to video games, I don’t think you want to be told to be awesome, you want to feel awesome ! You can tell a lot about a mute character through the things unique to the medium of video games and that’s what a lot of older Ys titles did but the modern discourse surrounding mute protagonists changed because the purpose and how they are integrated changed and not always for the best in my opinion.

However, I’m also not entirely against the party system or the idea of Ys games being about a party of characters rather than a single man unit and I think I understand why this change was made in the end. Adol is a guy with a sword and he’ll always be a guy with a sword so to spice things up, adding new characters with different playstyle isn’t really a bad idea and Origins already experimented with the idea of alternate characters so it’s just in the natural continuity of what that game did. On the other hand, JRPG and Action-RPG as a genre has evolved and even the Ys franchise has evolved since the 80’s and that means that now the franchise is on hardware powerful enough to display more text and create deeper more fully structured stories instead of just telling a story through the prism of gameplay alone.

So now, the Ys franchise is trying to appeal more to the wider JRPG crowds which are all used to big adventures where your main characters are joined by a variety of party members each with their own desire, dreams and goals which oftentimes guides the story of the game more than said main protagonist. Heck the Ys franchise was already starting to get deeper more involved story with Ys Origins where the story was more than just a pretext to climb a big tower and was a big part of my and many people appreciation of that game. With this decision, Falcom tried to tie the Ys franchise deeper to the JRPG genre as a whole, not trying to live in the shadow of Zelda or other big franchises for too long and thus these changes while controversial I felt were necessary to make Ys standout a bit more in an highly competitive market. Some people will say that the series has lost its identity since that change but so did many people who thought the same when bump combat wasn’t a thing anymore.

With that bit of ranting out of the way, how does Ys Seven fair up with these changes in mind, well for that we’ll first have to talk about how the Party System even works mechanically speaking. On a surface level, Ys Seven is still your classic Ys game, the combat is fast and frantic with an exciting sense of flow to it. Each blow and attack comes out quick with very little lag and I feel that at least for this game, it’s one of the “faster” feeling games in the franchise. Unfortunately despite the game being fully 3D this time around, the game has removed the option to jump, likely a response to many people complaining about platforming in the Ark Engine titles (skill issues imo). Therefore the game definitely has more of an hack’n’slash Diablo like feel to it which is completed by the combat now adding skills on top of your regular combos.

Instead of switching to different types of magic adding to your base moveset, here Adol and his teammates can learn a variety of skills they can attribute to 4 skill slots, each of these skills cost SP which can be regained by attacking or blocking enemies. You can also charge your regular attacks to deal a more powerful strike which does more damage but also gives you more SP. On top of all of this there’s also another meter on the right which fills up with attack and guarding, once full you can unleash an EX-Skill which is essentially a big super attack which deals tons of damage at the cost of your entire EX-Bar. It’s a system which on surface isn’t too dissimilar to other action RPG’s you might’ve played such as the Tales Of Series with the only difference here compared to that franchise is that everything happens in real time on the field rather than taking you to a separate battle arena each time you encounter a monster. Enemies now also have a stunt meter on top of their health, most regular enemies will die shortly before reaching that point but bosses won’t and once that meter is full they’ll be vulnerable to attack for a short time while being completely stunt, another system we’ve seen far too often in post 2010’s JRPG if I’m being honest.
And this is where the different party members come into play, during regular gameplay, 3 party members can be active on the field, and different party members deal different types of damage : Slash, Strikes and Pierce. Slashers are fast attackers which deals moderate damage and mostly use swords as their main means of attacking (it’s the main damage type of Adol), Strikers are heavy hitters which does a lot of damage but are very slow, Piercers are mostly ranged attackers which attacks from a distance by shooting projectiles (in later games, some non-projectile based characters are added and they’re just super-fast fencers which deals low damage). The main reason why you’d want to switch between party members however is because certain enemies are weak to certain types of attack and thus switching between them becomes essential to claiming victory over some of the tougher enemies.

Overall, Ys Seven version of this system is actually quite decent but a lot of balancing and gameplay issues kinda sours the fun of the system and definitely shows a severe case of “first game syndrome”. For starters, while Adol is still pretty fun to use, I found a lot of the additional characters to be a bit lacking in the fun department. Heavy characters are too slow for me to consider using them for too long and ranged attackers don’t actually have combo and unleash projectile not unlike Hugo from Origins and thus I didn’t find them that exciting to use in the long run. Also the way the game makes characters available is a bit weird, during the first half only Adol, Dogi and Aisha are available with some guest characters joining for the duration of their attributed dungeon before leaving your party. Some of these playable characters join your party permanently in the second half, but by that point your main party is so stacked that there’s no real incentive to use the other characters (keep that in mind, I’m gonna quizz you later) especially when some of them serve similar roles as your main three. I’ve mainly stick to an Adol only playthrough with the only other character other I found fun to use being Geis (a character from Ys VI making its grand return here as a playable character) so let’s just say that the rest of my party was lacking behind in stats and skills since updating them cost a lot of resources (again, keep that in mind).

The characters in question also aren’t the most interesting ones from a storytelling perspective. I found the team of characters in Ys Seven to be thoroughly unmemorable outside of Dogi, Aisha and Geis (two of which are returning characters with long-established roles in the series). Most of them are just random tribesmen associated with the different temples you visit throughout the game and they don’t really stand out more than that storywise except for maybe Cruxie who replaces her brother Mustafa after some story event happened to her. I like Aisha as a character too but she fits into the typical tomboyish princess role you’ve likely seen in many other JRPG’s over the years and thus your appreciation of her will really depend on your fondness for such tropes.

Other gameplay issues come from guarding, guarding in Ys Seven is a bit wack and unreliable mostly because of how loose the game is compared to other titles, dodge rolling makes you travel half the goddamn screen each time you use it and thus placement can be a bit wanky. While you’re not playing as them, the other party members are controlled via AI and let’s say the AI in this game gets pretty wack. From the auto-harvest not activating on ressources points, to them falling off of platforms and cliffs (which wouldn’t be an issue if switching to them didn’t also mean switching places with them !) or ruining your combos with bad attack choices and targeting the wrong enemies. The AI in this game is up to a lot of shenanigans and aside from being spare HP bags and being good at dodging its not great.
Last but not least, the way you learn abilities in this game is quite wack, each equipment you buy has a skill attached to them and to permanently keep those skills you have to farm AP on the enemies, a system not too dissimilar to how FFIX does it. I didn’t mind it in that game since most of the skills were passive abilities but here not sticking to outdated weapon and armor for longer than necessary locks you from having a complete moveset for each your characters and since AP can only be earned by active party members, they will inevitably lack behind for the late game (again more on that later).

But alright that’s the gameplay change but how’s the game itself ? This time around, Adol gets to explore the Kingdom of Altago on the Afrocan continent, a vast place with many different types of biomes and a bunch of tribes trying to survive out there in the wild to take care of each of their Dragon temples. A long-time ago, the 5 Dragons of Altago breathed new life onto the land, their goal being to keep the balance of their elements in check and if that balance had to be broken, the Wind of Destruction might destroy the land to reset the flow of Energy. To stop this, the prophecy talks about a legendary Dragon Hero who will one day make a pilgrimage to the 5 dragon shrines and receive a blessing from each of its dragons in order to stop the upcoming calamity. As Adol and Dogi land in the capital city, they come into contact with two herb sellers by the name of Tia and Maya getting harassed by the Dragon Knights, the elite soldiers of Altago. After a brief altercation, Adol gets thrown in jail, however having heard of his many adventures, the King of Altago tasks him with investigating the local shrines after a couple of earthquakes has been happening throughout the land. Upon visiting the first shine, Adol learns that he is in fact the chosen Dragon Hero who needs to seek the blessing of each of the dragons to stop the upcoming calamity.

As you can see the story of Ys Seven is overall a pretty basic “save the world by gathering 5 McGuffin” plot line seen in a lot of JRPG. Adol and his friends will go to different regions to explore each of the shrines, encounter the tribe's people, team-up with their local hero and defeat a boss at the end. If anything, the story of Ys Seven isn’t that amazing, it’s cliché, quite predictable and at point even boring and with the party members not having much depth it's really hard to think of this story as anything but serviceable (even if the series rarely shined in that department past Ys 1, 2 and Dawn). You can see the twists coming from a mile away and to top it all of the game is divided into two parts which doesn’t help the game’s pacing.

Because yes, after visiting the 5 shrines, some plot shenanigans happens and Adol gets thrown into jail again, gets to revisit all of the shrines to get blessings from the dragons again and… Yeah I don’t think I need to draw a picture here, this game is a bit too long (20h which is twice as long as your average Ys Game) and stretched out for how basic of a storyline it is. It’s also not helped that all of the quick travel points in the second half get deactivated forcing you to re-explore the entire map once again on foot. Sure the game does open some new areas to make the journey back less tedious but it’s such obvious padding that I’m shocked it got past the development phase. Despite my complaints about the story however, I do enjoy the Kingdom of Altago and its lore and some of the ecological and even political elements weave together to spice this pretty basic plot line into something far more enjoyable than expected. Tia for exemple without spoiling too much on what her deal is turns out to be one of my favorite heroines of the franchise and the end of her storyline did manage to make me emotional. What little actual story there is is good but it’s a shame that the whole Dragon Quest™ takes up 80% of the actual runtime of the game to be appreciated.
Since you’re mostly going to spend the grand majority of the game exploring the overworld as well as the different shrines (twice with other dungeons past the actual dungeons in the second half) how do they fare up ? Well this is where the game kinda suffers from its shift in gameplay and the lack of platforming elements, since the game removed the ability to jump a lot of the dungeons are pretty straightforward in design with one path leading to an item which unlocks the path to the boss. That’s not to say they’re not fun to explore or have fun gimmicks and obstacles, but they’re a far-cry from how the Ark Engine games were designed and I even must admit that they have a hard time even comparing to some of the best areas from Dawn of Ys.

The actual overworld connecting each of the towns and shrine fairs a bit better in the level design department with lots of interesting ways all the areas connect to one another and the monsters you fight there being pretty fun to fight with even some world bosses to take on if you feel especially spicy today. I’d say that in general the level design of each area and dungeons while not being able to compete on the same level as the ones from the Ys Engine era definitely compensate with some ideas and they’re overall pretty fun to go through nonetheless. I think the music alone carries the level design here, Ys Seven music is especially good even amongst the high standard of the series and if I’m being frank it’s at least in my Top 5 in terms of Soundtrack for the series.

So everything about this game is stuff that I just enjoy in an OK way but now I want to talk about the bosses…

They kinda… exist… or flat-out sucks…

With the party system, you now pretty much have 3 Health Bar instead of one and much like Ys VI we’re back to consumables items you can use mid-battle, I’m going to be honest, the party-system game kinda drop the balls hard on the bosses just for that reason alone since the challenge becomes quite nonexistent (which is why I advised playing these games on higher difficulties to have some semblance of a challenge). Because you have so much health and resources to manage that health the developers thought it was a good idea to turn every bosses into big fucking HP sponges which take fucking forever to die, I swear some of these bosses probably last up to 25 or even 30 minutes just to deplete their health bar. This isn’t really hard, it’s just incredibly long, boring and tedious for nothing and only a rare few of them have patterns worth giving a shit about. The only boss that I somehow remember is the first one you fight, which actually had some patterns to work with and some fun counters you can pull but other than that and in spite of the designs being pretty clean it’s not glorious.

Which now leads me to talk about the absolute fucking cancer cell that is the final boss of this game.

I failed to mention it until now but this game introduces a crafting system, with resources to gather in order to make better equipment. Some ressources fall naturally from enemies and some are harvested in certain spots in the game forcing you to stop your forward momentum to pick up some flowers and you better gather these resources because you sure as hell gonna need them. Why do I only mention this now ? Well remember when I said that the game had multiple party members but the game rarely if ever encourages you to use them ? Well, I hope you’ve actually been using them and keeping their equipment in check because they’re all going to participate in the fight ! All of them ! So if some of them are behind the curve, you can bet your ass the final boss is gonna whoop the floor with your ass. This is where the game which so far has avoided the sin of being too grindy becomes an infernal fucking grind fest.
To defeat the final boss, you need to have perfect equipment and everyone’s ultimate weapons, otherwise you simply won’t defeat him. To get those, you will have to grind ressources a lot ! And the worst part is that the game actually doesn’t tell you where to find specific resources, there’s not a compendium where that info can be found so if you’re somehow missing an ingredient for a recipe you’re shit out of luck except if you have a guide. I swear on top of having to farm levels and skills and resources for equipment you actually have to fight the damn boss. If you’re underprepared the boss is straight impossible but even with all the appropriate preparation he’s still a pain in the goddamn ass.

He has 3 phases, the first one being the longest since he’s only vulnerable for a set period of time and you have to dodge the rest of his attacks and attack his head before doing proper damage. The second will test your ability to guard and counter something that is almost never needed in the rest of the game and the third phase is a solo fight where Adol finishes the boss. Each phase has an ungodly amount of HP much like every boss in the game and if you fail at any of them, it’s back to the first phase (there’s also an easy humanoid boss fight before fighting him just adding to the frustration.

I guess I could give props to this boss actually having patterns and stuff to care about but god it’s such a pain in the ass. It’s easily the worst final boss in the entire series and perhaps one of the worst bosses in the entire franchise (yes even worse than Dark Fact in Chronicles and worse than any bosses in Mask of The Sun). This single element kinda sours a lot of the impact during the ending which without really spoiling all that much actually managed to get me a bit emotional despite the game’s many flaws.

After everything I’ve just said, you may think that my opinion on Ys Seven is less than favorable but on the contrary, I do actually enjoy the game maybe a tad bit more than most people. I like the setting, the lore, the music, the dungeons while more straightforward are still lots of fun to explore and the story although kind of non-existent for most of it manages to hit with some truly memorable moments which stuck in my mind whenever I think about this game (SHIRTLESS ADOL DAMN SON).

But it’s also fair to admit that Ys Seven isn’t all that remarkable of an entry especially after the home-run the previous two entries in the series were, much like Ys VI it’s a rough transitional period with some well executed ideas mixed with a lot of less than optimal ones. Ys Seven is a game I like a lot, maybe a tad bit more than Ys VI if only for the fact Ys Seven is just simply a lot more fast-paced and fun than that game and also doesn’t have any sort of weird esoteric mechanic such as dash jumping. Ys Seven sadly is just kinda there and just kind of exists and while I may enjoy it more than most, thinking back on it while writing this review almost made me draw a blank on what I can even say about this one.

Ys Seven is a game I don’t have any strong opinion about, either positive or negative, it’s the most quintessential 7/10 ARPG possible with mechanics you’ve likely seen executed better somewhere else, a story which is cliché, basic and quite predictable especially for Ys standard. The game also has sidequests and the fact I’m only mentioning them now during the conclusion shows you how much care was put into them. Overall, Ys Seven is solid, I’m in conflict with some of its ideas, starting with the party system I have some level of apprehension for and it’s not helped that it’s not executed at its best here.

Next time however, I’ll promise you some salt, we’re going to talk about a game I enjoy much less than Ys Seven, the actual version of Ys IV delivered by Falcom… and… thing’s aren’t pretty.

If you are playing in numbered order, this one feels a bit rough. Although there isn't anything exceptional I can point out, Amongst the Ys games, in this one there were a lot more instances where I wasn't really into it, the game starts off slow with the limited skills and, likely because I bumped up the difficulty this time around, there were many instances of damage sponges to prolong the combat. By the mid point, I was in the groove, but after act 2 begins, there was too much option. Skills would rarely be learned as I would get a new weapon before I could finish, characters were left in the dust after picking some favorites (like Ys IV, but with much more severe repercussions) and you are forced to run through the same map over and over.
I was surprised with how well this game is reviewed in the context of the series as this only above Ys V in my honest opinion not bad enough to skip but there's no reason to push yourself with this one. Just enjoy the casual gameplay

Ys Seven pilots the series into a new era, but ultimately ends up feeling like a rough draft. The game has solid bones - a fun and typically fast-paced and dodge-heavy hack-and-slash combat system where attacks build up SP to unleash special skills, as well as a party system to help introduce some variety.

But the game is constantly getting in its own way with weird balancing issues - SP takes waaaaay too long to build up, and bosses are giant damage sponges that draw fights out two to three times as long as they should be. The result is a game that feels both fast and sluggish in its moment-to-moment rhythms. Another key flaw? Only the slash-type characters are really any fun to play as (Dogi hits like a truck but he moves like one too).

I had an okay time with it despite everything. But this is easily one of the weaker Ys games, and the fact that it was by far the longest Ys to date on release really doesn’t help with that

Our first Ys game with the party system in the SEVEN engine which also laid the foundations of future remakes (Celceta) and future new games (Lacrimosa).

I think the first half of the game was better than the second half which felt a bit like padding and repetitive. Having to explore Altago AGAIN, even with shortcuts, was a massive pain and not fun. I think the idea of skills being tied to weapons is a good system overall but not a good system for Ys because of how fast you get new weapons plus add the synth and I ended up with a lot of unlearned skills.

I played on hard and it was a nice challenge until you get the Pentagram skill for Adol + Crimson Jewel and any sense of difficulty goes to the gutter. It's just that broken.

Even if I had a lot of issues with this game I enjoyed it for what it brought to the Ys franchise although I still prefer solo Adol games.

Ys Seven is simply a fun game. As the third attempt to change the Ys formula, the three-party system introduced was a first good attempt. Every character was fun to use and balanced to the point where no one outright breaks the game. Altago as a setting was fun to explore, though it did feel smaller than I thought. The bosses were some of the funniest in the series where pattern recognition and skills determine your ability to overcome each boss. Music is always a banger but that is expected for Falcom, with the first boss theme and the opening intro being the highlights. The pacing was fast despite being a bit longer than other Ys games, but the journey still felt long and fulfilled. Only time the pacing felt slow was when after a pivotal event, you needed to backtrack to the civilized locations without the ability to simply warp. Finally, (and probably the part that may make or break) the visuals. It's not that bad, though it looks rough in retrospect. The towns and location looks nice, though some of the character's 3D models looks off (ex. Dogi and Scias). At worse, most of them are tolerable and even then the color shading make them look visually appealing. In conclusion, Ys Seven is a solid Ys game that all fans should play and if you came in after playing Celceta, VIII, IX, it still has the same aspects, though it's the most experimental being the first game to use this engine.

On many levels, Ys Seven embodies everything a Ys game should be. Coming from Origin I immediately loved the sense of adventure that oozes from this game. It's one of my favourite elements of the series so getting that right is a big bonus. I love traveling the lands, helping people, collecting different items to progress, and upgrading my equipment. The map progression is satisfying along with interesting dungeons and landscapes to explore. There's an epic story about saving the region and as always - a banger soundtrack.

I enjoy the new party-based combat system as well. Ys always has satisfying combat, but it's naturally a bit scary when they switch their style every few games. Now it is nowhere near to being as polished as the two final Napishtim engine games, but it does remind me of Napishtim itself which very similarly had to introduce a new combat style in a new engine. We did sacrifice jumping because flying enemies have to be attacked by specific party members, but the overall feel of picking the right tool for the job is nice and party progression is well handled.

All apart from one aspect - for some reason, the boss fights in Ys Seven are quite poor. I can chalk some of it down to the more hack-and-slashy combat not being as well suited for boss fights (esp since for these you can use any party member freely without having to think about their damage type), but the primary issue here is that for the most part the boss fights themselves just aren't interestingly designed. There might be an exception or two, but for the most part, the phases aren't that interesting and you don't have to think or adapt all that much.

That being said I liked nearly everything else about this game and regard it quite fondly. I am interested to see how this party-based combat system evolves moving forward and whether we can see another jump in quality akin to the one between Napishtim and Felghana.

This is an action RPG that I really enjoyed, it has so much content and stuff to do, I didn't manage to complete all the side quests but the story was not half bad, and the gameplay was super fun. Quite a bit of nice dungeons and great boss fights and attacks to unlock. I actually got stuck at the final boss, so to complete it I just grinded for a bit, unlocked a couple new skills and tried some strategies until I finally managed to beat it, it was a 4 phase battle which was rough, but not impossible. I really recommend it to be honest.

Ys Seven is a perfectly adequate action RPG that hasn't aged particularly well. Combat is fast-paced and satisfying, although some techniques aren't explained at all and the special moves are largely uninteresting and interchangeable. Later in the game the charge time for special moves is reduced, which makes the experience a lot more dynamic and really shines a light on how hamstrung the initial hours are. Fortunately the bosses are really engaging and require the player to learn their moves to time combos, charges, guarding, and dodging.

Playing on normal difficulty means very little XP grind, but there is still skill grinding and materials grinding for an awkward parallel crafting economy. More than any previous Ys game this title really feels like the grind is a necessary part of the experience. There also isn't that characteristic Ys "staircase effect" where leveling up feels like a major power increase. That said, hot-swapping characters and clearing rooms is still delightful, even if it isn't as snappy as previous games.

The writing is a mixed experience. There's a lot of unique NPC lines that change as events transpire, which really makes the world feel alive and malleable. However, those lines rarely felt worth the effort of talking to every townsperson. The main quest has great dialogue and is even laugh-out-loud funny at times, but the plot and locations are pretty generic elemental MacGuffin shorthand. Overall this is the first Ys game that felt ponderous and padded out to me. Memories of Celceta fixes a lot of these problems and is generally so much better that it almost makes Seven feel obsolete. Seven is a testament to why longer isn't always better, and I find myself giving up a little more than halfway through at 13 hours, which is about how long this game probably should have been.

Weird yet fitting game to end my Ys streak on. Exemplifies the best and worst traits of the series.

To start with the good: this has my favorite core combat in the series, due to a more manual and deliberate style of combat. In Celeceta, 8, and 9 they automate SP and make spamming moves a lot easier. Flash guard is performed with a button combination rather than one button, and offers less invincibility so it doesn't trivialize the combat as much and flash move isn't in the game at all. In addition to the controls the equipment and items are more limited in selection and amount allowed respectively. I also think the bosses were closer to actually pushing me really learn their patterns on Nightmare, which I haven't had to do for any of the other modern games. You can argue that the classic approach is better since there's not anything to abuse, but I do think the additional mechanics have potential when stripped back like this. Seven also offers the most sensible approach to including Adol in a party by allowing him to use multiple damage types with different basic attacks.

The dungeons have a nice sense of following through on mechanics, rarely is a key item ever used only once and often they appear in interesting puzzles and the like. Sounds like fairly standard RPG affair but it's preferable to enemy spam.

Seven's ost is one of the stronger in the series, although the audio mixing can feel off at times. Environmental noises like waves and volcanos feel like they don't scale with the in-game audio sliders and your slashes will always be significantly louder than anything else.

Enami Katsumi's art is a treat as always, truly one of the GOAT illustrators.

Unfortunately, this game has the worst story in possibly any game I've ever played. Most of the older Ys games had fairly generic and by the books stories, but they would use their very little screen time to show charming characters or interesting lore. Seven opts to waste far more of your time for a less valuable, soulless elemental artifact hunt with overly stoic and motiveless characters. I love RPGs, I've played hundreds and I love most of Falcoim's games but if you HAD to incapsulate everything wrong with RPG and Falcom writing this game would be the result. Honestly irredeemable in my opinion.

The sidequests are dogshit fetch quests with trash rewards and no interesting lore or character details. To add one final complaint, this game shares some of 8's material grind and 6's grinding so it can end up feeling padded.

Ultimately, I still enjoyed the game because of the combat and bosses because that's what I enjoy about these games but I can definitely understand why its divisive and it's a shame that Falcoim kinda corrupted what made the combat so good in subsequent titles with mechanical fluff. This game will always remain in kind of a weird spot for me.

Playing by release date and this game is the worst so far (worse then ys6).
You play as a cripple for most of the game without ability to teleport ,nerfed ability to gain SP and shitty charged attacks.
The game is extremely long and frustrating, it overstays it's welcome a lot.
The worst part is when you have to revisit the entire map on foot. And late game dungeons like wind sanctum are a giant waste of time to make the game longer then necessary.
This game is a downgrade from ys origin. Hope next titles made party system better.