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 was a moderately enjoyable experience. Through experiencing what many of the games in the series have to offer, I've started to rate each title through a couple of factors. Those being (1) flow of combat/progression (2) difficulty and (3) music

Flow of Combat/Progression: Too much depth and complexity added to the system comes with unintended consequences. The flow is relatively similar to other titles. It's fast, but has some added depth with the skill, attack type, and extra skill systems. Additionally, there are a few more stats that each character can utilize (dex/avoid). However, more isn't always good. Being required to swap characters mid combat per the attack types interrupted the flow of combat in the micro. General grindiness with expanded RPG elements interrupted the flow of progression in the macro.

Difficulty: The game isn't as challenging as previous titles, which is for better and worse. The incorporation consumables means that, granted you have enough resources, you never really have to worry about bosses. You don't really have to learn their movements, and thus there isn't nearly as much of a challenge. However, the game becomes much more accessible with these JRPG elements.

Music: The music isn't as memorable as the other titles.

By the time I played Ys Seven, I was already kind of tired of the series. It has a lot of things I don't really like, but the bosses were cool and it's satisfying to destroy enemies with the amount of special skills you posses. After playing Lacrimosa of Dana it felt very mediocre, but it scratches that itch for a solid action RPG.

Gameplay: B
Story: B
Characters: C
Visuals: B
Music: Falcom
Difficulty: Optional (Normal)

Ys Seven

Juego un poco raro, al principio había momento que me gustaba, luego momentos que no. La trama me ha parecido un poco coñazo a excepción del final final.

Una pena que se el Ys con mejor OST y diseños que he jugado de momento.

(5/10)

Tocará darle al Celceta.

Possibly the Ys that I liked the least.

It is noticeable that it is the first game that implemented the new combat system with a party, it is missing many axes that, luckily, they polished in VIII. The setting hasn't clicked for me or the characters, unfortunately, but the combat, despite urgently needing changes, doesn't worsen the experience I've had with older Ys.

The bosses on the other hand... seem to me the weakest point of the entire game: large HP pools without phases until the last bosses. Reaching them makes the second half of the game repetitive and they have no greater reward than a special weapon at the end (having to get the materials, of course).

But hey, let's see if I can play Ys IX and finish this marathon of the Ys saga. What a ride!!

Decent entry in the ys series and the first to use the party system. Definitely a rough first outing in that regard. Normal combat still flows well, but the boss fights can range from piss easy to infuriating due to high amounts of health or poorly-designed patterns.

The game's pacing is weird as you basically have to go around the world twice to go to a second dungeon in each area. This makes the second half feel somewhat redundant. I would have wished they used the extra time to develop the party more if they were going to do this, but it feels like they missed an opportunity there.

The first Ys game I ever played and one I overall enjoyed quite a bit.
Unlike previous Ys games, this one has a party based system, which spices up the gameplay and adds a good amount of variety. Admittedly, I didn't experiment with it as much as I should've though.
Combat felt incredibly fluid and was a joy to play.
The bosses were overall pretty good, but the optional bosses were meh.
Like in previous Ys games, the soundtrack doesn't disappoint.
The story felt ok in the first half, but the second half really picked things up.

this games main issue is the party
not necessarily the party system, mind you. i think its a fine idea that can be done a lot better but this was a nice and humble start
but the party members themselves
there is literally 0 reason to use any team that isnt adol dogi aisha, maybe replace dogi with geis. mustafa/cruxie dont do dogis job as well as dogi, mischera doesnt do aishas job as well as aisha, and elk is just kinda really bad. they can be entirely ignored, however, up until the final boss. not a story spoiler, not marking it as one. the final boss forces you into 2 teams of 3 and adol. each teams respective phase of the fight is quite possibly the worst matchup for that team possible, making it an absolute chore to go through, as explained in the next paragraph.
this is only complimented by the party members braindead AI. they cant combo, they can only use a single attack. they can't draw aggro, and on the off chance the enemy does in fact hit them, it just goes straight through them anyways and theyll keep just hitting once every 2 seconds. when youre not attacking, theyre not attacking. when youre just trying to harvest, theyll either try to help you but get stuck in a corner, or just stand there. multiple times i have been harvesting while an enemy that dogi is super effective against is literally right there and dogi just stands there doing nothing, letting me get hit.
i do not mind item limits whatsoever, hell im a tales fan, but 5 and 3??? fucking 5 and 3. at least make it like 9 and 5 or something.
however, all in all, all of these complaints can be pushed to the side, because firstly this games story kicks absolute ass, and its definitely up there in top 3 (so far), secondly because all of my complaints about the party doesnt mean that the gameplay isnt fun, unlike celceta. celcetas mildly improved party ai was 1 step forward, literally everything else about the game was 12 steps back.

I am so glad to be done with the XSEED ys games before i have to go back to college and using my steam deck. onto ys 8, the alleged "best" one!

There's a lot of discourse about how Ys Seven is one of the more middling games in the franchise but I'm going to be honest... I really liked it! That isn't to say that it reaches the heights of Ys Origin before it or Ys VIII after it (and I will inevitably be making comparisons to the other games in the series that I've played), but I found the whole experience to be another thrilling entry in the series with very few infuriating moments and plenty of hack and slash pleasure.

Similar to Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ys Seven is a sort of stepping stone in the franchise, in that it marks the transition between the "Ark era" isometric 2D-3D Ys games and the "modern era" party-based Ys games such as Memories of Celceta and Ys VIII. The graphics can feel a little rough and polygonal for their time given that this was originally a PSP game and later localized to PC, but with the HD Texture Pack, it's not too shabby. You get to play as the chad adventurer Adol Christin and his best friend Dogi, sailing to the foreign kingdom of Altago, now stricken with a mysterious plague, an arrogant defense force that almost immediately throws our red headed hero in jail, and the omnipresent clash between progress and tradition. Tasked by the king to discover the source of the unrest, Adol and Dogi must team up with a flurry of other tribal representatives of Altago with their own stories and abilities in yet another cursed land and prophecy that Adol somehow finds himself at the center once again.

Combat in Ys Seven leans less in the Ark-era angle of jumping and dodging and more in the vein of classic hack and slash with character specific abilities and powers. It's pretty bread and butter combat, with the A button handling the basic attack and holding down the trigger + using ABXY to use abilities that are dependent upon an energy meter of sorts. Added to Ys Seven's movement in lieu of a jump is a quick roll, that allows you to both quickly get out of the way of incoming attacks while positioning yourself to the side or behind of opponents to continue your assault. It's sort of a deceptively simple combat system, because while it's a ton of fun to just mash the A button and go ham, it eventually becomes far more productive to use charged standard attacks to more quickly build up your energy meter so you can unleash a flurry of skills that can provide external benefits via additional damage and extended range. In addition, there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors layer thrown onto all of this via the party system, since there are up to three party members (including Adol) on the field at any time, and each character has one of three different attack types that must be accounted for depending on the opposing foe (i.e. Adol's sword is great against amorphous, fleshy enemies, while Dogi's fists are great against heavily armored enemies, etc) since using the wrong attack type will generally deal significantly less damage. So, there's actually a very solid and often frenzied gameplay loop of rolling around the environments to and fro the various enemies, and quickly switching party members and attack abilities whenever the energy meter builds up sufficiently, despite not retaining the EXP combo multiplier of Ys Origin and Oath in Felghana.

Now despite Ys Seven being an "easier" game due to having multiple party members to fall back upon as well as healing items that can be used in the middle of combat, Ys Seven is still not a mindless game. It is possible to dodge most attacks with the roll, but it doesn't make you invincible; the hurtbox is still active while you are rolling, so while your character is in motion, you can still be hit by waves or projectiles. That's where the flash guard comes in; by quickly hitting the L1 and R1 buttons in succession, you can perform a timed flash guard parry to negate an enemy attack (something that I really wish the game actually talked about; it never mentions this once in the tutorial or the manual and that's probably one of Ys Seven's greatest sins). This also isn't mindless however, because Ys Seven turns the timed flash guard parry into a high risk vs high reward situation; if you mistime the parry and you end up getting hit after the window, you'll take critical hit damage from enemy attacks. In addition, the flash guard doesn't give you an extended noticeable invincibility frame window after a successful parry (unlike Ys VIII), so attacks with lingering hitboxes such as lasers fired straight at you or extended enemy rush attacks will continue to deal damage after your parry. However, your immediate attack combo after a successful parry will deal critical hit damage towards opponents, and successful parries very quickly fill up the energy gauge. There is actually a method to the madness of balancing Ys's aggressive offense with on the fly defense, and mastering this push & pull is not as free as simply mashing A and then relying on one defensive option for everything. As a result, it's incredibly satisfying balancing calculated abilities and attacks in-between dodging and parrying enemy attacks in the middle of flashy, oversized boss fights.

Character progression via item crafting and leveling up is a bit more of a mixed bag. On one hand, I quite respect the character skill level up and unlocking system; each weapon is actually tied to a specific character skill, and you have to use a certain character skill enough times in order to use it indefinitely. It's a nice little way to reward players that remain cognizant of experimenting with different abilities and playstyles, and it gives individual weapons more meaning than simply serving as a stat upgrade. On the other hand, item collecting and crafting can be a little frustrating at times. The systems serve as a sort of conduit of fulfilling most of the side quests to document all the dropped resources from enemies/item hordes and also are raw materials that can be used to more cheaply produce better armor/weapons/healing items without spending money. There are a couple of caveats to this though.

Firstly, rarer drops are often required for certain recipes, and are RNG based. Most of this is circumvented by buying a Luck Medal to almost exclusively get rare drops, but there's also the case of specific item hordes in specific locations producing the exact species of rare item drop that you need, despite these item hordes in the same general vicinity looking the exact same, which can make item grinding a bit frustrating. There's also certain quests that require item grinding for resources scattered throughout the land (with basically no assistance from in-game to tell you where those resources are located if you're trying to farm item hordes). Finding these resource wells is trickier than it looks because the minimap doesn't automatically mark the locations unless you are holding the Silver Telegnosis (which in itself becomes an issue because you have to constantly switch back and forth between the Silver Telegnosis and the Luck Medal for the better guaranteed drops), and even then it only shows the location of a few resource wells within a certain distance instead of mapping the whole area. Finally, there's also a held item that straight up increases the amount of money gained from killing enemies, so it's not like you'll need to spend a ton of resources buying healing items as is when money can be pretty plentiful.

I'm making a particular point out of this, because while most of Ys Seven does not require excessive grinding, the endgame right before the final boss suddenly requires a ton of resource hoarding if you want to construct the best weapons and armor for everyone in your party. It's noticeably worse because most of the materials required for the synthesis of the final equipment are best gathered from the resource wells instead of gathering monster drops, which means this late game resource grind actively takes away from the most prevalent strength of the game. In addition to the problems listed above (items scattered throughout the land especially in areas that you have since forgotten the names of for particular drops, resource caches that look the exact same in a particular area but have different rare drops, etc), the somewhat lackluster AI also becomes more flagrant. They're not the greatest at doing exactly what you want them to do (i.e. dealing tons of damage alongside you spamming abilities and successfully dodging/flash guarding) but they tend to handle themselves well enough and are also supposed to help you collect drops from resource caches to minimize downtime. The key phrase here is "supposed to," because sometimes the AI messes up and just pauses to stare at you while you mash the A button 6 times in a row to collect all the resources from a single cache. As it stands, grinding in Ys is usually not an issue, because the bread and butter combat gameplay loop is great as is, but the late endgame really accentuates the flaws of the item crafting and collection systems and can make the final hours quite a bit more tedious if you want the best equipment. As such, if there are any noticeable weaknesses in Ys Seven, they would probably be these systems.

Despite my gripes here and there, Ys Seven is a fantastic entry in the series, both as a starting point to how easy it is to pick up and for veterans of the series both due to its challenging yet satisfying combat system and also in the form of lore drops, as it often references Adol's legacy as an adventurer across his past exploits. I do think that some of the side characters could have been developed a bit further, but they're still a ton of fun to use and explore regarding their own abilities and attack styles; I especially appreciate that it's a lot of fun playing as the ranged archer Aisha and spamming arrows, but she's not overpowered because there's often more downtime from her weapon skills and the range is good, yet not laughably huge. And the dungeons are fairly solid too, with a bit more sprawl and some added "puzzle" elements via key items (reminding me a lot of metroidvanias) and additional hazards reminiscent of a booby trapped crash course to keep you on your toes. The only other complaint I would have is that I do wish that the jump was retained; it would have added just another dimension to boss fights in being able to jump over attacks while allowing further verticality in dungeons and improving the honestly pretty solid movement in the overworld, something that Ys VIII does fortunately account for. Nevertheless, I really savored my time with Ys Seven as part of my journey through the series this year; it was a nice way to relieve stress and quickly press buttons somewhat aggressively but not too mindlessly, the environments are colorful and quite varied, the antagonist provides a moving touch to the plot thanks to the perfect amount of tragedy, and the soundtrack continues to kick ass because Falcom still hasn't made a single bad soundtrack for their games. Seriously, the opening movie says it all. The final boss fight that requires you to use all your party characters as a sort of reward for all your time spent experimenting and learning the ins and outs of the game is a great cherry on top of the cake.

If you weigh this by the expectations set from playing Ys Origin or Ys VIII, then I can definitely see how Ys Seven could be a tougher draw for you. Regardless, despite the lack of polish here and there, this more than holds up, and should not be missed as yet another fantastic entry in this classic fast-paced staple Falcom series.

Genuinely think this may be one of the most underrated RPGs out there and a lot of the things it does have not [or had not been] done better. The party system has always been controversial, but I feel like Ys Seven is the only instance where it's ever been married to the classic gameplay in a seamless manner. Items are /actually/ limited, bosses are challenging and telegraph their attack patterns well, and yet you now have access to a cast of different gameplay styles to use at your disposal, with fights being balanced around that. The dungeon design is fantastic and the plot tends to unfold as you traverse through Altago and gradually learn more about it, really evoking a sense of "adventure" in the player. Ys Seven is exceptional and it's a shame it doesn't get the appreciation it deserves.

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.

Playing this after Ys Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin kinda gave me whiplash in how differently they’re designed.

Origins and Felghana both had tight combat and no ability to heal during battle that made every boss fight a tense struggle to learn attack patterns and conserve your health long enough to take out the boss. But Seven is mostly a game about spamming the attack button until you have enough SP to spam the skill button, and chugging a few potions to shrug off whatever damage you take. There’s no incentive to learn attack patterns and play well, because the game puts up practically no resistance to stop you from mashing your way through every encounter. I died to almost every boss at least once in Felghana/Origins, but I got exactly one Game Over in Seven, and it was from trying to fight an optional endgame boss too early.

Despite this, I did warm up to the game over time. It has a pleasant sort of junk food quality to it where the combat and exploration are competent enough to keep you engaged between story beats. It’s not going to blow anyone’s mind, and I’m still disappointed it doesn’t follow in the steps of previous Ys titles, but you could certainly do worse.

I thought it was bad at first but then I played it and actually enjoyed it a lot

The only thing I did not like was the timed quests

Honestly I find almost any other Ys game I play better than 8 because they did not bore me to tears with a garbage ass story and repetitive mechanics

Also Dogi is a party member so it's fire for that

A pretty solid entry in the Ys series all around. I'm still not huge on this version of the combat, but I kind of mind it less here than I did when playing Celceta? Maybe it's just because I'm used to it now, maybe it's because it's balanced a little differently, but by the end of the game Adol would walk in a room do 2 SP attacks and everything would die instantly so I got some enjoyment out of that. The overworld here is a lot less annoying to traverse than in Celceta as well, meaning I spent a lot less time fighting the same trash enemies over and over which probably helped as well. The dungeon design is definitely the star of the show here, this is maybe the most solid entry that I've played so far in that regard. The progression through them feels really smooth, and the puzzles are pretty simple but satisfying.

One of my favourite Ys games, definitely the most underrated game in the franchise, absolute top tier soundtrack, boss design, iconic moments, good writing, best villains in the series by far, overall an amazing start for the party system games (this was the FIRST game they made with that system, on an underpowered portable console, and it manages to be so good!!!)

It manages to capture the exact feeling of an Ys game in ways that the other party system games don't exactly do, such as having a limited item usage that keeps the challenging nature of the series pretty much intact, even if this game is not as hardcore as Origin or Felghana (it kinda is on hard mode, which is the mode i played on)

Having Dogi and Geis as party members is extremely cool to fans of the rest of the series, especially if you played VI before this one

There are some things that are not perfect, like the McGuffin hunting for 50% of the game with barely any interesting plot in between but I couldn't care less, the gameplay, the dungeons, the insane bosses and the music easily makes up for that and the payoff is too good.

About the graphics... It's a PSP game. But, there's a texture pack for the PC version that makes the game look pretty good! I was very surprised about the difference in quality, but without it, I'll admit it looks pretty average to bad.

Never understood at all why this game is among the lowest rated in the series.

The most mid YS game ever, in every aspect.
Combat is annoying early on, until you get a certain "powerup" which makes combat smoother, story is basically just go to these 4 areas then go back because turns out these areas have another area behind them, so nothing really special. But it does have a somewhat rich plot on the surface, I suppose.

The characters are good, Tia is honestly the best part of this game. Geis was cool too.
We also got a playable Dogi, so that's at least something.
It's not bad, but it's nothing great either.