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

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

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

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

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

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

Finished on December 5th of 2020.

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

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

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

In YS 1, exploration's fun while the bosses are either very easy or just unfair (you know the one).

In YS 2, the bosses are fun, but exploration took a nosedive in a certain dungeon (you know the one).

But in both games, the bump system is really satisfying to pull off correctly since you end up a killing machine in the end.

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

There IS!

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

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