Okay, some mixed feelings here despite giving this a 3/5. I think my expectations for Ys have skyrocketed after playing through Ys Origin and Ys VIII, with the former being one of the best surprises of this year and the latter now being one of my favorite games of all time. Oath in Felghana has many of the classic elements that make Ys great, but I'm going to nitpick a fair bit here and try to explain why I think this pales a bit in comparison to Origin.
Oath in Felghana takes place as Adol Christin's 3rd adventure, in the land of Felghana where monsters have begun attacking rampantly for some reason and it's up to you, the adventurer, to do slashy slashy things and save this forsaken land! Now, I'd say the aesthetics and atmosphere are basically all there; graphics look fine for isometric 3D in 2005 with some pretty cool bosses and visuals, the soundtrack of course is banging because Falcom has never made a bad soundtrack in their lives, and game feel is generally very smooth because the Ys Controls are extremely simple and responsive. There's a story attached to all of this about your classic RPG tales of revenge and redemption and all that, and it's told well enough; you might even end up feeling bad for some of the characters despite story not being the main focus here. You can easily beat the game in less than 10 hours (that's with some grinding too, I'll explain that in a bit), and for the most part, you will be able to figure out exactly where you need to go to progress the story and Adol's upgrades. All the elements for a great action JRPG are here... so now I'll need to try and explain what felt "off" to me.
Oath in Felghana has two problems that stick out to me in my mind. The first is that in some sections, the checkpoints are too far apart from one another (particularly an issue in the abandoned mines and in the final dungeon of the game). If you happen to be playing the PC version like me, then when you die in a dungeon, you will teleport to the last checkpoint that you healed/saved at... which in some cases could result in you losing 2 levels of progress or more. This is made particularly more brutal by the fact that healing items in Felghana are either found as a one-off in some breakable pots (that never return), or as a drop by some enemies, so healing in general outside of checkpoints is not really reliable, especially at low health when you want to avoid combat. You'll eventually get an item to help alleviate this in the end game that lets you heal when standing still, but until then, your best reprieve is backtracking to the last checkpoint via a teleport key item (which you get early on enough) and saving your experience levels, but losing your level progress, because levels can get pretty long at times. So this was a major cause of frustration where getting wombo comboed during levels lost me about a half hour of progress or more at times. (There is an item that alleviates this slightly by increasing enemy item drops by the way, but it requires you to activate and complete an optional hidden sidequest on the other side of the map that was never mentioned to me by any characters and expires after completing the next portion of the storyline... OOPS!)
The other extenuating issue I have with Oath in Felghana is the boss design. Oath likes to do this thing where it often feels like an endurance test instead of a threshold/execution test; many of the bosses tend to be invincible or unable to be hit due to positioning until they let themselves be hit after dodging enough attacks or landing a crucial hit after dodging enough attacks. This results in this dance and song of having to wait around and dodge tons of projectiles and other physical attacks until you get your opportunity to punish with a few hits, and then waiting and dodging again to repeat the process. This may not sound that bad, but I'd like to compare this to Ys Origin, where in almost all cases it felt like I could actively influence the battle throughout its whole duration; in Ys Origin, bosses dissuade you from going all out by dealing damage to you and forcing you to dodge attacks when telegraphed instead of say, flying off the screen/above the ground to where you can't touch them or flashing invincible for some time. I think it's somewhat antithetical to Ys's popularized gameplay of playing aggressively and being rewarded for dodging/defending well, because in Oath in Felghana, you're usually waiting around or dodging for a good chunk of the time instead of being able to pile on damage whenever you're not on the defensive; it feels less like player-intuited counter play and more like following a script. Oh, and the small margin of error does not help here, because you have little time to attack due to the cycles and a lot of time to get hit, and when you get punished, you will get punished greatly because there are almost no invincibility frames from what I can tell. You could grind a little bit to lessen the damage (a problem that Ys Origin also has, to be fair), but that feels like a bit of a cop-out at times, and I really didn't feel like I had to grind in Ys Origin while I almost felt like grinding at times was necessary in Felghana due to how stressful and demanding the fights in Felghana fight. For context, I usually took about 1-4 tries for bosses in Ys Origin, while many bosses in Oath of Felghana took upwards of 7-8 tries; you could definitely argue that Felghana's just a more brutal game, but I think a lack of agency over pace during boss fights in Felghana as compared to Origin also contributes to this.
Now, this last part I'll be a bit more forgiving towards because I'm not sure how much of this relates to the PC port being scuffed. It became fairly evident to me that the PC port's physics were tied somewhat to frame rate, and because this game is ancient (in internet years at least), it constantly runs in the thousands of frames on my PC. This results in a lot of cases where double jumping onto platforms straight up didn't work because I'd get caught on the lip of the ledge instead of landing on top of the platform, and almost soft locked my game at the beginning of the mountains section because I couldn't figure out how to double jump and land on top of the elevated path. The proposed solution was to turn on V-Sync and cap the frames... except in my case, the box for V-Sync was checked in the config settings and I had used Nvidia Control Panel to cap the frames, but to no avail. The actual solution came when I played the game on fullscreen instead of windowed and somehow I was able to make all of these jumps (except for one in Valestein Castle... going to guess that one is just janky physics) on the first try. I think the frame rate - physics issue on PC also led to some unusual behavior during boss fights where bosses attacked more quickly at times or had tons of homing/tracking attacks I couldn't dodge easily or had yardstick hitboxes and lingering hitboxes that lasted longer than Link's nair in SSBM (I'm not even sure if that's base game in general or due to an issue with the PC port to be honest). I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're gambling a bit playing this on PC because I'm definitely not the only one who's run into this issues, and maybe you should just stick to the PSP release to err on the safe side despite the lower frame rate and lower graphical fidelity.
I think Oath in Felghana is still a good game, and still feels like a good Ys Game despite not being the Ys game; when you're playing well, there's really no other feeling like wailing on enemies and shredding bosses with well timed execution and dodging. But there's definitely some important factors here that make me greatly prefer Ys Origin, its sibling in this era of Ys, as my choice of condensed and introductory ARPG over Felghana. I'd say this is still worth a shot and I was more than happy to complete the majority of the game over two days without any burnout; give Ys Origin a shot first, and if you like what you see there, then Oath in Felghana's a must play. Just don't expect a 1:1 recreation in terms of experience and design; there's a reason why Origin was my first and not Oath.
Oath in Felghana takes place as Adol Christin's 3rd adventure, in the land of Felghana where monsters have begun attacking rampantly for some reason and it's up to you, the adventurer, to do slashy slashy things and save this forsaken land! Now, I'd say the aesthetics and atmosphere are basically all there; graphics look fine for isometric 3D in 2005 with some pretty cool bosses and visuals, the soundtrack of course is banging because Falcom has never made a bad soundtrack in their lives, and game feel is generally very smooth because the Ys Controls are extremely simple and responsive. There's a story attached to all of this about your classic RPG tales of revenge and redemption and all that, and it's told well enough; you might even end up feeling bad for some of the characters despite story not being the main focus here. You can easily beat the game in less than 10 hours (that's with some grinding too, I'll explain that in a bit), and for the most part, you will be able to figure out exactly where you need to go to progress the story and Adol's upgrades. All the elements for a great action JRPG are here... so now I'll need to try and explain what felt "off" to me.
Oath in Felghana has two problems that stick out to me in my mind. The first is that in some sections, the checkpoints are too far apart from one another (particularly an issue in the abandoned mines and in the final dungeon of the game). If you happen to be playing the PC version like me, then when you die in a dungeon, you will teleport to the last checkpoint that you healed/saved at... which in some cases could result in you losing 2 levels of progress or more. This is made particularly more brutal by the fact that healing items in Felghana are either found as a one-off in some breakable pots (that never return), or as a drop by some enemies, so healing in general outside of checkpoints is not really reliable, especially at low health when you want to avoid combat. You'll eventually get an item to help alleviate this in the end game that lets you heal when standing still, but until then, your best reprieve is backtracking to the last checkpoint via a teleport key item (which you get early on enough) and saving your experience levels, but losing your level progress, because levels can get pretty long at times. So this was a major cause of frustration where getting wombo comboed during levels lost me about a half hour of progress or more at times. (There is an item that alleviates this slightly by increasing enemy item drops by the way, but it requires you to activate and complete an optional hidden sidequest on the other side of the map that was never mentioned to me by any characters and expires after completing the next portion of the storyline... OOPS!)
The other extenuating issue I have with Oath in Felghana is the boss design. Oath likes to do this thing where it often feels like an endurance test instead of a threshold/execution test; many of the bosses tend to be invincible or unable to be hit due to positioning until they let themselves be hit after dodging enough attacks or landing a crucial hit after dodging enough attacks. This results in this dance and song of having to wait around and dodge tons of projectiles and other physical attacks until you get your opportunity to punish with a few hits, and then waiting and dodging again to repeat the process. This may not sound that bad, but I'd like to compare this to Ys Origin, where in almost all cases it felt like I could actively influence the battle throughout its whole duration; in Ys Origin, bosses dissuade you from going all out by dealing damage to you and forcing you to dodge attacks when telegraphed instead of say, flying off the screen/above the ground to where you can't touch them or flashing invincible for some time. I think it's somewhat antithetical to Ys's popularized gameplay of playing aggressively and being rewarded for dodging/defending well, because in Oath in Felghana, you're usually waiting around or dodging for a good chunk of the time instead of being able to pile on damage whenever you're not on the defensive; it feels less like player-intuited counter play and more like following a script. Oh, and the small margin of error does not help here, because you have little time to attack due to the cycles and a lot of time to get hit, and when you get punished, you will get punished greatly because there are almost no invincibility frames from what I can tell. You could grind a little bit to lessen the damage (a problem that Ys Origin also has, to be fair), but that feels like a bit of a cop-out at times, and I really didn't feel like I had to grind in Ys Origin while I almost felt like grinding at times was necessary in Felghana due to how stressful and demanding the fights in Felghana fight. For context, I usually took about 1-4 tries for bosses in Ys Origin, while many bosses in Oath of Felghana took upwards of 7-8 tries; you could definitely argue that Felghana's just a more brutal game, but I think a lack of agency over pace during boss fights in Felghana as compared to Origin also contributes to this.
Now, this last part I'll be a bit more forgiving towards because I'm not sure how much of this relates to the PC port being scuffed. It became fairly evident to me that the PC port's physics were tied somewhat to frame rate, and because this game is ancient (in internet years at least), it constantly runs in the thousands of frames on my PC. This results in a lot of cases where double jumping onto platforms straight up didn't work because I'd get caught on the lip of the ledge instead of landing on top of the platform, and almost soft locked my game at the beginning of the mountains section because I couldn't figure out how to double jump and land on top of the elevated path. The proposed solution was to turn on V-Sync and cap the frames... except in my case, the box for V-Sync was checked in the config settings and I had used Nvidia Control Panel to cap the frames, but to no avail. The actual solution came when I played the game on fullscreen instead of windowed and somehow I was able to make all of these jumps (except for one in Valestein Castle... going to guess that one is just janky physics) on the first try. I think the frame rate - physics issue on PC also led to some unusual behavior during boss fights where bosses attacked more quickly at times or had tons of homing/tracking attacks I couldn't dodge easily or had yardstick hitboxes and lingering hitboxes that lasted longer than Link's nair in SSBM (I'm not even sure if that's base game in general or due to an issue with the PC port to be honest). I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're gambling a bit playing this on PC because I'm definitely not the only one who's run into this issues, and maybe you should just stick to the PSP release to err on the safe side despite the lower frame rate and lower graphical fidelity.
I think Oath in Felghana is still a good game, and still feels like a good Ys Game despite not being the Ys game; when you're playing well, there's really no other feeling like wailing on enemies and shredding bosses with well timed execution and dodging. But there's definitely some important factors here that make me greatly prefer Ys Origin, its sibling in this era of Ys, as my choice of condensed and introductory ARPG over Felghana. I'd say this is still worth a shot and I was more than happy to complete the majority of the game over two days without any burnout; give Ys Origin a shot first, and if you like what you see there, then Oath in Felghana's a must play. Just don't expect a 1:1 recreation in terms of experience and design; there's a reason why Origin was my first and not Oath.
Reviewed on May 07, 2022
3 Comments
Thanks for reading! Celceta's definitely coming up sooner than later, think I'll pick it up for sale around summer on GOG. I might dip into Ys I & II Chronicles just to see how those have aged first.
Celceta was my first Ys game on the Vita. I really loved it at the time. It's more like VIII than Origin.
FallenGrace
1 year ago