Ys I chronicles was my first run-in with the Ys series. Tried it at the behest of a couple of friends of mine. I chose a digital version from steam. Which performance wise was great! Weird making a lot of the resolution settings have its own executable, but it works. I can say with ease this game was a good time. Not without some short comings though. First off, the art and soundtrack here are amazing and being able to switch between old school and modern renditions of the soundtrack is a bonus. Even the art can be switched in the settings to change character interaction scenes both of which are great. Some serious waifu bait here. The game has mostly a serious tone with some comedy mixed in that landed pretty well for me. The games runtime was about 18 hours for me. Which is a breath of fresh air in a sea of long winded 100 plus hour rpgs. Ys has a strange approach to combat in the same vein as Hydlide (which was not good). Here though I think the developers did a serviceable job. You fight by running into enemies, (Charmingly called the BUMP SYSTEM) which is counter intuitive to most gamers when running into an enemy sprite normally hurts you. Here it can but if you attack an enemy off center or from behind it only damages the enemy. Feels strange at first but becomes second nature after an hour or two. I was really interested that all npcs in this game have their own name and diary entry giving good context to each townspeople's motivations and personality. Dialogue didn't come off as cheesy to me but I'm a weeb so it was fun for me. Ys does an okay job guiding you and giving well translated hints on what to do. Only downside here is you may need a guide. In every review I do for a standard run not 100% or anything. If I need a guide its one star knocked off no matter what. There is decent number of cryptic directions for where to go at times and needing to find specific items in a dungeon to bring to a npc that you haven't talked to in like 5 hours is annoying especially when they move. Dungeon design here is I think this games weakest point. While not to hard till the final mega dungeon. Most dungeon design here is very winding and maze like you will be wandering a lot looking for a specific Items you need to progress. Most dungeons having very little in the way landmarks and feel samey to the dungeons theme throughout. So will get lost a lot without a guided map of some sort. Grinding here is not terrible but bosses and certain enemies do have pretty hard progression thresholds that need to be meant. If you're lacking really any pieces of equipment and are slightly under leveled for bosses, you're going to have a bad time. Some bosses being outright impossible without certain gear and level requirements. So, you guessed it if you miss stuff more wandering around. Finally and what made me drop another star here is the boss design. Biggest gripe being the final boss fight. These fights feel more luck based than skill not to say there is nooooo strategy here just that I felt bosses you attacks feel like luck to avoid. So, I just throw myself at them and hope for the best while trying to avoid damage. Final boss was where I almost wanted to quit and shelf this game. He is such a prick and a testament to bad boss design I wouldn't blame anybody for quitting. For one you really need to pay attention dont use the best gear in the game one tier down or would will do no damage. As you hit him the arena falls apart roughly where you hit him. So you will die over and over again to falling through a tile. or him justing spamming you to death. which again dodging attacks unless your the one is just luck based. Took me well over an hour to beat this guy on NORMAL. Despite that this game has a ton of charm and I would suggest everybody that is a fan of rpgs and anime to get into this one.