Perhaps I had bigged this game up too much after playing oath of felghana. The biggest fallback of this game is grinding. The pacing of OoF is superb whereas this is closer to the original ys games (I.II). There were many points in the game where I would meet an enemy which I could not damage at all. This was actually because I didn't have enough damage, meaning some bosses I had to sit around and grind, not because I felt I wasn't strong enough but because the game told me to. This is ok in games with limitations, or in Ys' case, a hyper speed combat system which could exploit grinding. But in this game it is not. However, the game starts to pick up about the half way point and this issues isn't a problem. On top of this, Ys has some great music and another brilliant world to explore. I wouldn't recommend this as the first game in the franchise but it is a decent addition to the Ys series.