I've wandered everywhere. Let's Play: Ys 3/OiF

The worst and the best of the Ys games (in my humble opinion of course): Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys (the bad one) and Ys: The Oath in Felghana (the good one) all here in one Let's Play.

I figured that I would play through both of them to fully show how much the remake deviates from the original in both plot and technological advances. See, for some reason Falcom is absurdly proud of Ys 3, it's been ported to a ton of consoles, remade twice (once by Taito, the other by Falcom) and there are about nine different versions of the soundtrack, even if you ignore the different console versions.

And that's probably the secret, why everyone likes Ys 3 so much, even though it deviates from the Ys formula by being both a sidescroller and having an attack button, as well as being a bit of an abysmal game. The music is generally regarded as being the best in a series most known for having great music.

So Falcom finally remade the game themselves in 2005 giving us Ys: The Oath in Felghana which was actually fun, along with an arranged soundtrack that's miles better than the ones preceding it, and here I am playing both.

I'm afraid I don't have much of an update today besides the intro post, because of a few logistical reasons (moved into a new place with not so great internet, and I need to find a better screenshot taker than the Oath in Felghana one) so that's why there's this fairly long intro.

I also wanted to ask those interested how I should do this: My current plan is to play each dungeon side by side, so I'll go through one dungeon in Ys 3, and then play the corresponding OiF dungeon. However, I have pretty much all the Ys 3 screenshots already taken, and notes written up for all the dungeons, so if people would prefer, I can go through Ys 3, and then follow up on Ys OiF. Either way, this will probably be a short LP, since both games are fairly short. If you have any preference for one way or the other, please tell me, so I can see which is more wanted.

If you want more information on the Ys series in general, or on Ys 3/OiF, there's HG101's Ys article which is what got me playing the Ys games in the first place.

Wait, where should I be finding this mystery remake instead of just burning myself a disc of Ys 3 for the turbo duo? You've intrigued me here because I always heard that the SNES Ys 3 was the worst of the bunch and that's the only one I played.

I don't have a preference either way, but I kinda liked how Spineshark did his, playing through one game and then following it up with the other for comparison. Granted, the two games are more different entries in a series than remakes, but I thought it worked well enough.

Either way, I don't really mind, but just thought you'd like to hear my two cents.

The remake is a lot different, it's no longer a sidescroller, and plays a lot like Ys 6, and unfortunately it's only been released in Japan, though Nightwolve who translated Ys Eternal 1 and 2 also did a translation for Oath in Felghana, I'll probably write a bit about that in the next update.

The input's helpful actually, I do have pretty much all the Ys 3 stuff done already, so I can work on Oath in Felghana without feeling too pressured... I'll wait a little bit longer and see what other people say before starting one way or the other. Thanks.

That's the reason I liked Ys III. I've tried one of the ones where you just run into enemies, and I found that mechanic so stupid that I quit almost instantly.

I support Ys.

Also now that I know there's a Nightwolf patch for Felghana I am so on that.

IN THE MEANTIME!

Consecutive is my vote, as opposed to concurrant.

I say consecutive.

Let's see these things one at a time!

This is one of those series that I knew existed, but know virtually nothing about in the way of concrete facts.

It seems like people prefer to see them played consecutively, so I'll be doing that, the next update should be tomorrow, provided my laptop decides to connect to the internet tomorrow (currently on my girlfriend's which doesn't have all my images to upload sadly).

Actually the first time I read about the Ys series I thought it was lame that there's no attack button, and refused to play the series pretty much based on that. Then I decided to give Ys IV a shot, and it was fun just ramming into things, but I can see why people might not like the no attack button thing.

And I want to like Ys III, but the difficulty, the lack of range, and lack of invulnerability after being hit make it hard to like. I'm just glad that Falcom was kind enough to let you save anywhere.

HG101's article on the Ys series is pretty good. Ys III is a little bit of an odd one to look at in comparison to the other Ys games, since it's a sidescroller, not overhead, and has an attack button. Who knows, if people like this Let's Play, I might do Ys I and/or Ys II Eternal, which are much more traditional.

I'm pretty sure the only reason I could enjoy it is that I played it emulated and abused save states without restraint. If I had played it the way it was intended, I would probably have exploded with frustration.

I loved Ys III when it came out on SuperNES, and one of the major reasons for this is that its generic anime story and cutscenes blew my 10 year old mind. This was one of my firsts tastes of Japanese design, dragging my a very dark parth.

It was a bit difficult, but it helped that you could level grind your way through a lot of the problems. I recall there was a grind point in the game where you basically just had to stick your sword in the air and birds would impale themselves on you until your levels maxed out.

There was, and it was early in the second dungeon.

Consequently, I breezed through the rest of the game up until the second last dungeon, when the game expects you to be that strong anyway, and I got demolished by the suddenly very, very strong monsters.

Whew, finally get the chance to start this whole thing. Well, sort. Still have annoying internet problems so I can't upload all my images at the moment, but tomorrow I should be able to, since I'll be able to leach off my college's bandwidth. In any case, this let's me get the boring intro stuff out of the way.

I decided to play the Sega Genesis version of Ys 3 both because I actually like the graphics better, the sprites are a little bigger, and the music is for the most part better. The SNES version is virtually the same except that the game is a little harder (at least, it was to me) and each of your magic rings make Adol a different color. So not too much different. The TG-16 version is supposed to be the best since it's the easiest and has the best music but I don't have that version, and it has voice acting. Terrible, terrible voice acting.

Now, without further adieu...



We find our hero Adol traveling with his love companion Dogi, after having saved the world previously with the whole returning Ys to the ground. On a bit of a tangent, Ys is a floating island that the people rose to the air once a bunch of monsters/demons took control of the ground, and that's why the series is called Ys, since the first two were about that island. So really, it was actually kind of neat how they titled Ys 3. Wanderers from Ys, clearly related to the same series, but doesn't really have anything to do with Ys*. Anyway, I digress...



And here we get to one of the first of the fun translation changes: Kenai. Thanks to this, we get our first clue as to where this whole games take place: Alaska. Another interesting little side note is that the countries of Ys are generally taken from real world locations, there are Romuns, Garmans, and the main continent is Europa. So I suppose Kenai isn't that far fetched... Nevertheless, since Adol has a lot of good luck with fortune tellers**, they decide to get their fortunes told to figure out what's going on in Dogi's hometown.



Well, crap, seems like an evil thing called "Demanicus***" is hanging about Kenai, and this means that we have something to slay. This makes Adol happy, since there's nothing he likes more than stabbing things and taking their precious XPs.



Of course, as they near Sarina, Dogi's hometown, they have to save someone. Contrary to Ys tradition, they actually have to save a man, and he mentions Elena, the quasi love interest for this Ys game. Too bad all the females in Ys don't realize that the only person for Adol is Dogi.



And here we finally are, in Sarina, with the in game engine, and this rather... odd conversation. It seems Dogi is a mite possessive...



As they traverse the town, they run into Elena, a childhood friend of Dogi, along with her brother Chester who has been hanging out at Valenstine castle, apparently too cool to hang out with the people of Sarina.

And that is all the introduction stuff that's really needed for Ys 3. The game disagrees however, as the introduction takes a good ten minutes with one of the two horrible songs in Ys 3. One thing you might have noticed is that despite having a sword to slay the wolf gnawing on the poor villager, in the screenshots Adol has no weaponry. We have to buy it, and thus continues the long tradition of Adol wandering the earth with no weaponry until he has to save the world. Sigh.

Next time: Gameplay! Finally!

I do want to apologize again for how slow this has been going, the update tomorrow should be more substantial as I actually finally get Adol into a dungeon.

*Ys VI and the remake of Ys 3 actually make this a bit more connected to the whole Ys thing which is kinda interesting I suppose.

**In Ys I the fortune teller who sets Adol on his quest dies since she helped him and all.

***Demanicus is one of those bad translation things, its name is actually Galbalan/Galbaran, which is important if you play Ys VI.

Heh, that's pretty much the way it was intended, near as I could tell. Every time I got passed an enemy unhurt, I'd practically save, since you can save anywhere.

I ended up gaining one level in one of the dungeons in my playthrough that made the rest of the game a breeze, until the second to last dungeon. That castle is a bitch if you don't save after every enemy. Luckily most of the bosses have tricks to make them really easy.

Oh man sick I just fired up Ys III like two days ago as well. I am going to enjoy this "not making it through the first dungeon ever" thing that is happening to me.

I love this game. I beat both the SNES and Genesis versions, which are like fraternal twins. Triplets, really, or more; The case/instruction art, graphics, music, dialogue and cinemas for all the ports are alternate versions of one another, in the way a lot of SNES/Genesis multiplatform games were then, but they're even more different than most. The Turbo-CD is the awful one, oddly. Music's great, of course, but the scrolling is stupid choppy.

Heh, so there was another delay, sorry about that. It was a mix of not having enough pictures (I still don't think I have quite enough and need to go back and get some more) and school. But I figured I can do a little bit of an update, and then add in things that I missed.

We left off finally getting control of Adol, and as every "how to play an RPG" thing says, the first thing we do is talk to townsfolk.



Aside from talking about Roy and giving us something to look out for should we ever have to go to the mine, they don't particularly say anything, and seem remarkably unconcerned about all the danger going on nearby. The next thing we do is buy weaponry. We have 1000 gold, which lets us outfit ourselves with the very basic, with enough money left over for an, err, harb.



Harbs (as I think they're spelled that way for the rest of the game) refill your life, and you're only allowed to have one in your inventory. They're pretty handy, mainly for boss fights, with one notable exception. Anyway, Adol continues going to the left of the screen and finally encounters plot.



The basic gist is the mine is under attack, and the mayor, for some reason, was in the mine, and is still trapped by monsters. Being the rather heroic chap that he is, Adol volunteers to go, and we finally hit our first dungeon.



In Ys 3, Adol has three basic attack moves that he can do: run and slash his sword, jump and slash (which ends in his sword pointed down, so you can stab things on the fall), and finally, the most useful, the crawl and stab. Examples of these will be shown pretty throughout.



And here is the first screen on the dungeon. You might notice that my health is slightly higher in the second screenshot (along with Adol in midslash, that's one of the three attacks). That's because I stayed there to gain a level, as it helps tremendously with the next screen.

First off, in these shots, the reason that I'm maxed out is I went back to get these screenshots, when I realized that I really didn't have enough for this dungeon, so these are a bit of a composite between what I did have, and then going back while I was at the last dungeon, I hope that doesn't cause too many problems.

The first shot is just more of the first little cavern part, where you fight little ant things, and the wasps, to kill the ants, you crawl and stab, and you stab upward (crap, there's four basic attacks) to kill the wasps. The next screen is why I decided to level. The blue ogre things deal a lot of damage (even at level two), but you can kill them by crouching and stabbing if you're at level two. If you're still first level, you don't kill them fast enough, and they deal a ton of damage, since there's no invincibility time.



We continue to the bottom of the shaft and take a left here. Mainly I just wanted to show off the background, which I think looks pretty neat.



And in this room is a door we can't go through, and more importantly the Power Ring. In Ys 3, instead of getting magic, you get rings, like in Ys 1, that do different things (though, essentially, they copy the Ys 1 rings). The Power Ring is really the only one you need, since it doubles your attack power (or at least increases it a lot), which means you can either kill bosses faster, or that you can actually damage them. You get the rest of the rings throughout the game, and they fool you into thinking they're useful, but the Power Ring is the only one that matters. Seriously.



When we take a right, we run into Chester, Elena's brother. He's the guy in blue. After we finish talking, a miner walks up the steps, and Chester argues with him, and leaves. Chester's a bit of a jackass, you see.



He tells us to go find a sword in the mine, so we climb back up the little area with the waterfall and the blue ogres, leveling in the meantime (sadly, not to max level, just to level three) and finally we meet our first boss.



Uh, I'll throw out the exciting conclusion in the next update, but I don't really have many pictures of Duran, since he went down, fast. His attacks are pretty simple, he shoots a fireball straight out, which you can crawl under, and then he attempts to drop swords on you. They pretty much separate from each other, and drop down, and deal a bit of damage. Really, the best way to beat him is to crawl, and stab his shins. You can probably beat him at level 2 with the Power Ring, but I prefer to be a little safer about it.

Pretty much the best way to play it is almost as a puzzler. Figure out how to get by each room without getting hurt, while also finding areas where it's easy to grind, and you'll be pretty much set. Each boss also has a way to kill them with minimal damage as well. One of the good things about Ys in general is that you can usually tell what level you need to be.

Yeah, I originally played the SNES version which I thought had the worst music (aside from a track or two), and the highest difficulty. Had the cleanest graphics though. I actually prefer the Genesis version, the scratchy music fits, the sprite's are a little bigger I think, and I think the difficulty's a little lower. I never played the Turbo-CD version, all I know about it is that it has some really terrible voice acting. When I get to the end, I'm definitely linking to a video of some of the ending dialogue in the Turbo-CD version just because it really is that bad.

I seem to recall that you couldn't hurt Duran until you were level 6.

Or at least it was like that in the SNES version.

I love the music in the Tigris cave.

That is all.

A rubber band over the attack button, a specific spot in the 2nd room of the first dungeon and leaving the SNES on overnight are all that's required to max your level before you even start the game...

Yeah, did this too when I was a kid (for some reason Ys was my 3rd SNES game, after FFXI and Mario World, I don't remember how I even heard of it).

I'm really looking forward to this let's play. I downloaded oath and spend a few days trying to get it to work on my PC back in 2006ish, but it never did.

I usually did that too. Or at least I did that to get to a high enough level to easily get to the bird part.

Oath was actually the second game I imported (the first being Ys Eternal 1/2), and one of the reasons I donated to Nightwolve (to get the beta translation). It works fine on my XP machine, though you have to change your language/regional settings to Japanese, which is kind of a pain.

It might have been, I seem to recall the SNES version being a lot harder. The Genesis version has the max level being 12, which is kind of nice.

Hey all, this is just a quick update to let everyone know that this is not dead. Grad school has been surprisingly more work than I previously expected, so I haven't been able to update this as much as I would like along with a couple image problems (mainly cropping my earlier ones) mean I don't update as often as I should. Nonetheless there should be an update tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest, as long as nothing comes up. Sorry about the delay.

Have you given up on your wandering?

Dude, grad school. He's most likely given up on eating at this point.

I believe in kaisel, though. I'm expecting a lets play narrated by someone just hovering at the edge of starvation to be quite interesting.

Destil pretty much has it at the moment, minus the starving bit. Lack of time has been the main problem at the moment. I haven't given up quite yet, actually Netbrian's Legacy of the Wizard LP has made me want to get back to this. School and work have just been rather time consuming, but ah... we'll see what happens. My plan at the moment is to at least finish the Ys 3 one, and see how long it takes me to get through Oath in Felghana (worst case scenario with the OiF one is that I play through on easy or something, though I don't want to do that).

There are a lot of LP that get started and then "put on hold 'til I'm less busy/something else" and then simply fade away. I get the grad school bit, but I try and occasionally bump these just to remind the initiator that there is, in fact, still interest.

Actually knowing that there are people still interested in this is actually helpful/motivational, and I know I slacked a lot on this. Current plan is to get an update after work today to finish up the first dungeon, and then try to find a schedule that works, either weekly or biweekly. So in about eight-nine hours there should be an update.