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Wolf

Ancient Nameless Hero
(He/him)
By all means, continue bumping the thread. Just, remember to do it off-center to avoid taking damage.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
By all means, continue bumping the thread. Just, remember to do it off-center to avoid taking damage.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................... lol
 

demi

(She/Her)
I played a bunch of Ys stuff like a decade ago, and amidst all my inbetweeness of games right now it has been in the resting in the back of my mind, awaiting my return. I think my order went something like Ark of Napishtim (Windows, Fan translation), Ys Chronicles I&II (Windows), Oath of Felghana (PSP), Ys VII (PSP) - I was thrilled to see former rival Geis as playable in VII, I loved that shit so much... And between all of the different styles, classic and old, each one was a pleasure to play (and especially listen to); I especially enjoyed the 2d sprites / 3d world thing goin' on the Windows releases of III & VI.

Honestly, all of them were an absolute blast, and this thread and certain twitter feeds are really amping me up to dive back in somewhere. I have a bad tendency to replay things I've already beaten instead of venture into new territory, but idk... maybe I should consider VIII? I recall its original release having some major issues, but it sounds like it's all good to go now? But Origins is on Switch also and I think sinking into a couch and jamming out to some 3d action sounds very nice...

Anyway, here's a song that struck me in one of my first Ys game experiences, I believe it's from Part II of Chronicles? It's a heartwarming tune that always makes me smile:

 

Wolf

Ancient Nameless Hero
(He/him)
The issues with Ys VIII were just with the PC version, as I recall. Not sure if that's your preferred/only method of playing it. I don't know if they're actually ironed out, though. I remember that the PC launch got delayed a bit because NIS couldn't sort it out. When they eventually did (by farming the work out to someone else), some players were reporting serious issues, while for others it was totally fine. I'd like to think it's been sorted out in the time since then, but I'm not sure.

There was also an issue with the translation, which read like something only slightly better than a machine translation, but that was fixed not long after launch.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
The technical issues were ironed out a while ago; they farmed out the fix to Durante of multiple Falcom PC ports (while XSeed was doing them) fame.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Yeah, I've definitely never beat Ys Seven before, because I would have remembered that last boss, fucking hell.

I can't stand when games make me randomly play as different party members, all I pretty much never used besides Adol, Dogi, and Aisha/Sigroon. The first half of the game kept taking them away! Why should I use them? Ugh. The first phase of the final boss is the worst by far - it can only be damaged after you take out one of it's arm/heads, which then exposes the core for a short time. So you wail on that for a while, then it regenerates the arm/heads and it attacks more often and faster. Meanwhile Dogi was the only one I'd trained, really, and he's slow as hell. This is where I spammed healing items, for the most part - it felt cheesy but the fight was cheap as hell and I don't regret it. It's second and third forms were pretty fun, and didn't feel like bullshit to me, though I would have been very upset had I died on them because I did not want to play that first phase again lol.

Story spoilers: how many creation myths does the Ys series have? lol you have the Eldeen gods, the Tree of Origins or whatever from VIII that governs evolution, the dragons of Altago which may only govern Altago but it's implied all life started there? Or something? I mean who cares about the story, right, but it's just weird to think about how many "gods" the Ys universe has lol.


Despite the last boss, I still enjoyed Seven quite a bit, like all the games in the series. I'm a little sad it's over, now, to be honest. It's a fantastic series - every single game is good. Yes, there are some I'd recommend over others, but honestly... you really can't go wrong with any of them. It's a very, very solid series.

Final ranking:

1. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
2. Ys: Origin
3. Ys: Oath in Felghana
4. Ys Seven
5. Ys VI
6. Ys: Memories of Celceta
7. Ys Book I
8. Ys Book II
9. Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand

And because it's this series, my favorite music tracks from each game (of the versions I played, I mean):

Ys Origin:


Ys I:


Ys II:


Oath in Felghana:


Memories of Celceta:


Ys V:


Ys VI:


Ys Seven:


Ys VIII:


(and because VIII is my favorite in the series, a bonus track I already linked upthread)


Incredible series. Can't wait for IX. I don't really recommend playing these in story order! It's not a bad thing to do, but I didn't really learn much from it lol. Probably better to play them in release order, substituting the remakes for the original versions when possible. Who cares though, the whole series is excellent.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
The big thing to take away from the wider series mythology is a sense of wonder, if nothing else, as it neatly captures the mystery cult nature of religion in antiquity. None of the deities are mutually exclusive, and the Eldeen are basically an extended Atlantis/Mu/Lemuria homage rather than actual divine figures.

The series' overarching plot (such as it is) is mostly hinting that there are a lot of aberrations with the "world" itself sealed or hidden away and Romn is uncovering and trying to exploit them for greater power, then the local divine figures tempt a certain red haired adventurer to seek out some ancient ruin or lost civilization linked to that aberration and let him act as he wants.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I suppose it reflects how our world has tons of creation myths, which is cool, but unlike real life, one man, seemingly in his teens and 20s, literally meets them all lol. I'm not mocking it, it's actually a fun way to explore a world (even if that was never really the goal of the series), it's just kinda amusing, really. Trying to wrap my head around all of it is a bit daunting, but then I really shouldn't be trying to in the first place.

I do kind of have a sense of wonder at all of it. Each game it's like, what is the new god I'm going to meet this time? It's neat.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Just think of the divine war that will inevitably happen once Adol croaks and all of the blue-haired goddess figures he's won the hearts of fight to see who gets to welcome his soul to their afterlife. Only for Adol to choose reincarnation instead because there's probably still more to see in the wider world.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
Just got through my first raid in Ys VIII. To be honest, it seems like busywork and not really what I’m playing the game for. It also gave me a bunch of stats for what all the NPCs were doing but I have no apparent way to influence them? It does say in the tutorial that they’re mostly optional so maybe I’ll just ignore them. Or my completionist tendencies will kick in and I’ll do them all.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I'd say ignore them when you can. They felt like busywork to me too and are mostly optional (there's a few story mandated ones). I ignored them whenever I could and still loved the game.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
The dungeon in Ys I is just some temple. From looking around a little, it seems the Windows remake (Ys Eternal) is where it started being called Salmon/Solomon Shrine. Though it is right next to where Ys took off into the sky, the actual Solomon Shrine sits at the zenith of Ys, so it wouldn't be part of the same structure.

So I bought the Ys Art Book from around the time Celceta came out because it looked cool, but found this while skimming it:

QYejr2h.jpg


But yeah, this is a total retcon. Still, interesting, I thought.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
Ys VIII’s sudden detour into murder mystery was unexpected. Hopefully Carlan stays gone. I can’t remember if the doctor’s surname was stated before the reveal - a bit of a clue for Trails players there, though it was pretty clear by process of elimination who it would be.

Anyway, that got me into chapter two. What’s up with these clothes?
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Ys VIII’s sudden detour into murder mystery was unexpected. Hopefully Carlan stays gone. I can’t remember if the doctor’s surname was stated before the reveal - a bit of a clue for Trails players there, though it was pretty clear by process of elimination who it would be.

I wondered if that was a Trails reference - though I told myself it wasn't, and didn't suspect him until the game introduced another doctor character (or medical student, whatever) before the reveal of the murderer. That's when I knew it was Weissman. Seemed a bit too convenient to introduce a replacement doctor character at that point.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
I don’t think there was anyone else it could have been, aside from a previously undiscovered castaway. The captain said he was attacked by a man, and every other male character (aside from the kid who I think is an optional recruit) was either attacked or present with Adol during an off-screen attack. I guess it could have been Dogi, but they’d have to work hard to reconcile that with the rest of the series.
 

Alixsar

The Shogun of Harlem
(He/him)
Apparently Ys IX is coming stateside next year and I somehow didn't notice till today! Or if I did, I forgot. Weirdly, what made me think to look it up was seeing the Tales Of games on sale on Steam and being like "oh hey, there's a semi-obscure JRPG series I like way more than this one".

Anyway, IX is coming and I still haven't beaten Ys VIII. VIII is great (ha) but it and VII had the same problem; they're REALLLLLYYYYYYY long, when the main thing I like about all the Ys games prior to those two is that they're maybe like 20 hours at the absolute most. VII and VIII are, like, at least double the length of most Ys games...no, probably triple?! Or more? I think my last run of VI was like sub-10 hours.

I just glanced at my Steam play times, and in the amount of time I've put into VIII since it first released (I've been playing it off and on since it came out on PS4) I could've replayed Origin, VI, AND Felghana and STILL HAD TIME LEFT OVER. And I'm nowhere near done with VIII, either! It's wild. Like VIII is good, but it's not really what I want from Ys. I like Ys cuz it's bite sized and swift. I never finished VII for the same reason.

Anyway, my question is, how long is Celceta? I bought it on a Steam sale forever ago and never even started it. I definitely wanna wrap VIII up first, but if I can squeeze getting Celceta done before IX drops too, that might be nice...

(Please say like 25 hours, that would IDEAL)

Also, Falcom Sound Team is on Spotify and they have, like, EVERY ALBUM that's ever been released. It's wild.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Celceta's about the same length as Seven? So around 20-30 depending on how completionist you get.

The Youtube channel for Falcom Sound Team's also got a lot of the more obscure stuff that didn't make it onto Spotify for whatever reason too.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I beat Celceta a month ago in about 18 hours, wasn't completionist, though I did get most of the map done and did several sidequests.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I don't usually care for games longer than 20-30 hours these days (and usually much less), but Ys VIII was definitely one where I didn't really feel it. I just hope the quality bar is as high for Ys IX.

Lemme check my playtime on Celceta... looks like my last save before the end was 22.5 hours, which would put me at 23-ish total. Pretty good amount of side quests and 98.6% map coverage.
 

Mommi

Miss or be made.
(She/Her)
I started Wanderer from Ys, and it's rough. My brother and I rented it as kids, but I had to go to a sleepover so I only saw his first forays into the mine. When I got back late the next morning he said he already beat it and returned.

Playing it now I strongly suspect he was lying.
 

Kishi

Little Waves
(They/Them)
Staff member
Moderator
Are you by chance playing the SNES port? The game is rough no matter what, but that version (by Tonkin House) has some infamously messed-up hitboxes on top of everything else.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Yeah, Genesis or PC Engine CD is the way to go there. The SNES version has some pretty terrible instrument choices for the soundtrack, too.

I wasn't a huge fan of even the PC Engine one, though. @Kishi is right, it's quite rough.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Huh. Maybe that's why I hated Ys III - I played the SNES cart. Maybe I'll give the Turbo version a shot one of these days.
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
The game may be rough but I kinda love that somebody decided that the way to go with the (original) third Ys game was something more akin to Xanadu instead of another top-down title.
 

Kishi

Little Waves
(They/Them)
Staff member
Moderator
The inspiration was specifically Zelda II, in fact.

I recommend the original PC88 version to anyone who has the means to play it. The scenery Falcom's artists managed to depict with just eight colors remains impressive to this day, as does the parallax scrolling.


ysiii-st1scenea.gif



I recall the X68000 conversion has the difficulty raised way up, and the Mega Drive version, being kind of a port of a port, may have inherited that. Not sure how the PC Engine version came out, actually.
 

Alixsar

The Shogun of Harlem
(He/him)
I will always go to bat for the Genesis version of Ys III because it's my favorite version of the OST (yes I know I'm weird), but honestly what you probably wanna do is play Oath in Felghana instead? Any Ys III is good Ys III...uh, except the SNES. FWIW the PC88 version literally gives me a headache, so take that for whatever it's worth. Kishi is right though that game looks wild for a PC88 game.

Also, okay thank goodness re: Celceta. I don't remember Seven being that short but maybe that's just cuz I wasn't really into it and it felt like it dragged on forever. I seem to remember the dialogue driving me crazy and not having the option to speed up the text speed? I dunno, it's been a decade
 
ysIII on snes has the unfortunate 30 min enter cave - kill first screen - exit cave gameplay loop until you're level 6 or so. It sits in the uncomfortable ground between side scrolling action and rpg that usually results in an action rpg.

I still like it though and it's not as if grinding is uncommon in rpgs of the time. It's still insane towards the end when you can't up HP anymore, but when you get over the initial frustration (it's a guaranteed frustration too. First dozen times i tried to start the game I wondered if it was supposed to be like it was or just broken.. it's both) it's still pretty enjoyable
 
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Mommi

Miss or be made.
(She/Her)
Yeah, the opening grind was no sweat, the moment to moment takes a lot of getting used to, much like Book I & II. Being able to save anywhere helps a lot.

I have beat Oath in Felghana before, so it's fun to compare the locations.
 
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