RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

The Ys (pronounced like the word ‘ease’) series has had a long and successful career in Japan with the seventh numbered entry announced, several remakes, and at least two spin-off games. Until recently, the only Ys titles ever translated for North American release were 3 and 6. Atlus decided to change all that by bringing over Legacy of Ys: Books I & II, a DS remake of the first two games.

Before one can really begin to understand the plot, one might want to consider the actual history of the game itself. Though there are actually two games on the cart, the story was intended to be one game. A timeline in the manual details the way the game was broken up into two pieces. Because the second game had more development time, it is significantly more fleshed out in nearly every way. The result is that the first game ends up feeling almost like a demo of the whole game with several key features disabled.

The game begins with Adol, the redheaded swordsman and series protagonist, washing up on a beach. This would be a shocking occurrence for most any small town, but this island has been surrounded by a raging tempest called the Veil of Storms, which has prevented anyone from traveling to or from the island. Adol is the first person to pass through the dreaded wall, and after recovering, he decides to investigate the cause and in so doing, unravel the secrets of the twin goddesses and the ancient civilization of Ys.

Both games take place in a 3/4ths view similar to that found in games like The Legend of Zelda, both when fighting and talking to NPCs. As such, the games are almost entirely combat, since monsters are pretty much everywhere but towns. The one thing that differentiates Ys from games like Zelda is that the fighting is very basic. There are no secondary weapons, and there is only one type of sword strike, regardless of the equipped sword. This makes combat very boring, especially in Book I, which lacks magic. Every monster, including the bosses, is killed by running into it and stabbing it with your very short-ranged sword.

Book II adds magic, but only one of the spells is used to attack. Even though the fire spell can be charged and gains some homing abilities later, magic doesn’t really add much variety to combat. Magic points quickly regenerate, so the fire spell simply replaces your sword for attacking since it can hit enemies further away. What makes things worse is that the fire spell is extremely overpowered. Nearly every regular monster can be killed in one charged fiery blast, whereas it would take several sword slashes to do the job.

The extra distance that magic attacks affords you can be pretty important. Unlike most games, Adol gets no immunity after being hit. If you accidentally run into a monster, you can be damaged several times in the blink of an eye. In fact, this is about the only way to be killed aside from just being slowly worn down. Unfortunately, there is no warning when you are low on health, so death often comes at a surprise unless you take time to heal up after being attacked. Both games have ample healing items and a piece of equipment to regain hit points by standing still.

One improvement over the most recent Ys game to come to North America, Ark of Napishtim, is that enemies respawn without forcing you to leave the screen. Neither game requires much grinding except in the beginning to afford equipment, but it definitely speeds things up. It also means that if you do need to grind a bit for a particularly hard boss fight, you will not need to spend much time doing so. All in all, there are probably fewer than twenty minutes of necessary grinding between both games. Most boss battles can be finished just by killing everything you happen to run into along the way.

Speaking of boss battles, that is where the game truly shines. Each boss is fought in a rectangular room, and most are huge compared to Adol, making the fights seem much more epic than regular monsters that you will have to slay. Most bosses aren’t exactly hard, but some of them, especially in Book II, will require some strategy to defeat. They are the one part of the combat that is actually difficult. Some of the harder fights come with a certain sense of satisfaction after you learn how to flawlessly win them since it will take a fair bit of pattern recognition to know when you can strike without being flattened. For those that find the bosses too hard, the game has several difficulty levels, so even novices should be able to manage the fights on the easiest level.

Though bosses offer some difficulty, the challenge is mitigated by the fact that, aside from during boss fights, you can save anywhere and at any time as much as you like. Boss battles are always marked by large doors, so most players will save before entering. It is also somewhat wise to save at regular intervals considering that you can be instantly killed by accidentally bumping into a monster for too long. One thing that should be mentioned about the save and load screens is that they look identical, so care must be taken when trying to save so as not to accidentally load instead.

You could almost say that the game is extremely easy, but there is one thing that artificially makes the game harder. Both games have a long list of items that can be collected, and several are necessary to finish the game. NPCs give some hints to help you figure out some of the puzzles, but there are still a few things that are pretty obscure. One particularly hard puzzle is in the last dungeon of the first game. An item found within has to be used somewhere, but there are no clues as to where. As it turns out, there is a very specific spot that has no distinguishing marks where it must be used. This is a reminder that the original game came out in a bygone era when puzzles like this were used to promote the sale of strategy guides to finish them. One could certainly use trial and error to solve puzzles, but most will probably resort to trial and GameFAQs instead.

Graphically, the game fares pretty well. The battle graphics are nothing to write home about for the most part, but they are certainly sufficient. The sprites used for bosses kick things up a notch, and conversations with important NPCs use high-resolution sprites that are very detailed and pretty. What is even better is that both games start off with a lengthy anime intro that is simply gorgeous and really shows off what can be done on the handheld. For some reason, most DS games neglect the fact that there are two very nice looking LCD screens on which to display pre-rendered video. Legacy of Ys: Books I & II follows in the footsteps of games like Final Fantasy VII to showcase that a little FMV can make a game more memorable.

The Ys series is known for having excellent music, and Legacy of Ys does not disappoint. All of tracks are well done, and none get too repetitive by the end of either game. This makes that fact that every launch copy comes with a free soundtrack all the more appealing. In the end, it’s one of the best aspects of the two games.

Legacy of Ys also attempts to make use of the touch screen by having two control methods. You can move with the stylus or use the buttons in a more traditional style. The stylus method is an interesting addition, but the game seems to handle best with standard controls. One nice touch is that players that go the stylus route can choose between left or right handed controls, so southpaws won’t feel left out.

Neither game includes a clock, but Book I will take about four to six hours to complete. Book II will last significantly longer at ten to fifteen. Not only is the second game longer, but the plot is better developed, and the level cap is higher. As mentioned before, Book II is where the meat of the game is, but that doesn’t mean that you should start with it. The second game picks up exactly where the first one leaves off except for one tiny detail. When the final boss falls at the end of Book I, Adol will almost certainly have 255 HP and all the best equipment. When the second game begins, he’s suddenly back to level one and devoid of equipment. It may be a different game, but considering the circumstances, it makes zero sense, even if it is common to RPGs as a whole. Waking up the next day to find all your equipment missing and your level dropped should be left to Metroid.

Though there are certainly some issues with the game, the final package is still somehow better than the sum of its parts, mainly due to Book II picking up a lot of the slack. Despite all the simplicity of the battle system and the randomness of some of the puzzles, the two games make for a pretty good package. It’s not going to be for everyone, but if you enjoyed Ark of Napishtim, this is definitely worth picking up. Even if you’ve never played an Ys game, fans of action RPGs will still find enough between the two games to be satisfied.