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The third Ys game takes a cue from Zelda 2 and flings the series in a side scrolling perspective. As a result, many fans regard it with quite a bit of disdain (again, much like Zelda 2.) Taking place a few years after the first two Ys games, Adol and Dogi travel to the town of Redmont, where evil happenings are going on. All of this is somehow related to the cold-hearted childhood friend Elena and her malicious brother Chester (surely the best-named evil doer in video game history.) Naturally, it's up to Adol to investigate the conspiracy, none of which have anything to do with the land of Ys.
Characters
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Dogi
A minor character in the first game - the thief that saves Adol from the dungeon, and named Colin in the US TG-16 release - becomes a major character here, as he leads you to his
home town of Redmond. Where, naturally, trouble is a-brewin. His role in all of the Ys games is pretty much just to break through stone walls. This is useful, because he ends up saving Adol in the process.
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Elena
Elena is kind of a cold-hearted bitch at first, but after you try to save her brother Chester from the clutches of evil, she warms up.
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Chester
Truly a Great Villain in Video Game History, Chester aspires to be a major bad ass by summoning the power of the
evil Demanicus (or Galbadan, depending what version you're playing.) His voice actor for the English Ys III is
terribly amazing.
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The side scrolling venue is a little awkward at first, especially when attacking in midair, but Adol swings his sword like a buzzsaw and the joy of dashing back and forth, cutting through enemies to steal their luscious experience, is still maintained. Like the other games, you'll spend a lot of time power leveling, because skill isn't something that will win you battles. There's no magic, but the rings are back for a variety of effects (higher offense, higher defense, slow down time, etc.), although you can only use them for a limited amount of time.
There are still some major problems. The maze-like designs of the previous Ys games are entirely gone. Most of the "dungeons" are straight forward paths, with an occasional rewarding branch to explore. And the boss fights are made unnecessarily frustrating due to the damage they deal, combined with the overall shortness of Adol's weapon.
Despite these issues, and the distance Ys III places itself from the rest of the series, it's still almost just a fun. The graphics are fairly mediocre, but there's some fairly keen multiplane scrolling, which was a technological marvel back at the time. It doesn't hurt that Ys III not only has the most amazing soundtracks of the series.
The Famicom version has the worst graphics and sound of any of the ports, but otherwise plays reasonably well. It's also quite difficult. The PC88 (the original) and MSX versions are a step up, but per usual standards for the computer systems, the scrolling is pretty choppy. The X68000 version is the best of the home computer versions, offering graphics comparable to the console versions. However, the MIDI synth is a little bit hard on the ears when stacked up against the PC88 version. Surprisingly, all three 16-bit consoles versions actually made to America. The Genesis version came out courtesy of Renovation/Telenet, the SNES was brought out by Sammy, and Hudson put out the TG-16 CD version.
The TG-16 version is considered by many to be the definitive edition, primarily due to the amazing CD soundtrack.
Seriously, if you have absolutely no intention of playing this game at all, track down the CD just for the music,
it's worth it in extraordinary magnitudes. There's also a few intros - one, showing some sort of beefy
hero of legend with long hair and the other, more traditional anime style intro, with Adol and Dogi sharing a
variety of adventures. There's also some terribly amusing voice acting throughout the game. As for the game
itself - unfortunately, the Turbografx can't seem to handle the multiplane backgrounds very well, so a lot of
the scrolling is quite choppy, even moreso than the original TG16 title. It doesn't ruin the game, but it is a bit distracting. This is also the
easiest of the three 16-bit titles, with weaker enemies, easier leveling and less insane boss fights. Oddly enough, the
English translation names have been changed - Redmont is now Sarina, Ilburn is now Alcaino, and there are plenty of other differences. Weird.
My personal favorite of the 16-bit ports is the Genesis edition. The colors have been downgraded a bit, but the game actually runs smoothly,
which already puts it above the TG16 version. The music obviously isn't quite as good, but for a Genesis, it makes the transition amazingly well. The intro is also different, showing how Adol and Dogi decided to start their adventure. It also maintains the bizarre altered names from the TG16 release.
The SNES version has a similar intro to the Genesis version, but quite a bit condensed, with entirely different artwork and some totally unnecessary Mode 7. It also offers the cleanest graphics of the three. Unfortunately, the music ends up pretty lousy during the conversion process, with totally abrasive sound samples - considering the SNES' awesome sound chip, this is also a mystery. The enemies are also nasty difficult, making this version a bit more irritating. It is also the only version to keep the original Japanese names intact.
The PS2 version, released in Japan in 2005 (fifteen years after Ys III initially came out) by Taito, gives a big overhaul to the game to make it comparable to the Eternal games. The graphics have been given a major overhaul obviously, with extremely well animated, high res sprites, hand drawn backgrounds, and characters portraits for all of the major characters, including
the shopkeepers. Most of the dialogue is fully voiced, including Adol's. The mechanics have been given an overhaul - bad guys are stunned when you hit them and Adol has a bit of invicibility time when hurt, so say goodbye to those irritating insta-kills from before. Unfortunately, you can't hold down the attack button anymore
and buzzsaw your way through bad guys, although you have a pretty cool four hit slashing
combos.
For all of the positives, however, there are some cryptic changes. While the game overall feels less broken than all of the other versions, hitting bad guys in midair is still difficult, and the difficulty is very unbalanced. On the Normal setting, almost all of the bosses are pansies. There are other weird issues too - the enemy life gauge has been removed, save for boss battles. Most of the levels
don't scroll - instead, they fade in and out as you move from screen to screen. As a result, a lot of the cool multiplane scrolling is missing. So are a lot of the background details. Remember those awesome waterfalls in the Tigre Mines? Gone. So is the Volcano in the Ilburn Ruins. The music is mid-quality synth, and while it's not nearly as good as the Turbografx CD arrangements, they're better than any of the other versions, even if they are a little uninspired. But the biggest problem is that, other than fixing the controls, they didn't
do much to the actual structure. The stages are still linear and dull, and the whole game can still be beaten in three hours. You would think that the wisdom of hindsight would
provoke the designers Taito to severely overhaul the game, but they didn't. As a result,
only people that really loved Ys III in the first place could really dig this version. Only a few months after the PS2 release, Falcom published their own remake of Ys III, dubbed "The Oath in Felghana". Since it uses the Ys VI engine, the gameplay is entirely different - you can read about it later in the article.
MP3s
Be Careful - PC88
Be Careful - X68000
Be Careful - Genesis
Be Careful - SNES
Be Careful - PS2
Be Careful - TG16 CD
Be Careful - Oath in Felghana (PC)
A Searing Struggle - TG16 CD
Ilbern Ruins - TG16 CD
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Ys III (TG-16)
Ys III (TG-16)
Ys III (TG-16)
Ys III (TG-16)
Ys III (TG-16)
Ys III (Genesis)
Ys III (MSX)
Ys III (PS2)
Ys III (PS2)
Ys III (PS2)
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