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Ys Origin is the first game in the series that doesn't star, or even involve, Adol Christin (although he is technically a hidden character.) In fact, it takes place hundreds of years prior to any of the previous Ys games, not long after the kingdom of Ys was launched into the sky and elaborates on the backstory presented in the other games, specifically the first two. The goddesses, Feena and Reah, have disappeared, and a search party is sent to the ground to discover what has become of them. What they find is a broken, desolate land, barely fit for humans. Ys Origin runs off the same engine as Ys VI and Oath in Felghana, so it looks and plays almost identically. There are a total of three different playable characters, each with different skills, although you can only choose two at the beginning: Characters Yunica Tovah The grand-daughter of one of the six priests of Ys, she is part of a search party to discover what happened to the goddesses. She plays pretty much like Adol from Oath in Felghana, right down to similar magic spells. Her main weapon is a small axe, although she gets a large sword later on. Hugo Fact The ancestor of the evil Dark Fact, Hugo is a powerful magician with projectile based spells. He controls two floating orbs that effectively triple his firepower. He also has a variety of shields at his control. Playing as Hugo almost turns the game into a run-and-gun shoot-em-up, although unfortunately he can't strafe. The Claw Otherwise known as (minor spoiler) Thor Fact, The Claw has...well, two very large claws. He seems to be evil - you'll fight him a few times during the course of the regular game - but becomes playable after clearing everything with Yunica and Hugo. He plays much like Yunica, although with different special abilities, including a cool speed dash and a flaming shoryuken. Dalles If you've played Ys II to the end, you're probably familiar with Dalles/Dulles, Darm's right hand man. Except he's the main bad guy this time around, aiming to use the power of the goddesses for his own nefarious purposes. For the extremely small amount of people that remember the plotline to the original Ys, some of those character names should sound familiar. There are other vague references to other installments, including a character named Kishgal, who shares the name of a city found in Ys VI. Both of the main characters' quests begins with them talking with a Roda Tree. There's a heavier emphasis on plot this time around, which is unfortunately lost on non-Japanese speakers, which means lots of skipping through numerous dialogue screens. The whole game takes place in Darm Tower, which should again sound familiar, and it's here that Ys Origin's weaknesses first show through. Roughly two-thirds of the first Ys game took place in Darm Tower, and you fight through it again in the PC Engine version of Ys IV - it's already extremely played out. But Falcom thought it'd be a great setting, yet again. For the most part, the whole point of the game is simply to crawl from the bottom floor to the top. You can transport back and forth easily between floors - your base is at the floor of the tower, and you'll occasionally need to do some backtracking - but the whole game has a suffocating feel compared to the other games, which at least gave the appearance of an open world. More concerting are the actual levels themselves - they're astoundingly dull. The designs themselves aren't really any worse than the other games, but they're all retreads of your usual RPG cliches. The first area is a fairly boring, non descript dungeon. The second area is a water shrine, where the most exciting thing you can do is swim. The third area is a fire shrine. The fourth area is full of sand. There's rarely any variation in the textures, and outside of a few cool areas later on, the whole game just feels incredibly drab. The repetitive feel is further stresses by the rather blase soundtrack, which is surprisingly mediocre for a Falcom game. The main theme, played during the intro anime and near the end, is just what you'd expect from an Ys game. But otherwise, pretty much anything that isn't a boss theme is generally very average. Keeping with the nostalgia theme, there are a handful of remixed songs from the first two Ys games, but they range from "boring" to "downright offensive". Additionally, the main game is relatively short. Yunica and Hugo plow through identical levels, but their story scenes are completely different. Once you beat the game with them, you unlock the third character, The Claw, who also has a unique story mode - so, you need to beat the game for a third time in order to fully grasp the plot. Given how lazy the design already is, asking that the player go through the same game three different times is asking a bit much. Even though they skimped on a majority of the game, Ys Origin does not disappoint when it comes to boss fights, which still look amazing. Many of them are homages to past Ys bosses, although they've all been drastically reworked. The only problem is that these scenes are much more intensive than the rest of the game, which will cause crappier PCs choke on them. Players with decent gaming rigs shouldn't have any issues. While the core gameplay is on the level of its predecessor, ultimately Ys Origin feels like a cheap cash-in overall, an intermediary game to satisfy fans in between releases. Here's hoping Falcom puts a bit more effort into the next installment. Much like Xanadu Next, Falcom released a patch that adds several new things to the game, including Napishtim and Felghana versions of Adol for use in the Time Attack mode, extra difficulty settings, alternate versions of the other characters with slightly different moves, a hidden boss, and a new outfit for Yunica. While this is included in later shipments, the patch is so big that it needs to be applied by ordering a CD straight from Falcom. MP3s Genesis Beyond the Beginning Scars of the Divine Wing Silent Desert

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American LE Cover

Japanese Cover

Ys Seven

After taking a detour with Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin, Falcom finally returned to the ongoing story of Adol with Ys Seven in 2009. Like most of his adventures, it begins at sea, as our heroes land in the country of Altago, which is the equivalent of Carthage. The land is being ravaged by numerous pestilences - disease, earthquakes, monsters - and Adol is, naturally, the chosen one to explore the land and discover the five dragons that can set things right. Things go amiss somewhere along the line, as Adol and company ends up on the wrong side of the law, as he fights against those whom he is trying to save. Ys Origin introduced multiple characters, but Ys Seven goes several steps further by expanding the roster significantly. This is the first game (outside of the Japan-only mobile games) where you can actually play as Dogi, which long time fans should enjoy. Geis from Ys VI also makes an appearance, and while he's antagonistic at first, he later joins the group and guides your party through the rest of the journey. The rest of the characters, however, are new. Due to the multiple party members, the ability to use healing items during boss battles (which was present in Ys VI but removed from Felghana and Origin), and a function to save practically anywhere, it's also quite a bit easier than previous outings, although there are various difficulty levels to provide more of a challenge. Characters Tia A young girl who takes care of the people in the slums. She adopts a young orphaned mute girl named Maya. Her blue hair suggests there is something more to her, but it's probably not what most people would expect. Scias The Dragon Knights of Altago don't take too kindly to Adol and Dogi, the country itself wary of Romun spies. Scias, on the other hand, is much more reasonable, and lends a hand when necessary. Aisha This bow-wielding young girl wishes to help Adol and Dogi for mysterious reasons. She's actually the princess of the kingdom, and does a really bad job of hiding this fact. Sigaroon Aisha's personal bodyguard, Sigaroon inherits her skills whenever she isn't around. Elk Tee grandson of the ruler of Shannoa Village, hidden deep in the forest. He seems like a bit of a brat, but he's handy with his unique bladed weapon. Mustafa The chief of Segram Village, out in the middle of the desert. He wields a hammer and is a heavy fighter, like Dogi. Cruxie Mustafa's sister. She suffers from the Iskan fever at the beginning of the game, but later gets better and shows off her fighting skills. Spelled "Crshe" according to the official Japanese documentation, but rendered as "Cruxie" by the XSeed localization team. It's pronounced "Croo-she-eh". Mishera This blind priestess is head of the Kylosian village. She wields magic projectile attacks. After publishing Ys Origin, Falcom found substantial success with the Playstation Portable. While many of their releases were ports or remakes of their back library, Ys Seven represents their first original title for the platform, and an exclusive one at that. When it was originally announced, they mentioned a PC release, perhaps to please long time fans, although that seems to have fallen off the radar. It's not really a huge deal, though - the PC Ys games weren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology, and it doesn't really lose much visual fidelity on the translation to the small screen. It does run on a totally new engine, using gameplay systems significantly changed from the trio of VI/Felghana/Origin. The characters are now polygonal as opposed to sprites, although they look significantly better than the models used in the PS2 version of Ys VI. The basic fighting works and feels quite similar. Rather than magic, each character has a variety of skills, four of which can be equipped at a time and mapped to any of the face buttons. These attacks use SP, which is gained by killing enemies. Similar to some of the Final Fantasy games, each weapon has an innate skill which you can use when it's equipped. Repeated use will level it up, and allow the character to use that skill even without the weapon. Similar to the Burst functions from the previous games, there's another meter which will let you pull off a super move when it's fully charged up. Your entire party shares the same SP and Burst meter, but they each have their own individual hit points. More significantly, jump button has been replaced with a dash roll. While this means the platforming elements are completely gone, it adds an extra layer of depth to the combat. Enemy attacks are explicitly telegraphed - they blink before striking - making the combat feel a bit less button mashy. There's also a block button, as well as gFlash Guardh maneuver, executed by hitting R in the middle of a block. In addition to negating the damage, this will slightly refill both your SP and Burst meters, plus will grant you guaranteed critical hits for a few attacks. If you miss time the counter, though, you'll take extra damage. The scope of the game has also been drastically expanded. The previous games have been fairly compact compared to typical JRPGs, with minimal equipment and journeys that last maybe ten or fifteen hours at max. Ys Seven now has dozens of different weapons, numerous skills, and substantially longer quest that lasts twenty hours or more. It's much more loot based, as enemies will drop various knick knacks, which can either be sold or used to forge new equipment. There are also several subquests to obtain from villagers to get even more items. The overworld is also substantially larger than any previous Ys game too. While all of this up the gRPGh elements in Ys' action-RPG gameplay, in the end it all seems somewhat superfluous. There are really only three types of characters - light attacks, heavy attacks and projectiles, with each character taking on one of those roles. (Adol can equip various weapons to fulfill any of these.) Some enemies are susceptible to different types of attacks, which requires that you keep them in rotation, but most of the characters of that type don't play much different from each other. Dogi is similar to Mustafa, Mishera is similar to Aisha, and two characters are literally identical, to replace other members that have the party. While most have different skills, functionally they're not all that different from each other, just attacks that can inflict some extra damage. None of this is a big deal, but it does effect the story and the overall adventure. The plots of the previous Ys games have rarely been great, but at least they were brief. Ys Seven is much more verbose, and much of the story is either boring or predictable. It is reasonable self-aware and does either acknowledge or subvert Ys trops - Dogi, for example, acknowledges how lucky it is that their ship safely made it to port in the beginning of the game, given Adol's luck with boats - but except for a few twists it's really not enough. Thankfully you can fast forward through any cutscene. There are numerous warp points on the overworld, which makes travel easier, but at the halfway point, you need to revisit all of the locations you've been to before, and conveniently, said warp points are disabled. Backtracking in a game like Metroid because you've obtained new skills to find new paths and secret. The world of Ys Seven is not so rich, resulting on the second half becoming somewhat tedious. While most of the extra stuff is redundant and the game drags on longer than it needs to, Ys Seven is still a fantastic game. The graphics are decent for a PSP game and the music is easily the best the series has heard since its PC Engine days. It's even faster paced thanks to the dash button, and the combat is a bit deeper too. It also marked the first game in Falcom's partnership with XSeed, having been published in English in 2010. The limited edition release comes with a soundtrack CD and an artbook with work from Ys Seven, Ys: The Oath in Felghana and Ys Chronicles.

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