Spin-offs

Ys Strategy (イース・ストラテジー) - Nintendo DS (2006)

Japanese Cover

Ys Strategy

Ys Strategy

No one really asked for this, but here it is - a real time strategy game in the Ys universe. It sort of makes sense - the genre isn't exactly popular in Japan, so what better way to hook gamers than with a semi-popular franchise? The story focuses on a young, red haired swordsmen named Abel Renford, who allies himself with the Esteria kingdom. Joining forces with Princess Rione, it's up to your army to defend the neighboring lands from the invading Romun Empire. The world of Ys always had a rich storyline, so seeing it expanded is interesting. You'll meet characters from Xandria and Afroca from Ys V as well. For the most part, the game is exactly like Warcraft. You command peasants to harvest three resources (food, wood, and Cleria, the fancy word for ore), build up your town, start producing soldiers, and then eventually move in for attack. There's actually a reasonable amount of depth, including three primary food soldiers (swordsmen, archers and spearmen), magicians, monsters and hero characters, as well as the ability to upgrade structure and abilities. The bottom screen is where the action takes place, and the entire game is controlled with the stylus. The upper screen shows a map and various unit information. There are multiplayer options for up to four players, although each person needs their own copy of the game, and there isn't much in the way of customization options. The only problem is that it's slow. REALLY slow. Peasants shuffle about their chores. Soldiers meander across the battlefield. Scrolling is painful - the only way to move the viewpoint efficiently is by click L to bring the map to the lower screen, touching the destination, then switching back to command your characters. The action grows even choppier when its has lots of characters on the screen. Additionally, trying to give out orders in the chaos of battle is a nightmare, as it's extremely difficult to pick out individual units. There's also an option to manually take control of hero characters and move them around with the d-pad, but it's so clunky that you shouldn't really bother. The storyline unfolds with incredibly long, boring, and unskippable cutscenes. There's nothing about this game that isn't extraordinarily sluggish. The visuals are pretty awful, with tiny, undetailed characters and boring landscapes. The new art style isn't too bad, but outside of the small character portraits and tiny art gallery, they don't add much. The music is closer to Fire Emblem than traditional Ys, and relies mostly on the same few orchestral and electric guitar samples for practically all of the songs. There are a few good tracks, but the music stretched way too thin (there are over seventy songs listed on the sound test.) Overall, Ys Strategy isn't entirely unplayable, and it's nice to see a real time strategy game on the DS. But prepare to have a LOT of patience if you expect to get anything out of it. An English version was released in Europe, but it never made it to North America, for good reason. MP3s Abel the Hero Hopeful Steps

Ys Strategy Ys Strategy Ys Strategy

Ys: The Call of Solum (イースオンライン) - PC (2008)

Ys: The Call of Solum

Ys: The Call of Solum

Ys: The Call of Solum

It seems like taking various Japanese properties and turning them into MMORPGs has become popular. Other than the obvious Final Fantasy XI, it happened with Shin Megami Tensei, Kunio-kun, and even Falcom's Sorcerian, so it makes sense that Ys would be next up in line. Developed by CJ Internet Studio, a Korean development team, Ys Online, or as it's officialy known as, Ys: The Call of Solum, brings Falcom's world to life for fans around the world to enjoy. As of current, it's only available in Japan, and under beta testing in Europe, published by Key to Play. The thing is, there are so many MMORPGs out there - how is Call to Solum different, and how does it link in with the regular series? It's always been about fast paced action, and especially in the later installments, arcade-like reflexes. Like most of its genre, fighting just involves on click, click, clicking away. Similarly, Ys is usually known for its high intensity music - here, there are a couple of familiar themes in the background, but most if it is silent, or at least atmospheric. Instead, Call of Solum brings in a lot of the world and lore from the previous games. There are three playable races - Eresians, or humans; Afrocans, beast warriors from the land in Ys V; and the dimunative Kimo, which like more like an elvish evolution of the Tarutaru from FFXI. You can also pick the gender too - naturally, the default character for Eresian males have red hair, making them look much like Adol. Here, you're fighting against enemies and creatures inhabiting the Romun empire. The beta only shows a handful of locations loosely related to the Ys world. This isn't a shallow knockoff game - there are tons of skills to use in combat, even though there aren't many races, and the opening tutorial takes at least twenty minutes, before you're given the freedom to explore the land, roam dungeons, and hunt from treasure. It's not vastly different from any other MMORPG, but for fans looking for an expanded view on the Ys universe, it's not bad. Unfortunately, the European version did not leave beta status, and was eventually shut down, never officially reaching North America.

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Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga (イースvs.空の軌跡 オルタナティブ・サーガ) - PSP (2010)

Japanese Cover

Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki

Like many of the more popular video games in the era, Ys was honored with two anime OVA series. The first one is seven episodes long and covers the first game. This might sound a bit off, because the total running time is about as long as it takes to play through the game. While it follows the basic events, a lot of the characters and their relationships are fleshed out quite a bit more. There are certain nuances that affected later games - the character Slaghf first appeared in this OVA, and eventually ended up in Ys Eternal. The first town Adol ventures into, Promarock, is eventually visited in the games in Ys IV. The music is good, but they use one song - "First Step Towards War", the field theme - far too often. And this is an early 90s anime, the character designs and animations are rather lame. The second OVA, covering Ys II, is only four episodes long. The storyline is much altered and condensed (Lilia captured as a sacrifice in the first episode and nothing is mentioned of her illness, for example) and the narrative works much better for it. Approximately half of the story is spent convincing the people of Ys that Adol is not a heretic, as they are still ignorant that anything exists beyond their floating continent. Eventually, the story picks up. The art is also much better, and there's a greater music selection, all of which is excellent. Like most video game anime, the Ys anime bound to be pretty dull unless you're a fan of the series. Still, there are far worse out there. Astonishingly, Anime Works brought the series to America in 2002, perhaps anticipating that Ys Eternal would be released for the PC in English, which it wasn't. The menus are clearly designed by someone with a passion for older computer games, as they feature graphics that would've looked at home on a PC88. One does have to question putting simulated load times into DVD menus when there are plenty of real pauses to sit through. You can buy the three disc seperately, or, far more economical, gets the Ys Legacy set, which includes all 11 episodes. Also included is a trailer of an Ys IV: Dawn of Ys anime. It was meant to be a pilot, for the creators to shop around to different animation studios to see if they wanted to make a full length version, but there were no takers, so nothing really came of it.

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Compilations Certain limited editions of Ys VI for the PC came with the Ys Complete Works, a compilation of Ys I - V. It really is pretty unimpressive - they are merely emulators with the PC88 versions of Ys I - III, and the Super Famicom versions of Ys IV and V. Still it's a nice bonus for those who plunked down the extra cash. Ys Typing Tutor In 2001, Falcom released Zwei!!, an absurdly cute dungeon crawler. One of the mini-games was an Ys typing game, where you help Adol destroy monsters by typing phrases quickly and accurately. The graphics and sound effects are lifted from Ys Eternal, although the music is a rendition of "The Theme of Adol" done in the style of the Zwei soundtrack (very similar to Yasunori Mitsuda, composer to Chrono Cross.) Thanks to the efforts of Nightwolve, Wyrdwad and Deuce, Ys Typing has been released separately and translated into English. You can grab it here, or check out their website. About the Music Ys music is hard to describe other than synth rock, but it's by far some of the best of its kind. Part of the advantages of the Ys games being relatively short is that each area can have its own specific theme, which fleshes out the identity of every dungeon and town. The initial computer music chip tunes were written by Mieko Ishikawa and the ever famous Yuzo Koshiro. However, the most famous arrangements - on the Turbografx-16 CDs and Perfect Collection albums - were done by Ryo Yonemitsu, who sadly does not compose video game music anymore. Many of the songs have been arranged time and time again by Falcom's in-house musicians, the JDK Band. Scores of CDs have been released, other than just CDs with the normal soundtracks. These are some of them, although you'll find even more tracks arranged on various Falcom compilations, including the 12 minute Ys Disco Mix on the Falcom Special Box '89 album - which, unfortunately, isn't nearly as cool as the title suggests. Another annoying factor is that a vast majority of the series music is from the first two games - while Ys III has seen a healthy number of variations, most of the rest have been ignored. Perfect Collections: The Perfect Collections are synth arrangements by Ryo Yonemitsu, sometimes similar to the TG16 games, sometimes a little different. They usually contain the complete soundtracks, as opposed to just the selected parts that fit on the game CD. The first two are excellent, with one CD having the arranged music, and another titled Super Arrange, with more drastic versions, sometimes with vocals. These were re-released under the Falcom Millenial label, although the packs are separated differently - instead of each set having a regular CD and a Super Arrange CD, they bundled Ys 1 and II together, and the Super Arranges together. The third game has some rather bizarre takes on the songs, and the Super Arrange album, while decent, doesn't pick the best selection of songs.. And the fourth game's Perfect Collection is split up into three separate CDs, so tracking them all down can get expensive. There is no Perfect Collection or Super Arrange for Ys V, although there is an image album. Perfect Collections Ys Heaven's Sanctuary Actually four different CDs, these includes arrangements from both Ys 1 and 2, as used in the second OVA. Provincialism Ys It's an Ys dance album, with most of the tracks containing a weird English voice rambling about something or other. Some of the tracks are fairly good, others aren't. Ys Healing and Preprimer Two new age versions with very laid back versions of the songs, with Preprimer having arrangements from other Falcom games. Sometimes the melodies are very thin, but it's meant to be relaxing. Symphony Ys There are actually four of these - Symphony Ys, Symphony Ys 95 (slightly different arrangements, and more songs) and Symphony Ys 21st Century (unavailable for sale separately.) It's Ys music on an orchestra, naturally. There was also an orchestra album released for Ys V, which pretty much fits the tone of the music. Very Best of Ys If you don't feel like randomly grabbing Ys albums without knowing what you're getting into, this is a good choice, with a variety of songs from different CDs. It's a good sampler, but it's hardly the "Very Best", as there's only songs from the first two games on here. A hearty thanks goes to Deuce for not only getting me started on the series, but also vastly contributing to the community, having translated the PC Ys Eternal games, as well as writing a Dawn of Ys FAQ. Also thanks goes to Kouryuu, for the Ys Eternal and Mask of the Sun FAQs, MP83 and everyone at the Ancient Land of Ys forum, CrossSlasher for the Ys VI FAQ, Seldane for digging up Ys 2 Special, and Ethrin for help on Ys Origin. Links: Ancient Land of Ys Forum Gathering for English speaking Falcom fans everywhere. Ys Utopia Nightwolve's excellent fan site. Ys Music Files Tons of screenshots of different versions. Japanese. I Love Falcom! Exhaustive Ys resource. Japanese. Nihon Falcom Home Page Creators of Ys and many classic Japanese RPGs Ys Complete Translation Patches for the Windows version.

Ys Typing Tutor Ys Typing Tutor Ys II Artwork Ys V Artwork