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Ys 5: Kefin, Lost City of Sand
Adol the Red, famous swordsman, gets off a boat in Xandria and is accosted by the overzealous guards--seems they don't like foreigners. But little things like that don't stop an adventure searching for the legendary Phantom City of Kefin, which holds the secret of alchemy and might stop the spreading desert sands from overwhelming the local cities.
Ys games tend to be formulaic and this is no exception: Adol gets off a boat in a new area, discovers an ancient mystery that recently resurfaced and the locals are embroiled in, exercises his chronic hero syndrome, grinds, gathers a stack of 5-6 weapons and magic he'll lose before the next game, and goes to a giant final dungeon to fight space fleas from nowhere. There aren't any real surprises to the plot or the flow of the game.
Though some games in the series just have Adol wandering into trouble, this game actively figures him into all sorts of prophecies as the "red-haired swordsman" whose presence will cause no end of trouble. Turns out that if you stumble into enough legendary situations, fate will find ways to incorporate you into new ones. Either that, or the timey-wimey ending caused to you set up your own hero-hood; it's not entirely clear.
Remember when I played Lagoon and complained that it was an Ys clone? The design of Adol's shoulder pads in this game (a higher-resolution version of previous games) make that exceptionally clear to me.
I had been hoping for a fan translation of this for quiet some time, despite being told it's the worst of the series, because it was the only one not available in English at all. Aeon Genesis released their patch on Thanksgiving! The complaints seemed to be based around it being relatively easy, which I can't say that I mind. I play the other games on Easy mode, anyway. There were two versions of this game for the Super Famicom in Japan; the second was Ys 5 Expert, released a year later as basically a hard mode cart. The version I played was clearly the original easier version, from the fact that it doesn't make me cry.
In a lot of ways, this is a "missing link" game between the early generation "ram enemies to hurt them" games and the 3D "jump and swing your sword" games. The graphics are later-SNES quality (as is the play control), and they're definitely trying new things with top-down jumping and slashing mechanics. They also added some features that didn't survive into later games, like enemies dropping vendortrash gems instead of money (and different stores give different exchange rates for them), different XP/level tracks for fighting and magic, and a strange cross-key submenu that seems inspired by the Mana series' ring menus.
The fact that you can jump, of course, means they needs to add different levels you could jump to (which makes some maps very confusing, because the faux-3D makes it hard to tell how high any given ledge is and edge gravity is only sometimes present), and they added platforming puzzles. The waterfall segment is rather irritating in how careful you have to be about precise jumps lest you be sent back to the beginning.
Different weapons have different attack arcs, which is an interesting touch. This would be a more interesting feature if there were more than five swords (with obvious improvements in attack power over each other) in the entire game.
The ability to restore your HP in the field by standing still returns from other games, and it's lovely. (Though it doesn't work in dungeons, again as usual, until you get a ring in the final area.) The counterpoint of this is the poison ailment, which makes your HP drain incredibly quickly and is fairly easy to contract starting mid-game.
The magic system is a bit dodgy--you need to hold R to charge spells, can't use them on many bosses (as usual for these games), and MP doesn't recharge automatically. I'm amused that there is actually an in-game explanation for why you can't use magic in some boss battles: Using magic near the macguffin crystals causes no end to problems, and this figures into at least one cutscene. You assemble the spells yourself from "elements" found throughout the game (though there are many-many more in the final dungeon than anywhere else) so you basically choose which spells to use; I picked a couple of fire spells I liked to grind with but generally ignored the system.
Overall: This follows the classic Ys formula and presents it with standard late-SNES quality. If that sounds good to you because you like Ys games or SNES-era action-rpgs, go for it. If you've never played an Ys game before, one of the PSP remakes is probably a better starting point.
Ys games tend to be formulaic and this is no exception: Adol gets off a boat in a new area, discovers an ancient mystery that recently resurfaced and the locals are embroiled in, exercises his chronic hero syndrome, grinds, gathers a stack of 5-6 weapons and magic he'll lose before the next game, and goes to a giant final dungeon to fight space fleas from nowhere. There aren't any real surprises to the plot or the flow of the game.
Though some games in the series just have Adol wandering into trouble, this game actively figures him into all sorts of prophecies as the "red-haired swordsman" whose presence will cause no end of trouble. Turns out that if you stumble into enough legendary situations, fate will find ways to incorporate you into new ones. Either that, or the timey-wimey ending caused to you set up your own hero-hood; it's not entirely clear.
Remember when I played Lagoon and complained that it was an Ys clone? The design of Adol's shoulder pads in this game (a higher-resolution version of previous games) make that exceptionally clear to me.
I had been hoping for a fan translation of this for quiet some time, despite being told it's the worst of the series, because it was the only one not available in English at all. Aeon Genesis released their patch on Thanksgiving! The complaints seemed to be based around it being relatively easy, which I can't say that I mind. I play the other games on Easy mode, anyway. There were two versions of this game for the Super Famicom in Japan; the second was Ys 5 Expert, released a year later as basically a hard mode cart. The version I played was clearly the original easier version, from the fact that it doesn't make me cry.
In a lot of ways, this is a "missing link" game between the early generation "ram enemies to hurt them" games and the 3D "jump and swing your sword" games. The graphics are later-SNES quality (as is the play control), and they're definitely trying new things with top-down jumping and slashing mechanics. They also added some features that didn't survive into later games, like enemies dropping vendortrash gems instead of money (and different stores give different exchange rates for them), different XP/level tracks for fighting and magic, and a strange cross-key submenu that seems inspired by the Mana series' ring menus.
The fact that you can jump, of course, means they needs to add different levels you could jump to (which makes some maps very confusing, because the faux-3D makes it hard to tell how high any given ledge is and edge gravity is only sometimes present), and they added platforming puzzles. The waterfall segment is rather irritating in how careful you have to be about precise jumps lest you be sent back to the beginning.
Different weapons have different attack arcs, which is an interesting touch. This would be a more interesting feature if there were more than five swords (with obvious improvements in attack power over each other) in the entire game.
The ability to restore your HP in the field by standing still returns from other games, and it's lovely. (Though it doesn't work in dungeons, again as usual, until you get a ring in the final area.) The counterpoint of this is the poison ailment, which makes your HP drain incredibly quickly and is fairly easy to contract starting mid-game.
The magic system is a bit dodgy--you need to hold R to charge spells, can't use them on many bosses (as usual for these games), and MP doesn't recharge automatically. I'm amused that there is actually an in-game explanation for why you can't use magic in some boss battles: Using magic near the macguffin crystals causes no end to problems, and this figures into at least one cutscene. You assemble the spells yourself from "elements" found throughout the game (though there are many-many more in the final dungeon than anywhere else) so you basically choose which spells to use; I picked a couple of fire spells I liked to grind with but generally ignored the system.
Overall: This follows the classic Ys formula and presents it with standard late-SNES quality. If that sounds good to you because you like Ys games or SNES-era action-rpgs, go for it. If you've never played an Ys game before, one of the PSP remakes is probably a better starting point.