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chuckroThe land of Altego: Now that the war with the Romuns has finally ended, perpetual wanderer and hero Adol the Red can find his way there, and find himself embroiled in a millennia-old ritual of dragon-waking that might spell doom for the land, or write it a new destiny.
This game doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, which is likely for the best, given the formulaic nature of the Ys series. When Adol and Dogi disembark in the introduction, Dogi has a crack about them being lucky it didn’t crash. Similarly, when it becomes clear that they’ve gotten wrapped up in some sort of major mystical occurrence, he has a line about how he shouldn’t be surprised. (I’m pretty sure that the flagrant use of “dragon warrior” and “dragon quest” together is the localizers having a bit of fun, as well.)
In an odd step backwards, this game has no jump button and virtually no platforming. Instead, you get a dash/roll button to dodge enemy attacks with. Like other games in the series, there are obstacles (icy floors, lava, wind pipes) that you need to find the special item that lets you avoid. I appreciate, though, that you never need to use special attacks or wacky button-presses to clear obstacles, even for optional items. (As opposed to Ys 6, which I recall having an item that could only be retrieved by making a blind leap and using an ability the game never explained you even had.)
You have a second character (and eventually a third) following you who you can switch to control of at any time. Most enemies are weak to one type character (slash, bash or pierce) and strong to the others, which requires you to switch often. This mechanic got old fairly quickly for me. There are nine playable characters in total, though two of them are “substitutes” for others in the party, so they share equipment, levels and skills. (You get leaked experience for characters you aren’t using, so there’s only so neglected they can get, but the game forces you to use all of them in the final battle, so make sure they’re equipped.)
The game has an easy mode. I played it on easy mode. This should not be surprising to anyone. It’s a very pleasant gaming experience, though still with a few challenges, on easy mode.
You learn special moves from your weapons: Equip them, use the skill enough to level it up, and then you get to keep it when you switch weapons. You can play this as a “gotta catch them all” thing, or you can stick to four of your favorites and just level them up a lot, which reduces the cost of using them. Adol’s Sword Dance skill saw a lot of use, for me.
A lot of the equipment (and in turn the skills) is only available via Synthesis using vendortrash dropped by most enemies and gathered at spawn points throughout the world. The items are plentiful enough (except for the best weapons) that I didn’t find myself needing to really grind for them, though they may be less plentiful in harder game modes.
This is an impressively large and long game, particularly by Ys standards. (This took 19 hours, versus a dozen for most of the remade titles.) There is a very clear “halfway point” to the game, the place where there would be a disc switch if this was a PS1 game. As an interesting choice, you get a teleport power in the first half, it’s temporarily disabled, and then when you get it back, they wipe all of the destination points you’ve unlocked and make you reach them a second time. This forces you through some new areas (and makes you replay some old ones with a few new monsters thrown in) and keeps you on track with the plot.
The final act of the game has a bunch of twists, but I actually thought they did a decent job with the foreshadowing into the “why/how we can win” twist. When the characters call back to an earlier event, it really makes sense and builds on a cultural context within the game world. How about that?
Overall: Because the plot has a bunch of continuity to earlier games (it especially spoils chunks of Ys 6), you’re better off playing the other PSP Ys games first; but if you enjoy those, you’ll enjoy this. I did.
This game doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, which is likely for the best, given the formulaic nature of the Ys series. When Adol and Dogi disembark in the introduction, Dogi has a crack about them being lucky it didn’t crash. Similarly, when it becomes clear that they’ve gotten wrapped up in some sort of major mystical occurrence, he has a line about how he shouldn’t be surprised. (I’m pretty sure that the flagrant use of “dragon warrior” and “dragon quest” together is the localizers having a bit of fun, as well.)
In an odd step backwards, this game has no jump button and virtually no platforming. Instead, you get a dash/roll button to dodge enemy attacks with. Like other games in the series, there are obstacles (icy floors, lava, wind pipes) that you need to find the special item that lets you avoid. I appreciate, though, that you never need to use special attacks or wacky button-presses to clear obstacles, even for optional items. (As opposed to Ys 6, which I recall having an item that could only be retrieved by making a blind leap and using an ability the game never explained you even had.)
You have a second character (and eventually a third) following you who you can switch to control of at any time. Most enemies are weak to one type character (slash, bash or pierce) and strong to the others, which requires you to switch often. This mechanic got old fairly quickly for me. There are nine playable characters in total, though two of them are “substitutes” for others in the party, so they share equipment, levels and skills. (You get leaked experience for characters you aren’t using, so there’s only so neglected they can get, but the game forces you to use all of them in the final battle, so make sure they’re equipped.)
The game has an easy mode. I played it on easy mode. This should not be surprising to anyone. It’s a very pleasant gaming experience, though still with a few challenges, on easy mode.
You learn special moves from your weapons: Equip them, use the skill enough to level it up, and then you get to keep it when you switch weapons. You can play this as a “gotta catch them all” thing, or you can stick to four of your favorites and just level them up a lot, which reduces the cost of using them. Adol’s Sword Dance skill saw a lot of use, for me.
A lot of the equipment (and in turn the skills) is only available via Synthesis using vendortrash dropped by most enemies and gathered at spawn points throughout the world. The items are plentiful enough (except for the best weapons) that I didn’t find myself needing to really grind for them, though they may be less plentiful in harder game modes.
This is an impressively large and long game, particularly by Ys standards. (This took 19 hours, versus a dozen for most of the remade titles.) There is a very clear “halfway point” to the game, the place where there would be a disc switch if this was a PS1 game. As an interesting choice, you get a teleport power in the first half, it’s temporarily disabled, and then when you get it back, they wipe all of the destination points you’ve unlocked and make you reach them a second time. This forces you through some new areas (and makes you replay some old ones with a few new monsters thrown in) and keeps you on track with the plot.
The final act of the game has a bunch of twists, but I actually thought they did a decent job with the foreshadowing into the “why/how we can win” twist. When the characters call back to an earlier event, it really makes sense and builds on a cultural context within the game world. How about that?
Overall: Because the plot has a bunch of continuity to earlier games (it especially spoils chunks of Ys 6), you’re better off playing the other PSP Ys games first; but if you enjoy those, you’ll enjoy this. I did.
