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Ah, Ys. This is a series I haven’t delved much into. This was actually my first game in the series! But it’s EXTREMELY popular and influential. I seriously cannot begin to explain how influential Ys is. Nihon Falcom started as a computer store that made gamesd as a hobby, and off the backs of games like Ys they became hyuuuuugggee. This, I do believe, is the first Ys port ever. The following year, Ys books 1 and 2 would get a release on the PC Engine, which was a massive deal. That also has a lot of fun stuff involving Hudson Drama, but I don’t gotta get into that. This is the first game, which is really the first half of what is basically one whole game, and was developed by Nihom Falcom themselves. I haven’t played the PC original, so I have no frame of reference. How is this, as a game?

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In Ys, you play as Adol, an adventurer. If he has a character, you don’t really experience it. He’s another Link or something similar, someone you can kinda project yourself onto. He’s just arrived in Minea, and is tasked by a fortune teller, Sara, to help stop a great evil sweeping the land by collecting the six ancient Books of Ys. You must explore the wilderness, help some people with some problems, and collect the six books. Sounds good!

The history of RPGs is a very long and interesting one. You kind of have three major precursor series, and all RPGs coming out of Japan are inspired by one of those three. You’ve got Dragon Quest, which spawned all sorts of JRPGs. You’ve got Zelda, of course. But then you have Hylide. Hydlide isn’t… super respected these days, but its most immediate successor is the Ys series.

Ys is a big open place to explore with little dungeons and things, and you’ve gotta grind a lot to gain EXP to survive it. And notable, it uses bump combat. Bump combat is rough on a good day. It’s FINE here, but for the most part, this means you can ONLY progress when you’re certain you can easily wipe the floor with the enemies in the next area, which means a lot more grinding.

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And that’s not a BAD thing. I like grinding. I even like it in the context of video games! But it does mean the pace of the game is a bit rough. It’s honestly really small. There’s like, three dungeons, and two major hub areas, one of which is way larger than the other. It’s a bit defensible when you realize this is basically half of one game, and even then I don’t mind that much.

Is there a lot here? Not really. It’s pretty retro and crude. But I still had a good time, exploration was fun, and there wasn’t even THAT much early RPG bullshit (just a little bit). I’ll need to play the PC versions at some point so see how different this is.