Selling Stop on Ys Seven

So Stop wants me to sell him on Ys Seven. The problem is that it’s not my favourite game in the Ys series, so I can’t be as, um, passionate as I would usually be. It’s still a great game as I think he should play it, though.

Ys I and II were the first two games and have been remixed/re-imagined a zillion million times. I’m not sure which version he’s played, but the very original had a very weird combat system: to hit enemies, you had to run into them. But not straight on! No, you had to be a little off-centre or you’d get hit, yourself. Yeah. Plus, I’m sorry to say this, but Feena annoys the crap out of me. (Though Ys II has the best game opening EVER. EVER.)

Ys Seven has none of this crap. It’s built on Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim’s engine, and has been the standard for Ys: The Oath in Felghana (more on this later), Ys Origin, and Ys Seven.

The reason why Ys Seven makes me pause is because it introduces party mechanics, which is a little jarring for someone who’s played through the other games. No longer is Adol alone in kissing dirt/sand/etc., but you can have up to two party members following you around. It’s a lot like Secret of Mana, in a way, where you can switch between members at will, which might be kinda engaging later on in the game. I was routinely switching between Adol and Dogi in the first area, and you pretty much need to have it down pat in order to beat the first boss.

Combat is fluid, but they’ve had a lot of time to refine it from Ys VI’s basic engine. They’ve taken away the mindlessness of just hitting the button to smack things down — I mean, you could, but you won’t be hitting efficiently and might be doing 1 damage to the mob. Once you get into it, the combat gets really fun. Characters also get special attacks that you can assign to buttons.

The opening animation is kinda meh, but I’m comparing it to Ys Origin’s opening which was mind-blowingly good. The music, however, is absoutely amazing and really fits the game. (The first boss music is Worthy™.) I didn’t have any problems with the play control at all. The graphics are crisp given that it’s a PSP game. (You won’t have to worry about comparing it to the PC offerings like me, which is really colouring my opinion of this game.)

The story, from what I can tell, flows nicely like an Ys game, though some of the characters look stereotypical ($10 says the kid in the opening gets kidnapped). However, I didn’t do anything past the first boss — I got sick of looking up words at every screen. This gives me hope for a nice, engaging story, though.

Difficulty seems to be a bit easier than previous offerings. It’s a long standing joke that it’s not an Ys game unless you die a horrible screaming death to the first boss in the game, but I managed to beat it with 10 HP left on Adol on my first try, so I don’t know what to think about that. I seem to remember being able to set the difficulty level at the start, though.

There are a few familiar characters that come back that might go straight over a player’s head if they haven’t played Ys VI, but most Ys games are stand-alone-ish, so they should be able to provide enough explanation about Gassh/Geis and his three bitchy faeries.

Anyways, verdict? It’s a great action RPG that everyone who likes the genre should try. Does it fit 100% into the Ys Series? Not so far, which is part of my negativity towards it, but I haven’t gotten far in the game. We’ll have to see when I get it. If you don’t have any other Ys game to compare it to, you might actually get a better experience.

Now if you want me to foam at the mouth and go nuts, let’s talk about Ys: The Oath in Felghana. THIS GAME MUST BE PLAYED TO BE BELIEVED. GOD.

Current Mood: Okay