Game Discussion of the Week: Ys I & II

I remember playing the first two on the TG-16 CD compilation in a Toys R Us and being impressed. I remember that was one of the first CD games I had ever played. Of course, I didn't own a TG-16, so I never played the games in their entirety.

On a side note, I'm in the middle of Ys VIII, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the English voice actor who did Dogi is the same guy who did General Jaeger's voice in Valkyria Chronicles.

The port I've played most extensively is the Ys Chronicles+ version on pc. It's pretty great.

The reason why Ys I + II are listed together here is because they are like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in the sense that they are usually packaged together and are meant to be played as a single, longer game. The first one is pretty short (there are only two or three dungeons) and is about getting to the floating island of Ys; the second is much larger and happens on Ys itself.

They are pretty great. The combat is unconventional at first, as there is no attack button: you just bump into enemies, then it depends on the angle that you hit them (you have to hit off-center) and your stats. What is pretty great about it is that when Adol is at a high level with good weapons, you can mow down enemies, run over everything. I recommend that you guys watch that CGR review up there, Mark explained well how the game works.

One very nice feature in the second game is an item that lets Adol talk to any creature in the game - surprisingly, every single enemy has something unique to say, and you can talk to all of them. It's very surprising how much effort went into this, and it shows the better quality of these games: story and writing. The characters are very endearing, and there is a reason why some of them became recurring characters for the whole series. As stratogustav said, this is easily on the level of something like Zelda: A Link to the Past, Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy and other classic RPGs or action RPGs from that era.

It's well worth noting that Ys I+II got various ports over the years, with the PC-Engine version being, for a long time, its best outing, maybe only surpassed by the more recent PSP/PC versions. I've also played the PC-Engine classics through emulation and they are still great.

By the way, Ys Chronicles+ is on Steam, is a cheap game and runs on pretty much any computer, so I really recommend getting it.