I've bought and tried it, and it's just like you said, Panaias. At first combat seemed difficult because I overestimated the AI and tried to hit the opponents while running and dodging, but once I found out you don't have to be as frantic about it, it became very easy. And saving anywhere works, too.

I'm a bit at a loss now with the first boss fight though. I did the main tasks, even explored a bit ahead on my own and grinded a bit on the side, but when I first met the boss I was only lvl 4 with a short sword and hardly did any damage to him while quicky losing my own hp with every misstep. I checked some threads online and people were saying one should come back at lvl 10 or higher with a long sword, but the thing is, there doesn't really seem to be anything else to do but run through the same screens over and over again and defeat the ever respawning monsters to grind xp. It's not some lethal high level quest or anything, it's the first boss from the very first quest ... I'm not sure if I'm missing anything, I searched the maps several times and grinded to lvl 7 or so, bought a long sword, and now the boss seems doable but still very tedious. Are you really supposed to grind that much? (Playing on Normal difficulty, btw.)

EDIT: Correction - I was actually still lvl 4, not 7. So the first time I met the boss when doing what the game told me to do, I was only lvl 2 or 3. Now I leveled up to 5 and bought a middle shield, and that made a HUGE difference. All of a sudden, the boss battle was trivial, and I killed the boss with three hits. Pretty weird design ...

That's a common thread in the Ys games; it also happens in the Naphistim engine games (including Origin). One level can make the difference between unreasonably hard and actually rather easy.

In Oath in Felghana, there is one point where you can temporarily skip a boss, go to the next area, and get some easy levels. If you do that, the boss you skipped and the following boss will become ludicrously easy; I believe this is true even on Nightmare difficulty.

By the way, going back to Ys 1, if a certain boss is driving you batty, you are actually meant to max your level at that point, even though you are only about halfway through the game. Yes, this is really strange design, as is the (rather obvious) point of no return that follows (there's still a lot of game left at this point).

(Hint: There's a reason I used the term "batty". Also, said boss I consider to be poorly designed; you'll see why when you reach it. Fortunately, even though said boss returns in Ys Origin, the fight isn't as bad there. By the way, many bosses from Ys 1 and 2 return in Ys Origin, but the fights have been heavily redone, so they're effectively new bosses from a gameplay perspecitve.)

The weird thing is that there isn't anything else to do; no other areas to explore in the meantime before coming back. The game is pretty linear, and the only way to gain more xp is to repeat stuff you've already done before.

I'm actually at this point right now, and I guess my level is maxed out, because I have full hp and don't get any xp anymore, but I learned online that I need to go back to town first to use the items I found in the dungeon right before this boss in order to get a more powerful weapon, which I wouldn't have done intuitively. It seems the game design is heavily based on backtracking and grinding on the way, to an unreasonable degree ...

EDIT:
Fully maxed out, with all the silver equipment, and I know some strategies for the boss, but it's still frustrating and tedious in execution. This might be the point where I call it quits, even though I haven't fully decided yet.

I can see the appeal of the general gameplay, it could have been a pretty neat game, but it's also very uneven and flawed in design. There are stretches when you desperately need to level up by grinding in order to beat a boss and it takes quite a while, and then, after the boss, there are stretches when you level up within a few minutes just by exploring a new dungeon. Suddenly everything flows, even a little too fast, until you hit the next road block in the form of a boss and have to grind again. And then you're at max level all of a sudden, halfway through the game (and apparently by design, because otherwise you would be in no state to defeat the bosses), so all the fights become pointless from there on and it's better to just run past any monster you encounter. Also, in the beginning you have to grind for money in order to buy the weakest equipment; but soon you'll amass more money than you can spend just by following the linear story, so that you can easily skip the middle range stuff and already buy the best of the best. There's no steady progress, it's either painfully slow or so fast it almost feels like cheating; regular enemies are no challenge, once you get the hang of it and get your first set of equipment, bosses are tedious sponges, and of the three boss fights I've seen, none was interesting or fun in any way.

Rogue Legacy is different, since it has tons of unlockables and I think you're not really supposed to beat it right away. It's more about gradually unlocking the game's content, with each run through the castle. Spelunky is a more "hardcore" rogue-lite, since you can't unlock any upgrades ( other than shortcuts to the later levels ), but it's fun because there are so many little details and secrets to discover, and individual runs are fairly short, once you get the hang of it.

Ys 1 is pretty short. Both, Chronicles and Ys 2 are comfortable with keyboard. I have an old advance savegame on Ys 2 with 17hs (I've got stuck and forget to retry it..) but the game is awesome and probably you can complete it with 20-30 hours. The first Ys is way shorter. Like 15 hours or less. I also had beaten Ys 3 oath in Felghana with 27hs in my first run on normal or high (I can't remember)