Ys SEVEN

Ys 7 a series I knew nothing about I saw this on GOG and it looked interesting to me. I didn't look very much into the series all I knew is that it was an RPG ported from the PSP. I got in the mood one day to play in RPG so I decided to give this one shot since it's a pretty small download. When I booted up the game I was greeted with Graphics that I am familiar with from the PlayStation 1 era. The fact that the PSP got a title that looked as good as this is quite impressive. The story and gameplay are fairly cliche in all aspects but it's because of that that I loved it so much because it is that same type of game that got me into RPGs in the first place. The gameplay is very simple but fun there is a rock paper scissors type system in play here and it's quite satisfying however I can see for certain people this being too uninteresting and repetitive I didn't find it to be as such but others might. The port was also rock solid never crashed and I had no issues with it what so ever. Overall I love this game I put in 30 hours in a little over a week which for someone who works a full-time job is a lot in not that much time. I was quite invested in the story and the world the game may not make me want to play the others but it was a great adventure.

Coming into YS Seven I knew to expect what I always expect in a Ys game; fun combat, challenging and enjoyable boss fights and excellent soundtracks. Its safe to say I am impressed once again with how they keep improving in each game. The feature that stands out in this game is the group tag team. I was surprised how intuitive the switching between characters would be on a game that has a lot going during combat. Fortunately is it not the only stand out feature in this game. Tech skill selections, crafting/farming, and side quests I havent experienced in previous series. The combat is oh so enjoyable. Typical Ys combat fun, but with the tag teaming twist to it. The only con I could say is the graphics are meh. They arent terrible, and were typical for PSP. I wished the port would have had much crisper graphics. None the less, its hardly a hiderance. The gameplay is very good you get over that rather quick. Easy 5. I recommend anyone who is into any action RPGS to give this a try.

Be warned this is a port of a 2009 PSP game, don't expect miracles. That said, I experienced no performance issues at all, not even a single crash. There was ONE bug I managed to trigger, by somehow dodging out of bounds and falling through the bottom of the screen - my character fell in darkness for about 5 seconds before an automatic game over kicked in. That was it in an otherwise flawless port. This is apparently the first Ys game to feature a party mechanic. Your party members don't rely on the SP meter though they seem to use skills rather sparingly. Too infrequently to rely on for leveling skills - you'll need to play each character you want to skill up. They rarely get hurt though, so switch up when your current played character seems like it'd get knocked out. Abuse the out-of-combat regen/warp autoheal mechanic when you can, consumables are mildly annoying to re-craft/buy. It's a 2009 PSP game: the cutscenes are fairly basic and dialog features the standard JRPG style of the character shown in a cutout above their dialog text. The storyline is linear, though you're allowed to roam most of the map you unlocked at most points. While there's some grinding for drops to craft gear, it's not as annoying as grinding to level up skills. I played with a Cheat Engine table cheat (look for exact matching version) to be able to spam skills with no SP cost and STILL barely maxed several skills. The music is great, typical of Ys. Sound effects are okay but get repetitive. No major nitpicks about the presentation. Most enemies are fairly easy even on Hard difficulty (can't change this setting btw). However, boss fights tend to ramp up, and the final boss is both a hp sponge and cheap af. Overall decent if you like Ys games. If you like ARPGs but aren't familiar with Ys, it's okay. If you dislike JRPGs, probably stay away - the ARPG component hasn't that much meat to it. While I'm glad I got it because "it's Ys", I'm glad it's over. TL;DR Good but dated.

As much as I’m a big fan of the Ys series, I found this slightly weaker than the others I had played. Certainly not terrible by any means, but there were a few problems that prevented me from enjoying it as much as the others. I’ll start with the positives first though. As expected from a modern Ys title, this one also had great graphics, music, and for the most part, good gameplay. Although the graphics could be considered a bit dated nowadays, having a low polygon count and low-quality textures, I enjoyed the game’s aesthetic, having some brilliant design on display. It was certainly a long one, being almost double the length of the previous Ys games I had played. I thought the game was starting to wrap up at one point but it threw me for a loop, introducing quite a bit more left to do. As I was enjoying the game, this wasn’t a problem, although it did introduce a fair amount of backtracking through areas I had already previously seen. You do unlock a fast travel system but it’s quite limited in places. This game also introduced a crafting mechanic, having many resources scatted over the world. However, it was substantially undervalued. At the end of the game, I realized that a huge proportion of these I never ended up needing, with only two rarer ones that I needed to grind for. It was probably something that the game was better off not having honestly. Combat was a bit different from the previous games, but it still had the satisfying feel to it which Ys is known for. It included a separate level-based skill system but I never made heavy use of it as most monsters didn’t take much to kill. This was mostly due to the party system, where I would usually switch to another character that had a weapon that was stronger against its type. Good in that members who weren’t in the party still received EXP points during battle, but the AI players could be a little stupid. I'd would rate it a 9/10 for me, but as that's not possible for GOG, I'll round it up to 5.