Ys Origin

Simple hack-and-slash-ish game with minimal RPG elements, a generic JRPG story (that you'll enjoy a lot more if you''ve played other enties in the series). It also looks pretty. That's not important, though. Only one thing should be said about this game. This game will kick your ass. A lot. If you don't like getting your ass kicked, you're not going to enjoy this at all. If you do enjoy getting your ass kicked sometimes, you might enjoy this. I say might because even though I love challenging games, this game gets way too repetitive gameplay wise. For me at least.

I never was a fan of the RPG genre for some reason, but when I say one of my favourite games is an RPG... it says everything. I played on all games from the Ys series, and I can say the Ys Origin is the best amongst them. The Ys Origin tells the origin of Ys, this is the concept. It starts 700 years before the other games. Because of this, this game is the only from the series where we can see Reah and Feena as the Goddesses, in their original form. It is different compared to other Ys games, but far more full of emotions. The gameplay as said before is basically a hack 'n slash platformer with RPG elements. It has a smooth combat system with handy amount of abilities and skills. You are not forced to rely only one of your moves like in all other RPGs, all of them are useful. It is not a full featured RPG. There are a level-up system, and a lightsome equipment management. This combined with the superb story is quite enough to call the game an RPG. The musics are excellent, always reflects the current situation. I must mention the main theme of the game, 'Genesis Beyond The Beginning'. It is an award winning game soundtrack, the best main theme for a game. I hope we can see the original album as a bonus for the game on GOG.com.

Pros: Great story, great artwork. Cons: Literally had 100s of game crashes while playing. Mainly when trying to access the inventory/menu screen. Ugly: Playing through for the first time as Yunica I literally could not beat the final boss due to the game crashing every single time. I tried many different options of "compatibility mode" as well as verifying/repairing files. Searching across the web and this has happened for many it appears. I would easily give this game a 5 star rating if it were not for the game breaking crashes. That said, I powered through the 100s of crashes to get as far as I could and enjoyed every minute of it (non-crashing issues aside).

I thoroughly enjoyed this game putting in well over 50 hours and that was just with the 3 story mode playthroughs only. I went to a website called Digital Emelas that recommended playing this game after Ys 1 and 2, and I can say that's definitely a good suggestion. The style of play is much different than those two games and every game after them plays more like this one. I thought one of the things that would hold this game back is that it doesn't have an overworld that you ever get to interact with. Even without that, however, it still has a really good storyline. I played the characters in the order of Yunica, Hugo and The Claw. From a storytelling perspective, that order was actually great as more details got revealed with each playthrough in a logical progression. Unlike Ys 1 and 2, I didn't need a guide to get past any point in the game. It wasn't an easy game, mind you, just not cryptic with what you need to do to progress through the game. Let me get the minor issues out of the way now. First, if you're using the GoG Galaxy client, you'll need to go into your game folder and run config.exe if you want to change your controller inputs and set up higher resolutions. Second, several achievements failed to register. I had 6 unmissable achievements that didn't show up even though later ones did. I wasn't a big fan of hard or nightmare modes as it took much longer to level up and introduced a lot of grinding that I didn't have to deal with on normal mode. Normal mode isn't easy, but it's definitely better balanced so you don't have to spend several extra hours grinding just to have a chance at survival. Other than those things, this is a really fun game that should appeal to many people.