Ys SEVEN

Another great Action-Adventure in the series! At first, I'd worried about the party-based combat, because in games like this, the AI can be pretty stupid, and it is, but they very rarely get hit for some reason. Boss fights are intense, and the combat is fun in general. There's a neat skill learning mechanic reminiscent of Final Fantasy 9, but with how long they all take to master and how many there are, they got REALLY carried away with it. Seriously, I put almost 90 hours into this game that could easily have been just 20-40 at most. Lots of cool environments, though, and while the music is hit or miss, I'll definitely be adding some of it to my collection. If you like Ys, this is definitely worth your while.

The first of the party-based Ys games, Ys Seven isn't bad. . . but it could be better. Note that "not bad but could be better" is by Falcom standards- should you play it? Absolutely! But it very much feels like the rough draft for the later, much better, Ys VIII.

Okay, I'm guessing back in the day this was the first Ys with a party system and full 3D rendering, it has the DNA of games to come, and as suchity has its rough edges, it wouldn't be so intrusive if this was like a 2002 game, but this was from 2009 and the graphics are oof, textures are really low so it looks like a N64 game, the audio quality feels lower than it should. The party AI is very basic, there's no party "stance" but you can turn off skills so your AI partners don't spam skills you don't want them to (they use any learned skill not just the equipped ones), skills are incredibly tedious to level up. Therefore, it's better to comit to just four so they get to the endgame almost at max level, unfortunately some of the skills will be only available really late in the game which is frustrating., There's also a little bit of grind to do (jrpgs, amirite) and it's pretty heavy handed in the last dungeons because you are gonna need hundreds of soulstones that only drop in there. At least the story is pretty straightforward (except for the big bad guy reveal, but that was on me, I should have seen it coming) and the ending is exactly what I expected and the music is pretty good. And hey, this is the very first time Adolf don't start falling overborad or sinking a ship, so he's making progress, I thought for a moment Dogi was gonna be the ladies man this time around, but I was disappointed. Overall, pretty good, better than Ys 6, and with a better ending than Ys 8 (yes, I am still salty about it).

The way you can synthesize equipment and weapons, The Battle system, And the overall storyline/ gameplay reminded me alot of Tales Of Symphonia. 5 out of 5, Would reccomend

Once again, I have to say I absolutely loved another game from the Ys franchise. And while it is not the absolute best of the best, it is right up there with it. In fact you can clearly see a lot of what made Memories of Celceta so great got it's start here. Yes, that game balanced it out better, but the formula was great from the start and I can only hope to see more of this as we go on. Another phenomenal game in the series!