Ys: The Oath in Felghana

Another pun title - check. So, after my statements in YS: Memories of Celceta about not looking into other titles of this series and assuming that it would be a great game, only one of these became true. (Guess which one.) While I stand true to my review of that game, it still did feel too modern for my taste. I actually liked the more oldschool style of Origin a lot more. So what better to do than to look into the other games made with the same engine during the same 'era'. What do I have to say about YS: The Oath in Felghana? Well, it's a great game. In some parts (the music) it might even be debatably better than its successor (Origin). While the latter took a more unique approach for the series (being a Dungeon Crawler), this game is more in line with the other titles. Having a hub town, a shop and smithy, as well as multiple NPCs for flavour text and small side quests. While a lot of these make for a nice addition, some aspects also made me think back to Origin and how the more shortened and streamlined features made for a rounder experience (the dilemma of game design). Still, calling the gameplay bad would be far from true - it's just a tad less convenient for a more story driven focus. The mechanics are basically the same as in Origin, but one may say they have been refined in that game a bit as well (at least subjectively). Adol controls very smooth and the challenge is 99% your personal abilities to handle the obstacles. There are multiple difficulties. While normal is a pretty good challenge, it is also less unforgiving than "other games", so feel free to use easier (or even harder) modes. The game took me roughly 10 hours to beat - however this includes all the fails at boss fights. While the game had some issues on my system running on highest settings (which it shouldn't), disabling anti-aliasing (I think) and V-Sync + Z-sort polygons solved the problem (config.exe). I've enjoyed the game a lot...while being smashed to pieces - which says a lot!

I'm not a fan of JRPGs (although I always wanna give them a try), so expect some backhanded compliments. The game is fun, the active combat helps a lot to alleviate the grind, apparently a must have if you are a japánese game developer, but I digress, the hack and slash is good, the spells are few, but they pack a punch, and the mana works more like an stamina system so spamming them is encouraged, there is some platforming to be done, but is generally very forgiving. The leveling occurs organically for the most part, but grinding is encouraged because levels matter more than gear, you can start taking half the damage just by gaining a new level, if you don't know that going in, as I did, the first 2 bosses are gonna make you sweat blood, so if you are in a boss and you die repeatedly before reaching 30% of its life, just go grind a level and come back, since there are no consumables to heal yourself your only option is to power through fights. Artstyle is good and colorful which is always welcome, voiceovers are not stellar, but they are not terrible by any means, music does its job, but won't stick with you until you die. On the technical side I suggest to go to the additional executables options in the GOG Galaxy launcher and run the DX9 configuration tool, set Vsync on, and after that you need to launch the game using the same menu to run the DX9 executable every time you wanna play, this is crucial to avoid a game breaking bug that makes your double jump not work properly. Remember, by default GOG Galaxy will run the DX8 executable, and you don't want that. I wanna imagine Adol has an army of "faterless" kids running around with so many romantic interest after so many games, but I rant again, the game is fun to play, would be an all time favorite, but I became allergic to grind after wasting so many hours playing MMOs in my youth. I'm off to try the next game in the saga, I hope is as good.

Disclaimer: I've played the PC version, but not on GOG. I hear it works well on modern PCs and even on Wine/Proton if you use Linux. I think this was the best Ys era so far. They've done away with most of the jank the bump combat titles had and made the combat fluid 60fps. I love the 2D character design and animations, even though the generic anime style Falcom often chooses makes it hard to memorise NPCs at times. Still, the 2D is charming and makes my inner SNES child swoon, while living in a 3d background that was OK graphics for its time and especially on the PSP. The world building is great. Even though the area is quite small and the game is short, characters grow and feel like they belong in their world as well as notice what's going on around them. No NPC filler babble here. Dungeons aren't very smart, but not as boring as later titles either. They've iterated on the combat introduced in Ark of Napishtim and made it very fun, even doing away with the tedious grinding -- some reviewers still mind the grinding here, but I didn't really. Now you can either git good(TM) and defeat the bosses while studying their patterns or you'll usually have 1 or 2 enemies where you can overlevel if you suck at ARPGs like me :D The story is OK, but the bigger charm for me wasn't the grand narrative so much as the very intimately crafted characters. Most of the stars I give here are for the cool Falcom-style world building and NPCs, as well as lore -- this is why most people look beyond some of the shortcomings of Falcom titles. However, I'm deducting one point because the game is sadly a bit on the shorter side and because there's still a bit of jank here and there that's gone in games like Ys Origin. However, I like that this game isn't as hand-holdy and full of filler content like some of the later party-based games. Also, the pricing on this one is more decent than the AAA price Falcom asks for Ys VIII or IX, even though those games often don't feel AAA at all.

The music in this is so good that I listen to it outside of the game. I consider it the best of the Ys series.

Once again Ys does it with a solid entry in the franchise. I may not argue it as my favorite so far (I still favor 2 as the one to perfect the formula of the original), but not being my favorite out of a series I have generally loved so far does not make it a bad game in any way. If you like action adventure games and don't mind something that is a bit more simplified then this genre usually is, it's a very solid game to pick up and play. Have fun!