Ys The Oath in Felghana

This is a great game.

It's a remake of a early 90s-era 16-bit game called Wanderers From Ys III, although it's been so fundamentally overhauled it shares little in common with its inspiration except for a few character names and the overall structure. The original came out on Genesis, SNES, and Turbografix 16, and made a mostly-in-tact translation to NES. The game was later cleaned up and released on PS2.

In its current form, it's basically the world's fastest hack and slash, with a lot more depth than entries in the genre normally possess. Main attacks are performed with X, Jumping and double-jumping is performed with O, and magic attacks are defaulted to Square (I moved magic to R so I could keep them charged easily while jumping/attacking). The meat of the battle system is quickly jetting around the battlefield quickly attacking enemies and watching them for attack indicators, jumping or dodging them as necessary. Chaining an attack to your jump can affect it in 3 different ways: 1) attacking once you've jumped (on the way up) while not pressing the joystick - spinning slash; 2) attacking once you've jumped (on the way up) while pressing any direction - regular aerial attack, can be chained a couple times 3) attacking once you've jumped (on the way down) - downward strike that can stun people. Coupled with 3 different spells that each have a regular and charged up version, there's a lot of attack variety and the enemy and boss AI are very layered and challenging.

There are 4 initially available difficulty modes and 1 almost comically difficult locked mode. The highest of the initial difficulties, Nightmare, made for one of the most challenging experiences I've ever had with a game, bar none. This is mostly due to the unrelenting boss AI and pacing--bosses literally never have more than enough downtime for you to hit them 2 or 3 times and require insane amounts of forethought and twitch reflex to make any progress whatsoever. I'm no slouch at videogames, but there were only a handful of bosses I managed to beat in less than 10 tries. Most took well 20-50, no exaggerations. Granted, I started the game on its hardest difficulty, but it was absolutely maniacal.

The satisfaction when you finally beat the seemingly-impossible boss though? Unlike anything else I've experienced, save for Ys Seven, on this platform. The game's pacing is linear but there are some off-the-beaten-path quests to keep things interesting and force you to switch your brain back on between dungeons. The game world is small, but every area has a clear purpose....there's only one town, but there are just enough people in it to keep it interesting without ever becoming daunting. The "less is more" approach taken with the game design, at least in term of non-dungeon, works very much to its credit.

The music is just phenomenal. The original had some rockin' tunes, but they've all been remixed/doubled in length and are among the best offerings on the PSP console. Add to this the ability to sub in the original soundtrack from 2 other versions of Ys III (GENIUS! More devs need to do this with remakes) and you have a robust sound package. The only blemish is the voice acting, which is...well...bad. I've actually talked with someone who works with XSEED and they claim they used professional voice talent...but it just plain sounds poor. Ah well--too be expected. Just skip through them and relish in amazing dungeon and boss design.

This game is a required purchase for PSP owners. There's nothing else quite like it, and high-difficulty lovers finally have a PSP game that might convince Sony to release a PSP with a thumb stick that actually works!

This has got to be one of the most fun games you will play! It's lightning paced with great graphics & an incredible soundtrack. I'm glad I was finally able to play this in english, after beating it on the PC several years ago! I can't wait for more Ys games to be released overseas!

Enjoyed the game. It is one of my favorite PSP game. With different level to choose from I can play more than once.

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