From what I’ve heard, Celceta is basically Adol Begins, preceding both his trip to Ys Country and to Felgana as evident by his sudden lapse in fashion sense (whereas Dawn at least takes place immediately afterwards).
That would be interesting, yeah…especially seeing as MotS and Dawn of Ys take place two years after the events of the first two games. The story is sort of a tie-in, and it makes 1, 2, and 4 a trilogy of sorts.
I played Ys 3 back in the day and have been tempted periodically to go back, but I never took the leap. Which one of those is your favourite so far?
Easily, Oath in Felghana. Which might be nice for you - it’s a “do-over” of Ys3, so you’ll be familiar with the story. It just replaces the “Zelda 2” type combat with “Zelda with batshit insane combos” combat.
I did enjoy most of them, to be honest. I just can enjoy games under weird pretenses, sometimes. Like, the first two Ys games are archaic and not especially amazing; but, they are super fast, and it’s really funny to just run into enemies until they die. It’s funny to be overleveled and kill a boss in three hits. On the flipside, it’s funny to get to a boss that _just_plain_kills_you, usually after breezing through everything before that. It’s fun in a ridiculous sort of way.
But, realistically, I would have a hard time recommending the old Ys games to anyone, aside from Oath in Felghana and Ark of Napishtim, unless I knew they had the stomach for that sort of stuff.
7’s the best by far, its a bit of a toss up between 4 (VITA) and Oath in Felghana for 2nd place. I love the music from both. The combat is very fun for both but both are a bit more button mashey than 7. I totally agree 1-2 are ridiculous but entertaining. I haven’t played Origins yet.
Yeah, to be fair, I haven’t played 7 or Memories of Celceta yet, but I’ve seen them in action and they do look a like more “with the times” than all the previous installments. The other versions of Ys 4 play absolutely nothing like Memories of Celceta…but you could have probably guessed that.
Right now, I’m kinda tossing up between Oath and Origins (since they’re roughly the same mechanically speaking). Probably Oath, since while I feel that Origins gave Oath’s mechanics that extra bit of polish as well as three different modes of play, there’s fewer instances of “go back to the previous room and clear out these newly spawned glowy enemies to advance” in Oath. Plus I generally like the ascetic of running around the countryside for the odd plot coupon more than constantly dungeon crawling up a tower (and now we’ve hit the Lava Land section of the tower, now the Shifting Sands Land part, and so on…).
Well, I’ve more-or-less finished the Ys series. I played Ys Origin (I didn’t like it, but I admit that I was predisposed to not-liking it), and I just finished Ys Seven today (it wasn’t terrible…but, I didn’t like it). Now all that’s left is for me to play Memories of Celceta (although I’ve played both the original versions of Ys IV, so I’m pretty familiar with the story already). I have to admit, playing a game with the same engine as Ys Seven’s combat is not an exciting proposition to me. But, at least I know that the story won’t be bogged down in a bunch of metaphysical hot-garbage, so it has that going for it, at least.
Having never played a Ys game before, what would be a good one to check out and get a sense for what the series is like?
There’s quite a bit of difference between the games depending on which version of what you’re playing. 1-2 are a little quirky but fun, Origins and 3/Felghana are one type of action and Ys7/4VITA have their own battle system. My GF and I really enjoyed 7/4VITA and 3’s a good game, I haven’t played Origins. 1-2 are worth the ride on a discount. Overall they all have excellent music and the combat’s pretty fast paced.
You know, I’m just going to throw a +rep at the Blazer Trilogy as well since those play more or less like Ys games (at least in spirit) sans any reference to red-headed swordsmen, wall crushers, or Cleria.
Plus, if I recall my video game history correctly, I believe that many of the people at Quintet (the devs of the Blazer Trilogy among other things) were staff on the Ys games prior to braking off from Falcom right around Wanderers release to make Actraiser.
That’s exactly right. The two key members behind the creation of Ys worked on the series up through Ys III, then left Nihon Falcom to form Quintet.
That actually makes a lot of sense if you look at the old school games. I had grown to look at Ys as more like the original zelda / LTTP, not the boring evolution into OOT and its sequels or God of War without the gratuitous violence, sex and puzzles.
You can get Ys1&2 on Steam for 15$. There’s a free demo of Origins there too.
I think you can play 1&2, Origins or Oath pretty much in any order and have a good time. None of them have INTENSE BACKSTORY REFERENCES to other games.
It also makes sense that their first game, Actraiser, was basically their second attempt at the whole Sidescrolling/Action/Platforming/RPG thing using the lessons they learned from Wanderers.
I really need to go back and play that game one of these days.
…Aaaaand as of a few days ago, I finished Memories of Celceta, meaning I’ve completed the entire series in English (I’d actually beaten the Ys IV versions on SNES and Turbo CD, but Celceta was the new canon, and wow it changed a lot for the better). I wish I had a good explanation as to why…but, I liked it a whole lot more than Ys Seven. I was really worried when I heard it had the same combat as Seven, but for whatever reason, I just had a lot more fun this time around.
Also, although it’s probably not relevant to people who aren’t wasting their time with fan translations, it was fun to see what changed story-wise between all the versions. I also personally enjoyed hearing how some of the original music evolved - the majority of the soundtrack consisted of music from the original Ys IV soundtrack, while there were about 10-12 original compositions for this version.
Compare - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkHptsKg2oA to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ValMIEtUG8 for an example of just how far the music has come.
I think its probably due to having a better party than Seven’s Ys Team Six + token four elements themed fantasy classes (though credit where credit’s due for having the Earth based one be the party Thief instead of the walking Beefstack; that went to Fire, though it did make Water’s Hunter sort of redundant outside of attacking at range).
That could be. I certainly was excited to play as Duren and Karna since they are the only two party members from the original YsIV. But, I thought about it after writing this, and I think it was just several smaller quality-of-life changes, too. Like, for example, in Ys Seven, party members you were controlling were usually invulnerable. I hosed Ys Seven really hard by just switching to a different party member right before I would get hit. It was really annoying in Ys Seven how you had to clobber every enemy after they died for more constituents, where as in Memories of Celceta, only certain enemies did that, and it wasn’t even 100% of the time. Not having to triple tap every_single_enemy you killed made it feel like I wasn’t wasting so much time. Finally, I think retracing virtually all of my steps in Ys Seven made the second half feel remarkably boring to me.
Also, there was one main difference in the story that I didn’t like:[SPOILER]Memories of Celceta featured Eldeel and the Eldeen civilization, a race of winged people that held onto untold information and technology which was passed on to tons of people. This was hinted at in Ys6, which tied the Ark of Napishtim to the Eldeen, and even the Galbalans (kind of stupid, since Galbalan was described in Felghana lore as some demon that was sealed away and would do terrible things if it came back, etc). Memories of Celceta not only explained how this process works, but they even tied Altago’s technology to the Eldeen.
…BUT, they UNDID the connection of the Black Pearl to the Eldeen civilization. Ys IV (both Mask of the Sun and Dawn of Ys) was basically made to be the third game in a trilogy of Ys 1, Ys 2, and Ys 4 (I can’t tell if the new Celceta takes places before Ys3 like the original Ys4 did). And, for all that was different between the two versions of YsIV, one of the only similarities - and one of the most important plot points - was the revelation that the Black Pearl from Ys1-2 was originally Eldeen technology. My least favorite thing about the Ys series is that after YsIV, every plot boiled down to “The Eldeen did it”…but, considering the great lengths they’ve taken to tie every single adventure back to the Eldeen, why did they undo the only one that was kind of interesting!? [/SPOILER]
I can think of a few possibilities going on with that.
First is the fact that Adol simply hasn’t had his adventure in Ys country yet whereas the original version he not only had done so, but he had even brought the [STRIKE]Pegasus[/STRIKE] Cleria Equipment along with him (which is kind of a big deal given that in order to beat the final boss, said equipment is upgraded to its Gold Cloth form). None of that comes into play during MoC.
Second is that maybe tying everything into the idea that an Eldeen did it, was too much for the writers at Falcom and they decided to draw the line there instead.
Third is that they’re planning something for Ys VIII: Romman Candle and wanted to save something from both MoC and Chronicles to use in that.
Actually, there’s a very overt reference at the beginning of the game that indicates that Ys1&2 already happened. Even if there wasn’t, the fact that Dogi shows up in some of the memories is also a clear indication, since that’s when they met. Dogi also references Dr. Flair in that memory, who was one of the minor characters from Ys1.The only thing that seems a little ambiguous to me is whether or not Oath in Felghana has already taken place. Dogi said something in one of his memories that I felt could have been referring either to Ysteria or Felghana, but they didn’t name anything in particular, so it was confusing. Either way, it def takes place after Ys1&2.
As for the second…I mean, maybe, but it seems weird that, if they felt that way, they would use Memories of Celceta to create a deliberate link between Altago and the Eldeen where there previously was none. That said, the whole “The Eldeen did it” thing is definitely my least-favorite thing about Ys. It really takes a lot of the mystique away when you already know who’s responsible for everything amazing about every civilization ever.