JRPGs

Just about to wrap up Ys Seven and move on to VIII. Sure am glad it took me the whole game to learn there is a block function. Honestly it hasn’t been necessary for almost anything at all but still. Grabbed the Bandit Glove and Rare Item thing early on and not a single money or material issue. Guess I did a little farming here and there. Really found most bosses just annoying pains in the ass. A couple were legitimately fun but the majority were just AoE spam run around in circles HP sponges. That’s not as huge a complaint as it seems. It was mentioned earlier but the dungeons are hilariously generic replica of that generation of RPG dungeons.

Fun enough, looking forward to VIII and then IX.

I'm a ways into Ys Seven now and it's fun. More or less 2.5D like 6 was IIRC. Was kinda expecting it to be 3D like 8/9 but this works. On emulator it looks very much like a Wii game as far as resolution and clarity go. I had to try it on four different computers and each one had a different issue running the PSP emulator, until the fourth where everything worked well. Surprised I didn't play this back when I had a PSP, since I played Ys 1-3 on there and had the system for a while with nothing to play on it. This would have been a perfect fit.

Mainly playing it for the story to bridge the gap between 6 and 8 for myself. There isn't much so far, surprisingly. It does have what appears to be a deep customization system with equipment forging and whatnot, but I haven't even fooled with any of it yet because the game is a breeze on Easy with storebought weapons/armor and the levels you get from fighting everything along the way.

The dungeons are nice and simple, the music rocks...yeah, all in all I'd say it's worth checking out before 8/9 even if it isn't as good as those. It's very much a "scaled-down portable installment" that doesn't really compare to its console counterparts while being good for what it is.

Rajaah said:

I'm a ways into Ys Seven now and it's fun. More or less 2.5D like 6 was IIRC. Was kinda expecting it to be 3D like 8/9 but this works. On emulator it looks very much like a Wii game as far as resolution and clarity go. I had to try it on four different computers and each one had a different issue running the PSP emulator, until the fourth where everything worked well. Surprised I didn't play this back when I had a PSP, since I played Ys 1-3 on there and had the system for a while with nothing to play on it. This would have been a perfect fit.

Mainly playing it for the story to bridge the gap between 6 and 8 for myself. There isn't much so far, surprisingly. It does have what appears to be a deep customization system with equipment forging and whatnot, but I haven't even fooled with any of it yet because the game is a breeze on Easy with storebought weapons/armor and the levels you get from fighting everything along the way.

The dungeons are nice and simple, the music rocks...yeah, all in all I'd say it's worth checking out before 8/9 even if it isn't as good as those. It's very much a "scaled-down portable installment" that doesn't really compare to its console counterparts while being good for what it is.

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Yeah my review came off as a little overly critical but it was for sure a very fun game. The only difficulty I had was with the last boss for.... reasons.

Only a tad bit in to VIII on PS4 Pro now but it seems to occur directly after V and before VI. I’m also getting some bad graphical slow down when multiple skills are used at the same time. Anyways, only a couple hours in so we’ll see what happens. Still looking forward to IX.

Intrinsic said:

Yeah my review came off as a little overly critical but it was for sure a very fun game. The only difficulty I had was with the last boss for.... reasons.

Only a tad bit in to VIII on PS4 Pro now but it seems to occur directly after V and before VI. I’m also getting some bad graphical slow down when multiple skills are used at the same time. Anyways, only a couple hours in so we’ll see what happens. Still looking forward to IX.

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Anything I should look out for in Ys Seven as far as the last boss goes / anything else? I'm basically speedrunning the game. Gonna take more time with Ys 8 depending on how much time I've got until Feb 2nd.

Rajaah said:

Anything I should look out for in Ys Seven as far as the last boss goes / anything else? I'm basically speedrunning the game. Gonna take more time with Ys 8 depending on how much time I've got until Feb 2nd.

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Not really, only that it is the only point that requires you to split up and use each character on the field. I focused on using Dogi for Phase 1, Aisha Phase 2, and Adol Phase 3. And the only extra time I spent was farming mats with 3x speed on EMU for their ultimate weapon. Otherwise I didn’t min/max for EX Skill gain or SP gain. It wasn’t difficult exactly just I wasn’t used to the other characters and the Phase 1 was somewhat tedious.

About had it with Ys VIII. Every enemy has some sort or roll, dash, charge, or swoop that carries them through and away from you forcing you to chase them all over the field. It is irritating and not a fun enemy mechanic. The hurt box is also annoyingly larger than the model. Every enemy also applies some sort of status effect, poison, paralysis, bleed, darkness, making it almost necessary to stock all your consumables. Not a completely terrible thing but it requires way too many trips to the menu or switching out accessories. A minor annoyance.

No animation cancellations? The combat is way to arcade-y and action oriented to not allow flash cancellation mid combo. It wants to encourage skill use but you’re locked in the whole cycle and getting pummeled. This isn’t Dark Souls or Monster Hunter where attacks feel deliberate and weighted. It would feel almost perfect if there was just a little more ability to swap in and out of your attack + rolls / guards.

Terrain and traversal can be somewhat annoying. Fake walls preventing you from jumping off, sometimes actually designated by little lips on the ridge to indicate no falling, some not, some sort of. Little 2ft drops you can’t jump off of for... reasons?

All the little things only get on my nerves because it is, or should be, a very enjoyable game. But some of these decisions really eat at my ability to just have fun. Hopefully IX is better.

Intrinsic said:

About had it with Ys VIII. Every enemy has some sort or roll, dash, charge, or swoop that carries them through and away from you forcing you to chase them all over the field. It is irritating and not a fun enemy mechanic. The hurt box is also annoyingly larger than the model. Every enemy also applies some sort of status effect, poison, paralysis, bleed, darkness, making it almost necessary to stock all your consumables. Not a completely terrible thing but it requires way too many trips to the menu or switching out accessories. A minor annoyance.

No animation cancellations? The combat is way to arcade-y and action oriented to not allow flash cancellation mid combo. It wants to encourage skill use but you’re locked in the whole cycle and getting pummeled. This isn’t Dark Souls or Monster Hunter where attacks feel deliberate and weighted. It would feel almost perfect if there was just a little more ability to swap in and out of your attack + rolls / guards.

Terrain and traversal can be somewhat annoying. Fake walls preventing you from jumping off, sometimes actually designated by little lips on the ridge to indicate no falling, some not, some sort of. Little 2ft drops you can’t jump off of for... reasons?

All the little things only get on my nerves because it is, or should be, a very enjoyable game. But some of these decisions really eat at my ability to just have fun. Hopefully IX is better.

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I probably won't get to Ys 8 before Ys 9 because time isn't gonna permit it. So I'll be going 7-9-8. At least the story isn't super-important to follow in order. 8 sounds like it's got some issues. I'm really into the Souls style of attacks feeling deliberate/weighted. One of the reasons Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity wasn't really that enjoyable for me is that none of the attacks had any weight to them (in terms of causing enemy recoil or even controller vibrations). I'm looking forward to playing Monster Hunter World for this and other reasons.

Taking a detour from Ys 7 to finish up Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Pretty solid game, like a cross between a Persona and one of the South Park RPGs. Fairly basic like the latter, similar feeling to the former.

It was a bit of a bitch post and me just venting. It isn’t really all that bad. And the story is really good with some interesting side stuff and main stuff that isn’t purely chasing the world ending bad guy and killing it with the power of friendship. Well, there’s some power of friendship stuff, but it makes sense.

Been on and off all day with Ys IX. So really not that far in to it at all, just unlocked a couple extra city areas. Seems fun so far, a lot of similarity to VIII in the base building sorta way. Only complaint so far is that on PS4 Pro the outside city area performance is abysmal. Traversal would actually be a lot of fun with the rope and running up walls. But as it is it feels uncomfortable.

Wasn't able to finish Ys Seven (think I got about a third of the way) in time so I'm going to jump ahead to Ys IX. I'm playing them in such a weird order. Looks like it'll be IX->Seven->Celceta->VIII. No clue when I'll get to Origins since it's so massive, probably not for a while. Same goes for the first five in their original forms (only played remakes of those and started with 6)...

I've read that the city area has some major performance issues. I'll report back on how Ys IX runs on PS5 once I get going with it in a day or two.

Playing Ys IX now, midway through. It's pretty good. A couple things:

-The game is INSANELY easy. I started out on Normal and was barely getting scratched. On Easy maybe you're invincible, I don't know. Turned it up to Hard and was still rolling over the game, so I ended up going to Nightmare. From what I can tell, Nightmare is the real Normal mode, and Inferno/Lunatic are Hard/Very Hard, while everything below Nightmare are varying degrees of easy. Course, your mileage may vary, but keep in mind that I'm not that good at games. Just used to playing Souls-like games, maybe that's the issue.

-On PS5 there's zero lag in the town or anywhere else, and everything loads at warp speed. So far the PS5 has really just functioned as a "PS4 game enhancer" for me. 95% of what I play on it are PS4 games that are a lot better off than they were on my PS4 Pro.

-Midway through, I picked up a couple of DLC items (costumes for the hotter female characters, and accessory sets). The costumes are great, but do yourself a favor and don't buy any equipment sets. They completely trivialize the game. I'd probably have to set the game all the way up on Lunatic mode for it to be a challenge after equipping the DLC accessories. They absolutely trivialize everything, even bosses. Course, if you want to speed through the game, by all means. Though there's already Easy mode for that. Combine Easy with the DLC accessories and you might as well be playing Kirby's Epic Yarn or something.

The game is definitely a fun time, kinda reminds me of Trials of Mana except not as deep. Plays just like the earlier Ys games. Can't wait to go back and play the other recent ones (Seven, Origins, Celceta, VIII) and someday emulate the first five on TG16/SFC.

Question, what order should I play Origins and Celceta in? I don't mean chronological order of release or story. Just what suggestions do people have for which should be first? I got most of the way through Seven and I'll finish that off after IX. Leaning towards Celceta next after that because it looks a lot more interesting (and less drawn-out) than Origins, but I don't know.

Yeah I just finished IX tonight and need to do a few more things for Platinum. I got over the performance issues on PS4 Pro and enjoyed the outside stuff just fine. It does feel smaller than Seiren Isle, but maybe it is just different. It didn’t take away overall though.

Equipment wise I agree, having rate drop in party item was good because I didn’t need to take up accessories with bandit gloves and the other. Plus with Gift abilities I didn’t need to swap in climbing, swimming, other stuff. Just run fast, more money, and whatever else. Let me play around with accessories more. Also agree that the weapon system was a step back. XIII wasn’t a greatly rounded system or anything, neither was Seven, but IX had even less of a reason to craft. With the 2x Gold Sacrement I had 300k a few hours in. Mostly because you just don’t need to spend on anything. Then once you can trade shards for the few high end crafting things you may need, or purchase also with Gold.

Fishing, recipe, food was as you said easier (or non existent). Petal collecting was whatever, especially once you get Doll.

And also to agree, overall normal is extremely easy. Don’t think I used a healing consumable until like 40 hours in. But, I did think combat was more fun than VIII. No reason, just did to me. Everyone was cool to play and I cycled through to get the trophy for each one.

I really liked it though. Story was fine, nice tie ins to previous titles. Happy to have played it and will grab those last couple of trophies. Going through the last three back-to-back has been rewarding but ready for a change of pace and genre for the moment.

Played some more of Ys IX and it's really getting on my nerves now. Have to rant a bit.

-The frequent returns to the prison dungeon are annoying. Prisons are up there with sewers in terms of Do Not Want RPG destinations, and this game insists on putting me back in the prison dungeon every chapter.

-Adol looking like a completely different character in his normal form (yeah, I get that he's in disguise) and even a somewhat different character in his Monstrum form, for the entire game, really makes it feel like I'm not playing Ys. It's like if you got a new Zelda game and Link had purple hair for the entire game because he's in disguise. It wouldn't look much like a Zelda game or Link.

-Too much time spent trying to figure out what the game wants me to do next while I dodder around in town.

-The characters are annoying. White Cat won't shut up during battles. Hawk incessantly calls her "pussycat" even though she's like, a ten year old. Japan!

-There's way too much yapping and standing around. After a while I'm like "can I have a dungeon or something?"

-The game is so ridiculously easy. I guess you could crank up the difficulty to Nightmare/Inferno/Lunatic (I've got it on mere Hard mode), but I'm referring more to things like how if you fail a platforming section or lose a fight, the game instantly offers to just let you skip that area or weaken the boss that you lost to. Accessibility is all well and good but things like this cheapen the experience. Why bother strengthening my characters or micromanaging/optimizing when I can just skip anything that gives me a mild amount of resistance?

I'm still back and forth playing Ys Seven and Ys IX and at this juncture (roughly halfway through both) I have to say Seven is more fun. Just nonstop action in comparison.

Still looking for suggestions on which Ys to play next after these, between Origins and Celceta.

The Adol costume stuff bothered me also. Especially the Crimson King alternate outfit that was decidedly non-Crimson. Then his disguise form also not being Adol like you said was strange. And he talks a lot. Not just in exploring with the PoIs. I mean you could argue it is explained in game by the time you’re at the end, but still feels strange the whole game.

I didn’t get a lot of wondering what the game wanted me to do, but the forced side quests to build up Nox to unlock areas wasn’t as nice as just bouncing from quest to quest and moving the story. Some of the side stuff was good though and I didn’t mind the prison returns as much, but would have liked less of the forces “prison rescue” missions. The main plot prison stuff I mean I didn’t mind.

VIII was a more memorable game for me and the island had more character than the city.

Started Trails of Sky but may go back to Celceta or Origins just to do it.