Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: DotEmu, game review, Ys, YS: Origin

Going Back A Decade For Hack-N-Slash Fun With 'Ys Origin'

DEVELOPER: DotEmu
REVIEW PLATFORM: PS4
RELEASED: 2/21/17

The Ys series has had a rich history going back to the late 80s. In fact, 2017 is the game's 30th anniversary, which you'd think DotEmu would be playing up more, especially with the announcement of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana set to hit this fall. But that isn't stopping the company from giving us some bonus treats this year, the first of them being a re-release of Ys Origin. The game was originally released in Japan in 2006 and only made it's way to the rest of the world after a painstaking translation process that finally saw the light on Windows and Steam in 2012. But this week the game was released on PS4 in North America and Europe, with a Vita release coming on May 30.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it takes place long before any of the other titles and doesn't feature the primary character of the series, Adol Christin, since his story is very different from the one you're embarking on. The story focuses on a group of warriors who head off to find out what happened to the two primary gods in the series, Reah and Feena, who are somewhere in The Devil's Tower. You have two playable characters, Hugo Fact and Yunica, each with their own styles of fighting that have their own bonuses and minuses. You want Hugo if you like ranged attacks and Yunica if you like short range hack-n-slash.

The game is primarily centered inside the tower, no towns or anything beyond the doors to visit. There's no map to guide you, which means you're running off of memory. The floor plans stay relatively the same in groups, which is an interesting choice for level design as you can tell how far you've come in the game and roughly what boss you're at based on the way each area is designed. The rooms change from being your standard castle appearance to covered in flames or being in the middle of a desert, which you can attribute to the place being magical (they're really just putting outdoor levels indoors, but it's fine, it works). As you progress you'll run into enemies who, without spoilers here, explain what's happened to the gods as you try to find them. You'll also encounter members of your fighting party who went ahead of you and ran into trouble, some of them becoming unlockable characters after you beat the game.

The gameplay itself is smooth and gorgeous, especially for one made at its time. Sure, there was probably a lot of stuff cleaned up over the past decade to make the game look and flow better on a current gen console, but the difference between what I remember playing in 2012 and what I have here in 2017 is pretty similar. But that's not to say the game needed cleaning, in fact, this world is a nice throwback to action RPGs that were being released at the time on the PS2, even though this was a PC game. The feeling of a 3D world on a 2D plane works well for a game of this era and makes for a unique dungeon crawling experience. The nice bonus to the design is that you can roam freely through the tower after you unlock a save point, so there's room to mess around and explore after you achieve certain things.

There's a flow to Ys Origin that feels natural as you make your way through the various dungeons in the tower. The combat is fantastic, as you'll be greeted by enemies who have their own challenges in approach and damage. As you slay them off you'll be rewarded in XP and points, along with the occasional treasure chest lying about. You'll be able to upgrade your weapons and armor as you level up, but the key to doing so is fighting hoards of enemies and taking down bosses, so you'll be farming for a bit. The bosses are the one piece of the game that I loved and loathed, as they are some of the most tedious fights you'll encounter in the game. They are designed beautifully and these are some of the best bosses I've ever had a chance to tackle as they make for a great challenge. But a boss should be an extended battle, not a 30-minute commitment, and these are the moments where the game can drag. As a side note, if you're a hardcore fan of the Ys series, you'll dig some of the bosses and references to them as you go.

Another tedious factor is finding ore to upgrade your gear. It's spread throughout the tower and you have to do a bit of searching and battling to snag it. Once you have it, you have to return all the way back to the first floor to do your upgrades and then all the way back to where you were just to find more. It would have been nice to have some way of doing this on-the-go, and I get that this is the game's option of making you "return to town," but it becomes a chore after the fifth time and feels like it's impeding your progress. One final thing that kind of bothered me was the cutscenes and how they haven't been given a proper retreatment. They're still the classic look of the original, but that's part of the problem as they haven't been updated or cleaned up, and in fact, a couple of them glitched out on me. If you're putting a game to PS4 from a decade ago, you should expect to see some problems in development, but not in the final product. It's a shame these weren't redone because they add flavor to the game that many other Ys titles lack.

Overall, Ys Origin is an amazing game in the series, and a must-play if you're a fan. There are some rougher parts to the title that can be annoying and slow you down, but that's more of a nitpicking aspect that every player will approach and enjoy differently. If you're a fan of action RPGs, it's at least worth a try as you can beat the main game in a couple day (or hours if you're a badass). But there are time trials, unlockables, harder difficulty settings and other additions that give the game great replay value. This one is definitely worth checking out.

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