Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished


The humble beginning of truly underappreciated RPG series.

After i finished Ark of Napishtim i decided to do marathon run for Ys series and Ys I is the first checkpoint for the marathon. I played the Chronicles version which are available in PSP Thanks to Xseed who translated this game along with all other Ys series recently. The story begins with the main protagonist, Adol Christin begin his first adventure in Esteria where he fights monsters and stuff while investigating the reasons behind the recent emergence of the monsters in the land which will make him famous and known as "Adol the Red". Throughout his first adventure, Adol will find books known as Book of Ys which has ties with the ancient lost land of Ys and will reveal the truth behind them once 6 of them are collected altogether.





The game gets a major makeover compared to the old series, all of the character illustrations has been redone up to modern standard. While the gameplay still remains intact to provide the taste of the classic for newcomers of the series with subtle enhancement. Lastly the music is remastered and i had to say the first series has awesome music already which explains why Ys series are really famous. While the playtime is rather short and level cap is 10 only, you will find the experience is really fulfilling.


The gameplay of the first 2 Ys are rather unique for Action RPG game. In this game the way to damage the enemy is by ramming Adol towards them. While this look simple if you ram recklessly you will find that you will die really soon. The trick is try to ram the opponent from sides rather than charging straight to their front. I find the mechanism is rather fun and Adol is easily the wall of death in the game.


Probably what makes this game is known for its hard reputation is due to the boss battle. You only had one chance to fight the boss as you will have only one life bar to fight them and there is no way to recover your life. While most of the boss are not that hard some of them are really hard to kill and the first boss is a wake up call how hard this game is. But it is still really fun nonetheless. 


This game starts the Damsel in distress antics of the Ys series where Adol will save a girl who randomly got kidnapped and the girl becomes some sort of romantic interest for Adol. In this game the damsel in distress is Feena who is mysterious girl imprisoned in a shrine. Feena is probably the most beautiful love interest of Adol because she is actually one of the twin goddess who watched over Ys. She will play important role in the next game.


  Near the end of the game Adol will eventually led to the infamous Darm Tower and probably spend almost half of the time in here. Darm Tower is used to be ancient tower which has the clue for lost land of Ys until the monsters overrrun the tower and none has been able to leave the tower alive.


In this game, weapons are really important as even you have high level you won't last long if you are not properly equipped. Just like other RPG there are Key items which allow you to progress through the game by collecting the. Some of the key items are annoying to get considering you will do alot of backtracking.



The final boss of this game is Dark Fact, the dark sorcerer who is the source behind the recent incidents in Esteria. You will need to equip the Silver Equipment for this fight as it will be the hardest boss fight ever if you don't do so. His attacks are pretty much like Bullet Hell game pattern which is quite easy to dodge is you are good with them. He occassionally destroy the platform which will cause a gameover if you happen to stand on one of it.


As for the ending it is quite cliffhanger as there is direct sequel of the game. Shortly after defeating Dark Fact, Adol will find that light engulfing the Darm Tower and he is carried to somewhere else which will be his next adventure. I would recommend to get this game in PSP as it has the best version by far out of all Ys Remake. I will be writing review for Ys 2 soon as well

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