So, tell me, have you heard the name of Adol Christin? Truthfully, until a year or so ago I hadn’t heard of this legendary warrior. In fact, I am sure that many people haven’t heard exactly about Adol or the Ys franchise. However, Nihon Falcom, known for both Ys and the Trails franchise, plan to get this remedied with this remaster of the third installment.
Where Every Good Story Begins
Ys Memorie: The Oath in Felghana follows Adol Christin and his friend Dogi, as they travel to the land of Felghana Dogi’s homeland. However, all isn’t well as Dogi and Adol find a young girl in trouble along the road. This girl, once saved, reveals herself to be Dogi’s childhood friend Elena, who explains that monsters have been showing up.
Immediately, it becomes clear that Dogi’s hometown, Redmont, has been caught in a political standoff with the new lord of the land. And now Dogi and Adol must find a way to save Felghana by quelling the monsters that have attacked the peaceful mining town, including felling the lord that has somehow summoned them.
A Hero Arrives
The story is relatively short as players will be able to get a hundred percent save file in around 12 hours. For instance, a blind play through only using a minimal amount of guides to make sure I didn’t miss anything took around thirteen hours. Which seems short at first but cutscenes and the like only took about around 30 percent of that time.
Each new story beat would happen as I beat each dungeon and any time before that wouldn’t initiate a state change of the world. So, most of the time spent with the game will be exploring the dungeons and Felghana.
Despite the relatively short time with some of the characters the writing is very strong and I quickly formed attachments to the main characters. This was particularly strong with Elena, who is the main focus of the story along with her brother Chester, who serves as an antagonist.
The main issue that some may have with Ys is that Adol himself does not speak. His dialog, when he is implied to speak, is instead told to the player through a narrator. Otherwise, Dogi will be interacting with most of the other characters when he is around.
This can be seen as slightly antiquated in this more modern times. However, this does give Adol a more taciturn persona that can bounce off of Dogi in the implied dialog, imparting a very fun dynamic to the player. Which would be lost on having Adol speak any sort of dialog.
Into the Belly of the Beast
The Felghana’s game play is an Action RPG with a single attack that has context depending on whether Adol is running, jumping, or falling. This makes the battles simple but varied enough to make every fight feel actually worth it. Which is important as there are many moments in the game where players will need to grind, especially on a hundred percent run.
Enemies have specific weaknesses that players must abuse either to a certain magic spell, which Adol wields the power of three different spells that can be powered up. This is frequently used to help each dungeon feel different from each other and can be used to solve some very simple puzzles.
These abilities; a fireball, a charge attack, and a whirlwind slash, are designed to keep combat fresh and provide many ways of traversing through the terrain. The whirlwind slash in particular I found the most helpful as I would use it to cut down my foes and fly through the air to bridge certain gaps.
The real issue with combat is that Adol can get strong fast and eventually killing enemies turns into spamming the same style of attacks repeatedly or dodging everything to reach the end of whatever path the player is on. Despite this, I never grew tired of the combat and instead sought the best path through to dodge and kill enemies as needed.
I was instead attempting to find ways to speed through the game and the combat in a way that speed runners do. In fact, even thinking about it now I am itching to go back to the game and try to find a faster path or clear the game on a much lower level. There is a certain satisfaction of the game and the feel of even moving around in the over world.
We Were Born To Explore
Speaking of the dungeons, each one are about an hour in length and features some very different terrain ranging from a mine to an ancient ruin of a cult. These dungeons are pretty linear with some secrets that players can either return for or attempt to grab after a first run of the dungeon.
These all feel very well and varied in environment where each dungeon has vastly different enemies of different strength. I found that the beginning of each dungeon would be the roughest part but as I explored, killed, and looted enemies would become easier until my skill would far surpass what I was fighting.
There was only one or two dungeons that felt mildly bad to go through, mostly to do with ice physics. This issue clears up once a certain item is obtained designed to make the dungeon much easier to through. I’ll be honest, at first I was annoyed about this dungeon and impatient with the ice physics and enemies that called the dungeon home.
It was only upon reflection that I realized this approach is actually really good design. The dungeon do not give away what to use unlock other games that would instantly shine a light onto the solution for each puzzle. It forced me to search, fumble, and overcome roadblocks in a way that felt organic as if it was attempting to make me an adventurer.
So, that by the end of Adol’s journey I felt prepared to face down the big bad along with Adol as each hurdle we overcame together made sure that we were prepared to face this final trial together.
Slightly Rough Around the Edges
Ys Memoire: The Oath of Felghana is based off of a PC remake of an SNES game that previously came out in 2005. This means that there is no new content that wasn’t in the previous release that players can play on the PC or even the PSP. However, when you take a good look at the visuals, they do feel a bit dated at certain points.
This is mostly seen in the pre-rendered anime cut scenes. These are well animated scenes, but sometimes it looks like they’ve have been compressed for a format that required a higher level of compression. I even managed to obtain an old copy of the PSP version of Felghana, so that I could compare both sides.
I am notoriously bad at noticing certain visual aspects without seeing a comparison between the two in real time. For instance, I can’t really see the difference between 1080p and 4K or even 60 vs 120 frames per second. However, even I could see a clear dip in quality of the animated cutscenes when having them side by side.
The character models look older, but have been up-scaled and the environments look really good on my TV as I played. So, it is a shame that there wasn’t bigger effort put in to make the pre-rendered scenes shine in a way that they haven’t been able to before.
Completing the Legend
Ys Memorie: The Oath of Felghana is a fantastic game with only a few visual missteps that are noticeable in a bad way. However, Adol’s adventure in Felghana is charming with characters that stand out and a story that rises above other RPGS.
Fans of Ys and newcomers to the franchise will be able to fall in love with Adol, Dogi, Elena, and yes, even Chester. There is so much to experience and I am excited to go back in and attempt to save Felghana one more time.
Joys
- Characters are easy to get attached to
- Combat is fluid and meant to be heavily optimized
- Dungeon exploration is nuanced
Cons
- Some of the Visuals are lack luster
- Only a few combat moves is needed to complete the game
