This is apparently the black sheep of the franchise, but I love the fact that they dumped the stupid bump combat from the first two, and the side scrolling works pretty well. What I don't love is the amount of grinding this requires to clear what would otherwise be a relatively short game.

The story is pretty self contained which makes the entire adventure feel very localized and compact. Music as usual is nicely done, and the visuals are also decent minus some annoying parallax in the original PC-88 release. I'd say its my favorite Ys game out of the first three just because of the change in combat, but it was too lacking in other areas to rank among the elites of the genre.

After finishing Ys I & II, I went straight to the sequel. I watched a let’s play of this game well over a decade ago, and that was actually probably my first exposure to Ys as a franchise. It didn’t look super incredible then, so I’ve never given it that much thought in the time since, but I figured since I was already thinking about Ys (and this is also a game my partner quite likes) that I might as well track down a way to play it and finally experience this game myself. It took me around 5 or so hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware.

Ys III takes place two years after the first Ys, with Adol going off with Dogi (a minor character from the first Ys) on more adventures around the world. Eventually, a fortune teller gives Dogi a disastrous fortune about his hometown of Redmont, and the two set off there at once. With such ominous beginnings, Adol quickly finds himself on a quest to save not just Redmont but all of Felghana from the great evil that lies just beneath its surface. Once again, this is a relatively early 90’s action/adventure game, so it’s not the best thing in the world, but we’re already seeing good steps from Ys I & II. The total cast is significantly smaller than that of those games, and those who are here generally have relatively far more active roles in the story instead of just being glorified dialogue flag triggers for Adol. It’s hardly going to give most SquareSoft games a run for their money, of course, but we’re taking firm steps in the right direction, and it’s a story I thought was good fun.

The actual gameplay of Ys III could hardly be more different while still being in the same action/adventure genre. Dead and buried is the old staple of bump combat, as now not only does Adol fight by swinging his sword with the attack button, but we’re not even a top-down game anymore! Ys III is a sidescrolling action/adventure game in the vein of something like Castlevania II or Zelda II, with everything from towns to dungeons navigated like that and having no overworld to speak of. This is sort of a double-edged sword. On the more negative end is that sidescrollers just have a lot less literal space to work with as adventure games. The world feels quite small compared to Ys I & II (even though it’s not terribly bigger or smaller), and the level design ends up feeling quite unimpressive as well.

On the other hand, however, I honestly far prefer the gameplay in this to the gameplay of Ys I & II. While the bosses still aren’t amazing and a lot of enemies are quite simple and similar to one another, needing to jump, duck, and swing your sword to fight stuff means that combat has far more depth, and I found it far more fun as a result. Sure, a lot of bosses are still a matter of mulch or be mulched, that more active element means you actually feel more accomplished for taking a boss down quick compared to the bump combat equivalent of just having vindication that you did enough grinding to see this through. Hit detection (especially on the penultimate and final bosses) is a bit wonky at times, but this game at the very least continues to have the same save anywhere system that the earlier Ys games has, so getting nuked down by a boss is still just a matter of entering the room and trying again until your strategy is more sound.

This game still has levels to grind for, sure, but the relative length of this game being shorter also comes with the levels being far faster to grind for too. I did maybe a combined hour or hour and a half of grinding in this (with the owls in the ruins being a particularly great place to reach max level quickly), and after that it was all smooth sailing. This game even has better signposting than the first two did as well, thankfully, and I didn’t get lost or need to look up where to go a single time~. Ys III is overall still a bit on the easy side (much like Ys I & II were if you kept on top of grinding), but the overall play style of this was something I ended up enjoying much more despite how much smaller an adventure this is.

Though we’re on a SNES and therefore lack the storage capacity for the voice acting or CD-quality sound that a PC Engine can boast, the presentation is still as good as ever. The graphics are a bit simple compared to some other SFC games, but environments are still nice and colorful, and enemies especially are very pretty and well designed. Though I’ve been told that other versions (such as the PCE CD version, naturally) have better music, the SFC is still a very capable machine, and this is still an Ys game, so the music still rocks as much as ever even though the gameplay has changed so much.

Verdict: Recommended. This is a game that I don’t think is honestly that much better than Ys Books I & II on paper, but the execution is done so much better that it ends up being much easier to recommend as a result. If you don’t mind a bit of jank and a bit of grinding at the start, this is a good fun action/adventure 16-bit adventure game. It’s not the best thing on the system, for sure, but it still manages to be good to play with good music, and it’ll make a fun thing to go through in a weekend if this is a retro genre you’re interested in (as I so very much am).

I played the SNES version, I think I made a lapse in my judgment
The bosses were either boring easy or literally hell, and after reaching max level in Illburns Ruins then the bosses just got more and more annoying (except Garland was fine bc Time Ring go behind him for free hits... well until I get hit and get 2HKO yeah)
Valestein Castle just sucked, the nightcore (pitched up) version of the song and the traps that killed you in 2 hits were very fun
Galbalan made me use multiple save states... 21 of them to be precise. Even then, it took 28 minutes. That fight just sucked.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Yep, the unloved bastard child of the Ys series. It’s really not that bad of a game, but it’s just not an Ys game by any means, aside from the fact that Adol is in it. It’s kind of like Zelda II, except Wanderers from Ys is actuallly good. Anyways, the game takes on a side-scrolling perspective, and you have to swing your sword at stuff (which, if you’re not familiar with the Ys series, is actually a pretty big change), and you get your ass kicked a lot. Maybe you have to go around and waste tons and tons of time leveling up, but Falcom could’ve at least given you an easier way to replenish HP. In order to do so (without using any valuable Herb) you have to go outside the cave, and then your health gradually refills while outside. Then you go back inside. Which is pretty goddamn annoying! Okay, it’s really not that bad, but.. well, you’ll find out in a second.

The MSX version here either has a ton of slowdown, or all my emulators are just whacked. I’ve got to say, though, the tradeoff here is almost worth it, because the graphics are simply marvelous. Lots of colors, parallax scrolling… and a ton of slowdown. Oh well.