Reviews from

in the past


Played this as part of Ys Book 1 & 2 but I don't have the desire to finish 2 right now :/

At a time when every RPG was simulating the grand adventures, rag-tag parties and obtuse mechanisms of table-top games, Ys is shockingly homely, meditative and streamlined. A short jog through the woods hiding in your backyard. It's just two towns, a couple adjacently-connected mini-dungeons, and a back-half set inside a giant tower. Although it has to commit to the 'monsters are becoming more dangerous lately' bit to justify the natural aggression of enemies, the conflict is archival instead of actively present; an ancient evil you seal for good, rather than a ravenous and militant force. Conversations are up-close and intimate with detailed character portraits, the menu-hopping grind is substituted for raw movement that Falcom themselves described as 'popping bubbles', and the game ends with Adol being forcibly teleported out of Esteria, his visiting time no more than a fleeting vision. These trendsetting quirks make this a tender and seminal must-play. But these same strengths are a mask to unfortunately bad dungeon design, bosses that range from punching bags to torture, and deathly repetitive sprites and tilemaps.

It's the late 80s right? Like, almost the 90s really. The Legend of Zelda, and other Nintendo and Nintendo adjacent titles, are thriving on an aesthetic of minimal abstraction, which gives them a certain absurdist charm and a kind of timeless and ageless quality. Like, Mario is a plumber that jumps on turtles and stuff, and no one even knows what the hell Link is doing. In the world of Nintendo-aesthetics there's no space for logic or urbanism, there's just a dude living in a cave that's like "here, have a sword", and that is, and has always been, kinda beautiful.

On the other end of the spectrum, PC RPGs and dungeon crawlers were presenting aesthetics deeply rooted in fantasy novels and D&D, with the latter connection made stronger by their mechanical density. These were clearly aimed at a vaguely more mature audience, and every character looked like either Conan the Barbarian or Gandalf.

The original Ys kind of lived in between those aesthetics. Way more concrete and "realistic" than TLoZ, but way more streamlined and simplistic than most PC RPGs of the time. Its aesthetics and tone are naive and direct in a way that almost lays bare the absurd framings that make the foundations of the RPG genre. Like, where TLoZ is the rich inner world of a child playing pretend, Ys: The Vanished Omens is a passerby looking at that child and only seeing an idiot who's waving a stick around. You play it and you can't help but think that it's kind of weird that most RPGs, no matter how mature and complex, are fundamentally built on a foundation of us playing pretend that we're warriors on some silly quest.

I'm not really going anywhere with this really, but yeah. I don't know why we're so obsessed with medieval times honestly.

Anyhow, this is a pretty fun RPG with fairly streamlined mechanics. It has nothing too obtuse on it, and the progression is quite satisfying. Honestly, it has aged quite well. Someone could have released it in the 2010s as an Indie game (capital I indie), with some obnoxious tagline like "Finally we're streamlining boring RPGs with the innovative mechanic of bumping into things", and it would have been a modern critical darling.

(Ok, the level design of the dungeons is a bit ass, but that was sort of the style at the time)

Playing this with having more appreciation for where the Ys series would ultimate go honestly helped me enjoy this game a good bit more. It also helps that the Chronicles remake on PSP is actually playable (unlike the DS version I originally played), even if it feels a bit zoomed in.

It's a very no frills game that really benefits from you talking to everyone. Combat's simple. The story's simple, although it feels just like a setup to Ys II. It's really short. Underneath that, it still has this charm that comes with being one of the first action RPG's/JRPG's (yeah it technically ticks both boxes). With the only three games I've beaten being 1,2, and 8 (though I don't count 2 yet because I played it in such a godawful way), it's surreal to see where Ys started.

Also this game has some of the most obnoxious boss design I have ever seen. The only two bosses that were decent were the centipede and the mantis, and the centipede was just overly simple. The vampire was a painful fight due to its ungodly small window of vulnerability, and Dark Fact is just purely bullshit. I cannot understate how terrible that fight is when you actually play it on decent hardware. The other three bosses kinda suck, but are nowhere near as egregious.

I've warmed up to Ys 1. It's nothing special, and it has some awful bosses, but it's a really solid foundation to build up from.

I know this dude who played this game on PC-88 and thinks it’s the best version. Better than the PC-98 version that has better readability. Dude even thinks the OST on PC-88 is better than PC Engine! Heretic!

Played as part of Ys I & II Eternal on PC.
A nice beginning for a good saga, but today feels very dated.


A short blast of all the good stuff you want from a JRPG, delivered to you in a few hours instead of hundreds. A pretty by-the-numbers chosen one/prophecy story provides the backdrop for this mad fast paced adventure that has amazing music and surprisingly fun "bump" combat that makes you feel like you're running enemies over in some sort of deathmobile. I especially enjoyed the boss battles, which have this pretty unique style in that you're trying to work out the safest way to bump into them, rather than avoid them. It's neat.

I love a simple JRPG with systems that you can break and become OP and Ys has you one-shotting almost everything you see within half an hour. I had a good time with this.

Great game with great final boss and great music.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

Yet another of the 21352346 ports of Ys. And I can say with some authority that this is definitely NOT the best of them. The graphics look really old, the music’s not great, but the gameplay is still the good ol’ Ys oldskewl that’s kept us coming back for twenty-some years. If you didn’t know, combat in Ys involves running into your enemy. The only way that you can attack the enemy and not get hurt in return is if you are a half-tile off in either direction. Or, if the enemy’s not facing you, of course. It’ll make sense when you play, I hope.

Boas músicas, bons visuais, boa história e excelentes chefes, porém, a gameplay é um tanto falha em alguns quesitos:

1: A limitação de 10 níveis é péssima, você demora para evoluir e para de evoluir varias horas antes do fim do jogo, pareceu muito mais um recurso colocado por conveniência do que realmente uma mecânica positiva.

2: O inventario truncado e sem poder vender itens é algo bem incomodo, ainda mais considerando que meses antes havia o Dragon Quest 2 que tinha um gerenciamento de inventario bom.

Conclusão: Os chefes são o destaque do jogo, realmente gostei de vários. Eram desafiadores mas não impossíveis, foram muito bem pensados. A história é interessante, tem um worldbuilding acima da média e um bom final. Só é 6 por causa daquelas falhas na gameplay.

Bumpbumpitybump! Fun game for its time ,and pretty unique! But I played Chronicles+ first, and enjoyed it immensely more, won't ever play this one again, but it was fun to try. Fantastic ost!

This game is one of the oldest action RPGs and is an excellent proof of concept. Pros include unique gameplay, cool (for the time) voice acted cutscenes, and a decently nice story. Unfortunately it does have some annoying attributes like the bat boss and being easy to get lost in at times.

Pensar que isso saiu em 87 é loucura, envelheceu muito bem graficamente, até hj é impressionante. Pixel art fantástica, cutscenes animadas, DUBLAGEM e uma OST espetacular. O fato de ser um jogo de PC Engine, permitiu Ys ser um JRPG mais avançado que seus concorrentes.

Claro que isso não impede Ys de ser ultrapassado em gameplay, level design confuso, dungeons que são um completo labirinto e um sistema de ataque onde vc basicamente ataca e anda ao mesmo tempo, além de se tornar chato depois de horas de grinding obrigatório, como todo JRPG de 80 pede. Em dificuldade, é um caso estranho, geralmente os JRPGs da época costumam ser infernais de díficeis, ou seja 0 balanceamento, já Ys, é fácil em boa parte do seu tempo, tirando a última dungeon, onde vai de muito fácil pra muito difícil, o que o torna desbalanceado nos dois sentidos kkkkkk.

Em narrativa, não trás nada além do feijão com arroz de uma obra de fantasia padrão, mas tem uma lore interessantíssima, o que por si só, já torna Ys um destaque em seu gênero na época.

No fim foi uma experiência proveitosa, apesar de eu ter sofrido um pouco.

(NOTE: I played the 1989 DOS version which to my understanding is a pretty faithful port aside from some worse graphics and unlistenable PC speaker music^, so I feel like I got as close to the real deal as was necessary here)

Definitely an improvement on HYDLIDE's foundations for a successful action RPG. Feels like the mission statement was "make a version of THE TOWER OF DRUAGA that doesn't actively hate the player", and in that, they were quite successful. I was impressed by the smooth, intuitive quest design and especially some of the dungeon and overworld graphics. Each area was totally distinct in aesthetic as opposed to the homogenous blocky cave/tower/castle/dungeons of, say, DRAGON QUEST, and this kept me going just to see what was next.

The story is a little repetitive and muddled despite its simplicity, and there are some of the usual annoyances of RPGs of this vintage (mazes, unclear stats, dungeon backtracking), but it's very playable and I actually found the infamous 'bump' combat kind of intuitive and nice! Looking forward to the rest of these (and the remakes of this one).

^Even an Ys noob like me knows that the music is, like, half of this series' deal, so obviously I had to listen to it separately, as it wasn't really in this version. Honestly it's so good, the DOS port should probably get one star MAXIMUM for failing to replicate it. Like, if you can't do the music, just don't make the game. Give up. Port something else.

Ys I bump system gave a unique, seamless flow to combat that distanced itself from its turn-based peers. Despite its short length, it manages to pack fairly memorable characters within a well-paced story, an outlier in a JRPG generation full of bland clones.