Going into writing my thoughts on this game, I have to remember this is an old game...remade. I'm surprised by how short it was, but I was also very dumb at the start and didn't know you had to equip the sword you got for free.

But as a game, it was short and fairly simple. Fighting via running into your enemies did get a bit of getting used to, and once you get a hang of things, regular enemies aren't too challenging to handle. Bosses, on the other hand, are horrendous in this game. From the phantom who warps around, only giving you a moment to hit him while also avoiding long bars of blue fire to the damn vampire bat who is only able to be hit for a moment before he goes back to his bat phase.

The final boss is also pretty rough too. He's just a bullet hell boss who flies around and can kill you easily with either the vanishing floor or the overload of projectiles flooding the battlefield. He also doesn't appear at all in the flesh until literally the end of the game. We hear about him from a few NPCs, but never actually see him.

I do like some of the characters, though. But I think they've given away too easily the identity of our two blue haired ladies way too quickly when you put two and two together.

I will get around to playing the second game, since it's the second part of this story, but I'm not sure when.

as a person who knows absolutely fucking nothing about ys as a whole series i ended up doing what i do for a lot of series around which is just starting with the first game and while lacrimosa of dana is looking at me as the most appetizing entry in the series i just really wanted to play this one in order since it wouldve been the best way to do it in my eyes

did i regret it ? not really i genuinely do think this game has a lot to offer mainly due to the fact that its a remaster/remake/port of something i still have no idea actually i didnt do any study on this series i just went with the flow and played this one whatever

it sure as hell got the skeleton of an old rpg but i dont know what they did to me but the bump system was such a fucking blast ??? it wears thin after a while but during the first hours of the game when i actually realised how this worked i swear it was so fucking funny just to be running around and bumping into enemies and seeing them EXPLODE in front of my eyes literally most fun ive had with an old snes ish title secret of mana can only learn from this like forreal i wasnt a huge fan of this combat system in the beginning but it definitely grew on me pretty fast and i was left with some of the best fast paced action rpgs ive ever played im not joking here the bump system stole my heart sure i still have no idea how it actually works since theres a lot of nuance here in the “hit them diagonally pal” and most of the time i was actually confused as to WHAT this off centered attack actually was which led me to die in many many different situations during the beginning of the game it gets progressively easier after leveling up and getting some new equipment but the weird nature of this system shows its seams after a while

what surrounds this gameplay loop actually gets tiring after a while due to the fact that most of the other elements of the game arent supporting it the enemies are pretty samey after you get the best equipment you got rings with different uses that can be switched for each situation and you can use some objects that give some nuance to the gameplay but apart from this theres not a lot here the exploration is pretty bare bones theres like 2 towns a couple dungeons and some hidden chests with actual good stuff but apart from this nothing truly groundbreaking and it was pretty weird that the game stopped my leveling right at 10 (and completely annihilated any interest to actually kill enemies I encountered) which is the max just so that i wouldnt be overleveled for bosses that would fuck my ass up like why would you NOT make me overleveled for these insidious bosses whatever im not a game designer i wont ever learn the answer to this i guess its an rpg i should be free to overshoot my characters levels so that i would breeze through the game (not you fire emblem) and also fuck that final boss im not gonna honestly spend more time honing my abilities just so that I could beat an unfair shmup final boss

as for the story in it of itself it doesnt get too convoluted but it sure has some interesting story beats and plot twists here and there that i wasnt expecting but the general skeleton is poor adol gets stranded on a continent and here he tries to find out what happened to the ancient land of ys and why the two goddesses vanished STOP this is the stuff the game is working around and most of the time youre just gonna go from town quest to town quest so there's not really a lot of implications in the lore department but I gotta say I'm in love with feena she's my sweet little baby I love amnesiac girls and I'm pretty sure this game as a whole just acts as a prologue to ys II since the story just ends abruptly not giving any real insight to the story implications but I will be tuning in for the next installment since I really want to know what the fuck happens since it should be a direct sequel

art style is cool and looks like some 80s anime and the in game sprites remind me of those rpg maker horrors so there's that not really the most groundbreaking art direction ive ever seen in my life but it brings the whole idea home and also for some reason this has such a fucking banger soundtrack ??? like it's so out of place and awesome that it honestly shocked me a little for how good it is like the “battle” themes are honestly legendary and this one absolutely stole my heart the drums hit a little too hard and the electric guitar fucks everyone up in here I was eargasming the entire time

so ughhh all in all that was a nice good 10 hours of my life maybe with the prior knowledge of the later installments I wouldve liked this more bit still pretty excited to explore the rest of the series from here feena wait for me

WAIT WAIT WAIT THIS SONG TOO ???? OH LOOOOORD MASTERPIECE

Honestly for such a short game I had fun, it was simple. being a kind of experimental obtuse take at an early action rpg,

story isn't anything to write home about but it does give you hints in the gameplay including how to beat the final boss its very simple yet effective design.

most of the leveling up part of the rpg, feels like the preparation for the actual challenge you are going to face at the end, because the level cap is 10 which surprised me, but in that context of it being you getting the equipment you need to go forth made it kind of cute in a way.

speaking of equipment I do enjoy how the game handles it including a neat little twist on the best gear in the game that makes you super strong, which again ties back to the very small story you have in this game intertwining with the gameplay.

I don't want to overhype this game or anything if you it is super short and unless you are buying the I and II collection it may not feel like your money's worth, and if you don't like games that are that weird combination of being hard and old in that aforementioned obtuse way of game design, you won't like it just play a later game in this series,

But if you like old weird games like me you'll have a fun albeit short time

*I played the PSP version as I had problems with black screen occurring in my files for Ys I.
Ys I is a pretty fun game for about 75% of the time. The bumb combat system that was created due to the lack of an action button was weird, but easy to get used to. Exploring Esteria felt fun due to how quick it was and the banging ost from Falcom Sound Team. While it had some crypticness in terms of finding the next objective, there were clues that did hint on what you were supposed to be doing. The only part that was definitely cryptic was at the last part of the game. Also, the game was cryptic in the items not being usable in boss battles. While the plot and characters are simple, the lore and mysteries in Esteria were intincing enough and the upgraded art does give some characters to shine. The biggest flaw of the game were the bosses. Most of them were inoffensive to mildly annoying t best. However, a peculiar bat boss and the final boss were the most frustrating parts of the game. Especially the final boss as his fireballs and destroying floors were terrible game design. I salute all players whom beat him on PC as his fire balls are faster than on PSP. Just for those two bosses alone, the game falls to a 3.5/5. Despite those bumbs, the game is still fun and short to beat (if you know what you're doing). Easy recommendation for anyone trying out Ys for the first time.

probably just one of the best games ever made, so perfect and beautiful in its simple construction that as soon as the credits rolled I considered replaying it all the way through right then and there. The movement and combat are so incredibly fun that even the notoriously difficult boss fights never become actually annoying. The strange pacing, where you'll be max level halfway through the game and the entire second half is just one big dungeon, makes for great fast-paced progression as you blaze through the early areas and a very rewarding sense that you are now using everything you learned and acquired in the first half to push through the vast expanse of Darm Tower in the second. Despite the game's short length and simplistic story there are a lot of fun little details and missable moments here, and across its 5-10 hour runtime it feels more fleshed out and enjoyable than some RPGs do at 100+. The visuals in the "Complete" version I played are very pretty, you get some nice touches like the shadows of clouds drifting overhead or seeing Darm Tower looming in the distance in the backgrounds of some higher areas. Combined with the soundtrack at times it gave me that same classic fantasy anime vibe you get from something like Record of Lodoss War. I know there were OVA adaptations of these first two Ys games back in the day so I'll have to check them out at some point. The OST as a whole is great, I've listened to the (already incredible) PC-88 soundtrack a lot and the new tracks here are very faithful reinterpretations of the original melodies. There are just too many great tracks to even bother listing my favorites but hearing this one playing over the credits after finally beating Dark Fact is one of the most cathartic moments I've had playing a videogame in a long time lol. I honestly can't think of a single problem I have with Ys I. Genuinely perfect on just about every level. The bump combat is maybe the single greatest innovation in the history of videogames so it's a big disappointment to learn that a lot of the later games abandon it entirely. I'll still play them though, and I've seen a lot of people saying Ys II is better than this one so I'll have to start it right away.

Porra eu não tenho muito oq dizer desse jogo sem ser que ele é falho e é ótimo por conta disso, comparar ele com Chrono Trigger (os dois jrpgs q eu zerei a pouco) é bizarro, pq enquanto Chrono é objetivamente melhor o Ys me pegou mais, principalmente por ter muita coisa diferente e esquisita. O sistema de batalha é tipo carrinho bate bate, q eu achava q ia ser terrivel, mas não é bem divertido, as musicas são ABSURDAS e os bosses também são bem divertidos.

Agora ele não é perfeito, bem longe disso, tem que farmar bastante, é um jrpg antigo ent ele é bem críptico com oq tu precisa fazer, recomendo usar um guia, mas por conta dessas falhas ele me chamou a atenção, um jogo tão unico não se vê toda hora, ele é meio que o meu Zelda 2 dos rpgs.

Prefiro mil vezes algo unico e falho doq uma obra "perfeita" nada corajosa.

I stopped playin during the final dungeon. Not because it was so bad but the whole game is bad. Look i know the game is a remake of a 1980s game but damn could you add some QoL improvements or something? The way level scaling is handled is so poor, one level makes such a huge difference that you might have to grind. The bosses are all bad, every single one of them, without exception. These are some of the most poorly designes bosses ive seen in my entire gaming history. I know the remakes want to keep the intergrity of the old game. My point is that these old games should just stay in the past. The people who like these shitty old games will just play the old pc versions instead of this. New players will play this and get pissed off at the nauseating dungeon design with NO MAP. Confusing ways that you have to progress, meaningless side content and shit that you think is side content that is actually mandatory. The game does this thing near the end where they check if you have good enough armor for the dungeon. You have to find these fucking chests in these awful dungeons in order to progress. Honestly, they shouldve just built a new game off of the old one corpse. Again, the bosses are inexcusable, these "things" shouldve been deleted from the passages of time. I will say that the music kinda slaps. Its so incredibly out of place but i dont care, its cool as fuck. The music is why i give this game a 3 star rating and not a 2.