Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim

Bueno, lo que flojeaba el Oath este es mejor, pero flojea en otras cosas que el Oath tiene bien. Los bosses un poco aburridos a excepción de los del final.

La música bastante buena la verdad. Y la trama más interesante pero 0 VA...

(6/10)

Al 7.

A necessary reinvention for the Ys series, Ys VI has good bones, with its charming aesthetic and fun, fast-paced new combat system. But it feels like that reinvention isn’t all the way there yet - while it’s often good, a few stumbling blocks (an unfun weapon, one or two awful dungeons, some meh boss fights and a merely okay soundtrack) stop the game from really singing and taking off the way the best Ys titles do. Still, it’s a major step up from Ys V and feels like the series is heading in the right direction and regaining some of its identity.

Ys VI is the first entry with this style of presentation and gameplay, and because of that it doesn't feel as absurdly polished as Origin, but because it lacks that polish it has some unique aspects that I really enjoyed.

The focus on an overworld connecting the dungeon and having multiple towns full of people to check up on periodically gives this a much more chill vibe than Origin. I also really love the look of this game, the lush jungles, the weird ancient ruins, the dank dark caves, it all has a very unique feeling to it that I think could only really be captured during this era. The soundtrack is great too, the calmer vibey tracks and the pumping battle tracks each do their job very well. Also ended up enjoying this story more than most of the entries I played so far, the little ways it ties back into previous games were really appreciated.

Some of these dungeons can go fuck themselves though, especially the one with all the platforming. Dash jumping is probably the worst mechanic I've come across in any Ys game so far, and despite it being optional I still lost a solid couple hours trying to get a couple of chests.

Loved this one, it is fantastic, i find it beautiful how it connects all of adol's adventures up to this point in a fantastic climax with its fair shares of revelations and throwbacks mixed in. The game design also reminded me a lot of ys1&2 in a very good way.

One thing that i would like to point out is that the main towns of this game are among the best i have seen in a game, mostly for one reason in particular that is how well characterized every single npc who lives in them are and how nicely they are developed as the game progresses, it made me wanna talk to all of them every time i came back and it was a lot of fun, this is a feature that i have seen lots of people praise the Kiseki games(the other Nihon Falcon flagship series) for as well, and now i wanna play them more than ever.

In the end, i really had a lot of fun and couldn't stop playing this game until seeing the credits, even if it is a bit grindy at times and has a very confusing cave in the middle there, i don't care, it was way more enjoyable than anything and well worth my time, thank you Nihon Falcon for this very special piece of gaming and art.

And on another note and a bigger scope, with this done i finally have played all the Napishtim-Engine Ys games(VI, Felghana and Origin), they were fantastic and made me love this series. I admit that i am a tiny bit worried that maybe i might not enjoy the Party-System Engine games that much, because of my not-so-incredible experience with Celceta, but very hopefully i am wrong and they are going to be a blast.

Ys is good.

The incredibly average first swing at 3D Ys. Bosses are fine and I really cherish the way dialogue progresses with the Rehda villagers without side-quests, but the map and the arrangement of shops and upgrades across the two towns is just so unpleasant. I enjoy the idea of being familiar with the island and abstracting time through repetition, but it's just far too much distance to travel every single time I need to upgrade my swords. Playing the worst possible release of this game on PSP did not help, but even with the fast travel on the more recent PC port I could not imagine having that much better of an impression on Ark. Strangely fine to play through despite all that because everything other than the lunge jump feel exactly like Oath, but this is a pretty skippable Ys release given how sparse the writing is or how unconsidered the map is.

The sixth game in the Ys series, except not really because these games have been remade and re-released a dozen times each, but I digress.
For those who know nothing about Ys, it's a long running fast paced action RPG with beautiful aesthetics and excellent music. You can probably start with any game in the series except 2, but in order to understand the story it's better to play them in a certain order. They are generally hard, grindy and a lot of fun. Good old Ys.
On that note, I don't think this is the best starting place for a newcomer because there are numerous references to past titles and characters. Not to mention that many mechanics are poorly explained, almost like they expected players to know them in advance. As an example, I don't think I ever saw a mention that magic attacks have invincibility frames, even though I would consider that extremely important to know.
The Ark of Napishtim follows the "one playable character, three kinds of magic" style of gameplay and it's not as good as the masterpiece known as Ys Origin, but it's still really good. The worst part about it is probably the damage scaling.
This is because attributes in Ys have a non-linear effect which means that a single point of defense could be the difference between taking 30 or 1 point of damage from the same attack. As a result, sometimes it can feel like you are horribly underpowered, but grinding a single level can turn the tables.
There's also the bosses, many of which spawn enemies indefinitely in nightmare difficulty and their weak spots aren't exactly intuitive which can lead to some frustration. The gameplay remains largely skill based, but I did feel like the game expected me to grind at times which is kind of lame for an action game.
Overall, I would say Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim is a great action game, and only bested by Ys: Origin for this gameplay style in the series.

The first "modern" (2003!) Ys ended up being one of the lesser entries for me.

There are unfortunate pacing issues, a story with thin characterization even by Ys standards, just "okay" music and quite possibly the worst long jump mechanic I've ever had the misfortune of using (luckily you only need to use it a handful of times but I'm so glad they never brought it back). The original release didn't even have fast-travel! It's clearly a hybrid of the classic games and what would define the series moving forward, both of which are great on their own, but when mixed together leaves the experience feeling incomplete. Its a real shame because this could've been one of the better Ys stories too...

its not a bad game by any means but it doesn't have that same appeal that draws me to other games in the series. It doesn't really excel in any one area which places it near the bottom of my favorite Ys games.

This Ys holds a special site in my heart for being the first Ys that I've ever played. It was on my PSP and I quickly dropped it for it's difficult combat. I'm a sucker for grinding in RPGs, but not at that time, so I moved to the next game that I planned to play but it stucked in my head the experience that I had with just a couple of bosses.

Nevertheless, here I am, almost 17 years later playing it again. I really liked even tho I felt that the bosses weren't as special and well designed as other Ys games, but the setting and environments were cool.

Now, in my marathon of the Ys saga, there are only two remain games: Ys Seven and Ys IX. Let's go!

Playing this after playing Ys Origin and Felghana is rough. My biggest issue with this game is how leveling is handled. Often there are points in the game where you will be unable to damage anything. While this does help you know right away if you're in the right area sometimes, you'll often find that you can no longer hurt enemies in the dungeon you are in. This forces you to grind quite often. I often found myself able to kill enemies in an area just fine but unable to hurt the boss for no really reason other than the game wanting me to grind. While I found grinding to be fun and quick in Origin and Felghana, it hurts the pace of the game here.
One thing I can appreciate is the more open world structure. It feels more akin to Ys I in a sense, and there are plenty of items to find off the beaten path. This can make it difficult to find where to go next at times, but the game does provide hints to help this. Some of these collectables are absolutely not worth the effort often requiring tricky platforming using the dash jump ability. For some reason, the input to perform the dash jump is weirdly precise and immensely frustrating to perform. Why it wasn't mapped to its own button or a simple button combo is beyond me. Fortunately it is never required to progress in the main game. While a solid entry and a good return for the Ys series after a long drought if new games, I am not as keen to revisit this one compared to other entries.

This game can be janky as fuck, and I don't know if it really captures what I loved from Ys I & II, but I had a lot of fun with it regardless.

Every time I was having a hard time there was an easier solution than just grinding, like finding an optional item or using another elemental magic, and I really liked that, even tho it took me a while to find some of those like how I totally missed the item that lights the Limwater caves(Fuck this zone).

I don't think I'll play it right away(maybe next week), but I'm really interested in trying Oath in Felgana next.

Ark of Napishtim serves as a bit of a transition period between the top-down classic Ys games and the more modern isometric 3D action adventure games of Falcom during the 2000s. As is, it definitely has a few rough edges and doesn't have a lot of the features that make its followups Oath in Felghana and Origin so beloved by fans, but it's still a pretty fun game at its core.

Firstly, Ark of Napishtim's atmosphere feels quite a bit different than the other Ark era games, in that Oath in Felghana and Origin tend to have very energetic, sweeping tracks to suit the high intensity, frenzied combat and exploration while Ark focuses more on chill, tranquil melodies. It differs from my other point of comparison here, Ys VIII, in that Ys VIII strands you on an unexplored and untamed island, filling you with this sense of optimism and adventure as you traverse new grounds and fight off dinosaurs, while this game gives off this more ambient and nostalgic feeling of a mystical island held together by a fragile peace. In a sense, while the other Ys games of this time tend to be tightly constructed and fairly linear (with narrative hints heavily pointing you in the right direction), Ark of Napishtim almost feels like a quasi-open world; a lot more of the island's exploration tends to be very player-driven to find out everything that's changed after big events, and while the NPCs can give you hints as to where to dig next, those pointers are usually more subtle and there are often tasks that must be accomplished before you can progress the story. These tasks are generally signified alongside the right level range that Adol has to hit before he can safely traverse certain areas as a form of "gatekeeping"; it's fairly obvious in this game because while it is possible to enter some areas early, his sword will clank off of enemies if he's underleveled and he'll have to level up elsewhere (usually getting certain items or story checkpoints along the way) before returning. This all contributes to this feeling that you have to be a bit more patient for this installment, since grinding often feels necessary to overcome the level gaps and there's no EXP multiplier from chaining hits this time around, but honestly, I found the laid-back feeling of this game compared to its peers to be refreshing once I got more into it.

Some quick notes regarding the gameplay: combat's still pretty fun despite not having the EXP multiplier, though I do have a couple of minor gripes. There are a few enemies that absolutely have to be hit by jump thrust (they'll clank otherwise) or are optimally hit by jump thrust, and because you'll find plenty of them both due to grinding and abundance throughout the island, repeating this action over and over can feel a little overused. There are also a lot of optional (but fairly useful) items that have to be retrieved via the dash jump (using the forward momentum of the thrust and chaining that immediately to a jump), and Falcom does not do a great job explaining this mechanic; I recommend using this guide or from my own words, making sure you're facing in the direction you want to dash jump before tapping briefly in the right direction, and then waiting about a quarter of a second before tapping the slash button and the jump button in quick succession. It definitely can take some practice, but I eventually got this working consistently; nevertheless, I think Falcom got the idea that this mechanic wasn't working so well and eventually replaced this with the standard double jump. Finally, I've been told that Ark tends to be one of the harder games in the series, but I actually think it wasn't too bad; granted, this is partly due to how I felt obligated to grind throughout the run, but you'll also build up a nice little side inventory of healing items on the go and plenty of held-items to help you out with effects such as healing a little bit after slaying an enemy. I liked most of the boss fights as well; even though they weren't quite as flashy as many of the fights from Oath and Origin, they at least felt quite engaging since there was almost always some way to interact with the boss due to few "invincibility/intangibility" phases (which was one of my gripes with Oath).

While Ark's game-feel seemed a bit different than many of the other Ys games I've played, it was still an enjoyable experience at the end of the day relaxing to peaceful lulling tunes while slashing monsters on the mysterious island, helping out the villagers as best as I could. I do think some of the side characters as well as the main villains could have used some more screen time to enhance their character development/backstory, but at least Isha and Olha were pretty convincing and thoughtfully written characters, and the story/lore provides some excellent build-up if you're willing to talk to the villagers often for your fill. It's another classic Ys adventure with an ancient evil to thwart by Adol the Red himself, and though it's definitely not the best entry point to Ys, it's more than worth a look if you want more Ys in your life.

PS: If you decide to buy Ark of Napishtim on Steam as I did, you may have more success running the DX9 version that's included; the standard version of the game didn't have functional v-sync for some reason, and as a result had this incessant background buzzing due to the frame rate running in the thousands.

This was definitely the game that came before OiF and was a return to the franchise after a decade. It has some game play design problems that just made it off putting to play. Every time something is added to the lore around the winged ones, it just feels like its adding another metal or another nation the winged ones came from. It works well enough, but it isn't as impactful when that race is gone and only various artifacts remain. Unlike Metroid: Fusion, there isn't some change to possible threats from knowing about the past of this extinct race. For the most part, everything around them has been solved and all that's left is knowing a magic resource exists.