Coming to this after playing Ys I and II felt like a breeze of fresh air in many ways. At its core, Ys VI retains many qualities that I grew so fond of in the older titles. Exploration is fun, the music is absolutely stellar, the story is more grounded and character progression feels super meaningful. However, there are quite a few aspects that this game improved in comparison to its predecessors.

For one, the level layout was way less confusing for me this time around. Unfortunately, we still didn’t get a mini-map in this one (only a large world map that is kinda useless but looks nice) to help get our bearings. That being said, the level structure itself is crafted in a way that made it easy for me to find my way and not get lost. That is achieved by chunking the game world into distinct areas that stand on their own and which offer layouts, that are not nearly as confusing as they were in the older titles. That was a huge relief to me. I cannot count how many times I completely lost my way in Ys I and II as they were a million doors on every screen leading to a countless amount of side areas. Here, that was not really the case. Yes, there were still sections of the game that were rather confusing (talking about a specific cave - if you know, you know^^) but it never reached the heights of frustration that I had felt before.

Same goes for the combat system. In my opinion, Ys VI offers a huge step-up from the bump system introduced in Ys I. We can finally hack, slay and drop-attack our way through enemies and it never felt better. I liked how specific items were required to defeat certain enemies or how I could upgrade my swords to increase my damage output massively. That’s another change I really liked. Pretty early on, you get 3 swords, all with their own moveset and special attack that you keep until the end of the game. No more farming gold for new weapons or losing your mind because you didn’t find a specific chest in a dungeon that contained a better sword than what you had. Here, it’s all a bit more simplified. You still have to farm a resource to upgrade your stuff but at least you won’t miss out on anything just because you didn’t check every single room in a dungeon to find new gear.

Unfortunately, not all that glitters is gold and some new features bring new problems with them. For me, that was definitely the case for the jump mechanic. Jumping around for simple platforming stuff and striking enemies from above is cool and all. However, the game introduces some pretty precise platforming challenges that just left me frustrated. There are many areas in the game where you have to perform a pixel-perfect jump and if you fail, you fall down into the area below and have to backtrack the entire way to try again. And it’s the worst. On top of that, the game features a dash move that I would describe as the single most convoluted jump mechanic that I have ever seen in a game. I wasn’t even aware that there was a dash until I found a chest that I couldn’t jump to. So, I looked it up online and couldn’t believe what I read. You have to tap the move button for the direction you wish to jump to, then shortly press attack for some reason and then press jump. Yes, it’s as horrible as it sounds. Fortunately, I only needed this move once ore twice but my god, did it suck.

So, even though the platforming felt like ass in many areas of the game and the backtracking it led to did become quite frustrating at times, I still had a good time with Ys VI. The boss battles were fun with each boss introducing a new challenge that required a specific tactic to beat them. The world and its inhabitants were absolutely beautiful. It was the first time in an Ys game, that I kind of actually cared for the characters and their fate. The writing definitely helped with that. All characters were interesting, charming or funny in a way that I hadn’t seen in an Ys game before. The story is still very much in the background but it kept me motivated and it wasn’t as cliché as in other JRPGs. So far, this has been my favorite Ys game and I can’t wait to play more games of the series in the future.