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.