I'll just say from the start that this is not a highlight of the series. It's not bad, especially if you enjoy VIII's combat at a fundamental level, but this is the least inspired I've seen the series on my journey through it all. There was some great potential in the setup, and the core elements of the formula do what they do, but there was not enough focus or commitment to any of the new ideas for them to shine.

Starting with the technical side, 90% of the game is as smooth and quick as I expect a Ys game to be, which is great to see. This is the foundation of my appreciation for the series and keeps it enjoyable even when other elements aren't at their best. This is most prominent in the combat itself, but the menus are likewise snappy (even if their layout is subpar for controller play), and most other elements of the game are plenty happy to let you speed along at your own pace...

Most, anyway, as this title does suffer from more frequent speed bumping than I remember from the others. It's not so much that the speed bumps exist, as VIII had its share as do many games made in its era. The problem is in their nature: a speed bump can be a good thing if it's not the main indicator that the pace is going to slow down and is rather used as a final check — say, just before a quiet, heartfelt bit of dialogue. However, Celceta’s speed bumps tend to be in the dungeon design — which I don't appreciate — and they come from the traversal tools — which I really don't appreciate.

To give some examples, the first traversal tool you acquire shrinks you down so you can travel through small passageways. Fun concept, but two other things occur: first is that you have to go into a two level deep menu to enable/disable the tool everytime (minor); next is that it reduces combat effectiveness, which is a thematic plus but does slow things down; and third is that movement just feels unnecessarily slowed down through a combination of camera perspective and a weird interaction with how momentum is applied from rolling while small. And the real unfortunate part is that there were only a small handful of points where I felt like this form of traversal added anything particularly novel to the experience other than just being a special kind of key to an otherwise obvious hallway on the map.

Now as speed bumps, these were comparatively small — this is no Virtue's Last Reward — and there were elements of the map design I did like. I'm actually a fan of somewhat maze-like spaces that take some effort to keep track of your position in, and you get just enough of that here. And most of the spaces were quick and easy to traverse... It's just unfortunate that all the traversal mechanics tied to artifacts and teammate abilities, which should be the engaging moments, were actually the parts that made me groan.

Oddly enough, Ys IX is the shining example of how they should have done it, with each teammate adding a new, fun to use ability that sped up traversal or had more flexible usage. So Falcom clearly learned their lesson there. Also, I believe there is a turbo-mode ala Trails to help mitigate the issue of some of the longer cutscenes incurred by some mechanics. However, I had mistakenly unbound it from the controller because I thought I wouldn't need it and the default binding was kind of annoying.

Moving on to the specifics of combat, this is fundamentally the same system used in VIII and IX with slightly less polish, as one would expect from an earlier title. That lack of polish is more in the lack of strategic depth than in the moment to moment, though. I have a very tenuous love of the Flash Guard based Ys combat as it is both refreshingly exhilarating and active compared to its peers in the ARPG space but its super abusable as it's implemented here (as it still is in VIII). The problem is exasperated here by the camera being stuck between the fixed angle style used in early 3D era Ys games like Origin and the full 3D camera used in VIII and IX. Boss fights can often devolve into Flash Guard spamming because the boss has moved into an awkward position relative to the camera, where they fill the screen or the important bits of an attack are not on screen. Yet, if you spam RT until you get flash guard, then use a big attack, you're golden 95% of the time.

Having played Origin now, this is even more of a disappointment than it was before for me... yet....... pile driving a boss by exploiting the mechanics still is fun in its own way. So it's not completely a negative point on the game.

While its a bit longer of a game (20hours for me, all sidequests) it is also still short enough that the lack of depth didn't bother me much. As someone well acquainted with action systems, I could see the problems but I didn't necessarily suffer from them.

Now the real lynchpin for me in calling this one of the least good Ys games is the story. While that gap between the potential I could see and the reality was benign with the combat, it kinda really hurt here with the narrative. I really love stories that center around memories and our perception of them, but the concept is effectively only used as set dressing here. There were sparks of good ideas, but the delivery was played too safe and few of the characters got the attention they needed to add to it. Which is a shame, as I actually rather quite liked most of them.

And the biggest missed opportunity was in the promise of this being a self-reflective story for Adol. I don't necessarily think they had the wrong intent with what they did, but the build-up of all parts of the narrative kind of deflated by the mid-point and the climax couldn't work with it then.

On a last point, I'll say the art is mostly alright. Some decent design work but the early Vita engine doesn't really portray it in the best light and it lacks the flair of the older and newer styles. The music isn't particularly memorable, but its got a good rhythm for the combat and I thought it added quite a lot to the exploration sections of the game.

So, all in all, if you like Ys as an action game, this is still a very playable one. If you like Ys for the complete package, then I wouldn't suggest prioritizing this one. If you're completely new to the franchise, I can see it being more fun actually, but honestly VIII is a better starting point for the modern Ys formula.

So I recommend it to fellow Falcom nuts, otherwise, play VIII.