With Yakuza 4 done, Monster Hunter out of steam and Onimusha 2 on indefinite hiatus, I wanted something to play before Donkey Kong Bananza comes out next month. I want to play Daemon x Machina before the sequel comes out this fall but I don’t have a copy of that. Instead of looking at my BOMBS25 Chart, which would sensible, I decided to grab a copy of Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana off the shelf. I’ve wanted to play this game for a while, I’ve also coveted the collector’s edition on the PSP for some time but its always been more expensive than I thought it should be. So when Falcom announced the remaster of The Oath in Felghana I jumped on the reasonably priced collector’s edition. That edition is put together well, though I wish it came with an art book, even a small one, rather than the postcards. The included fold-up manual is also a great addition. Now, enough about the feelies, on to the game!
Title Screen
I’ve played 3 other Ys games, before this, Ys Origin, Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and finally, Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana. I liked all three! Felghana is a remake of the 1990 CRPG Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. I am not brave enough (or patient enough?) to have played the original Ys games, though they are on my list (and apparently they’ve all been released on Switch as part of the EGGCONSOLE series, but not in English). In 2005 they remade that third game as Ys: Oath in Felghana, first released on Windows and then finally in 2010 on PSP. And this is what Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana is a remaster of! So far I’m liking the remaster options, it doesn’t really get in the game’s way. There are also options to swap the music around, from the orchestral arrangements (which are great) all the way back to the PC88 game (which is also kick-ass). They’ve also created all new character portraits, which is less interesting to me, but you do get some incredible gems like these… (original on the left).
Let the adventure begin!
I like this series because these are big, grand, epic adventures that aren’t 120 hours long. According to IGN Owned (and filled with cookies and trackers) howlongtobeat.com this game reaches 13-15 hours depending on how much grinding and backtracking you need to do. Right away we’re dropped off our boat and immediately get tossed into the action. Wolves are attacking some poor defenseless maiden, oh no! Adol to the rescue! After the dust settles we learn that Dogi is from here and knows everyone. He, of course, will soon go out to run some errands and we will have to fend for ourselves. The first dungeon is inside the towns main source of income, the Ravol Mines. This game has showed a fair amount of enemy variety so far, which I like. There are flying enemies, ground enemies - some of them you need to use magic to kill - it’s a nice variety. Of the games I’ve played in this series, they all include a fair amount of platforming and exploration, and this game is no different. You’ll also notice this game is fully 3D and while it mostly presents itself as a mixture of top-down and isometric, but since we’re not working with pre-rendered backgrounds it can move the camera around and play with angles and scale.
In the first dungeon, the mines, there is a huge boss, Ellefale: the Azure Queen of Death! When you walk into her chamber we’re no longer top-down, instead it’s more over-the-shoulder, the camera moves around the room and follows Adol in from behind, and then the subsequent fight takes place in that same viewpoint! It forces you to think quick and adapt your play-style, but its not enough of a departure that it feels disorienting. Speaking of bosses, holy shit I forgot how difficult these games can be. I almost started this on hard but I’m so glad I didn’t. Though, when a death occurs - and this may be a product of the remaster - it gives you the option to tweak the difficulty.
So far, I’m through the first and second dungeon, I’ve got two of the four statues that are needed to do or prevent something, I’m not entirely sure what the story is leading up to just yet. In those 2 dungeons I’ve fought 5 bosses - and I’ve had to restart each of them at least 5 times each. This game really forces you to study the moves, memorize the patterns and do everything correct the first time… or else. They bosses attack hard and quick, they are unforgiving. For instance, there is a dragon that flies out of a pit of lava that we’re walking through and while its move set is not complicated, if it catches you just right, you can get stuck on it’s nose and since there are no i-frames in this game, you’re health could drain down in about 2 seconds.
Not having any kind of invulnerability after taking damage pushes this game from a simple action/adventure game and makes it into something more akin to a shoot-em-up. You have to be precise in movements, you need to recognize what the boss is going to do before they do it and get yourself into the right defensive position. To me, this isn’t as frustrating or challenging as something like Devil May Cry because it’s only requiring half the skill. Adol doesn’t have a deep bench or a complicated move set so you can kind of hack away. Sometimes you’ll need to mix in his magic abilities, and knowing when to activate Boost versus when to save it for later.
What’s Next?
Tonight I finished off the second dungeon and got through some story stuff which then left me to run around the map and revisit some areas looking for secrets. Since I’m half-way through I’ve increased my abilities and now have access to double jump which means I can get back to areas I wasn’t allowed in before. Tomorrow I’m going back to town to upgrade my armor and then I’ll set off to find the third statue!
Final Thoughts
That’s a wrap on Ys: Oath in Felghana! It’s a cool game that does a lot of things that I like, including never holding back the challenges. I find it unusual for an ARPG to push forward at such a pace, but this game never really slows down. From the moment Dogi and Adol step off the boat, you get thrown directly into the action and the story begins to unfold. There are moments where you need to pul yourself from the action to talk to people in the town or upgrade your equipment, or even go to a different dungeon to get something you couldn’t before. The meat of the fun of Ys, to me, is that unlike Link or other top-down action-adventure protagonists, Adol has a good set of sword-based moves & combos that can be strung together to take care of the bad guys. Slash, double slash, rising slash, power-slam, triple-slash - for a top-down action game they really put a lot into his move-set, which is great because he has no defensive moves whatsoever. I often found myself looking for a block or a dash/roll to get me out of harms way, but you must rely on jumping and moving only for that. This takes a bit to get used to especially since, as I brought up during the Lava-Dragon fight, you get no invincibility after taking damage. You really need to stick and move - relying on combos and jumping and stunning enemies using your downward thrust move combined with your 3 magic abilities (fire, wind and earth). I’m mostly talking about the average run of the mill enemies as the bosses take their own tactics.
Speaking of bosses - imagine if a Zelda game that had 4 distinct dungeons gave you 15 unique boss fights. Dularn and Chester you fight twice, but both fights are very different so even they don’t feel like they are rehashing a lot. I don’t think the people over at Falcom understand the difference between a mid-boss and regular boss because some of these take place in the middle of a dungeon and could be just as difficult as the one waiting for you at the end. Honestly the only boss I managed to kill in my first go was this werewolf thing, Zellfel Zam Schultiger. It has an easy pattern and while I was close to death I managed to get through it without needing to start over. The boss fights are also cool because they take advantage of the 3D engine, allowing each fight to feel unique through a combination of mechanics and perpsective. Some of them you fight head on, some are in arena’s, others take place as a side scroller - it was exciting to see the ways they could shuffle their deck to provide a new or unique experience.
I’d always heard that Oath in Felghana represented the best of classic Ys games and now the experience is behind me I understand why. It has a very mature story with plenty of twists turns oohs and aah to keep things interesting, a moveset that makes the platforming feel tight and fun and plenty of bosses to keep you sharp. I think it’s time to really invest some time in the series as a whole and go back to where it all started. If you are looking for an adventure, something to thoughtful and twitchy, Oath should meet all the requirements.
