Ys Seven: Holy Shit! Yes, Yes, Yes!
Dear god I love the Ys games, and usually I have to go through some kind of fancy import and patch ritual to get them running in my goddamn language. I still hold the belief that if you combined VI's story, weapon system, and super attacks with Oath in Felghana's battle, magic, and power-up gem systems you'd have a hack-n-slash that would probably make it into my top 10, maybe even top 5.
As it stands I think Ys VII may be my new favorite game in the series. It's not the combination I was hoping for, but it's pretty damn awesome. It may make my top 10 but we'll have to wait and see because it is a pretty tough list to contend with. It's not without it's problems of course, but the good generally outweighs the bad.
Let's start with the bad first though for kicks. You can't jump, which doesn't seem like it would be a big issue, but after being able to jump in the last few games it's a bit awkward for them just to remove it, luckily the Dodge maneuver works well and after a bit of gameplay you won't have a problem with not being able to jump anymore. This game also marks the first time Adol's in a party. 3 members strong at any given time, it's quite strange to have AI partners following you around, but it's nice to see Dogi in action, and their different strengths are taken far more advantage of than Ys VI's tragically underutilized elemental system.
A spot where this game falters without a counter argument though is the opening. It quite honestly sucks. They give you a tutorial on every little damn thing and they take their sweet time setting up a story while you're stuck wandering around town with nothing to do. Now I know I'm going to be called a hypocrite later since Majora's Mask is one of my favorite openings, but the difference is that the entire game world exists around Clock Town. It is the single most important place in the game, and the game is built around side quests to reach the same length as OoT and many of them stem from Clock Town. The game requires and wants you (the player) to form attachments to all the people of the town. By contrast Ys is a damn hack-n-slash RPG, let me get to the action, Ys stories are cool and all, but it's the game and the music that everyone is there for. Don't just dangle it out of our reach for 20 minutes.
The final issue I have with the game is the graphics. They suck. Really really bad. Now everything is a low-poly model. This is as opposed to the fantastic sprites and backgrounds of the previous games with passable polygonal backgrounds and boss models for the time in VI and OiF. Also the whole art direction of the previous games was fantastic, where as it seems a little less so in Ys Seven. The bosses are a little lackluster, the enemies are a little generic, and the weapons aren't anything fancy. It's kind of disappointing really. I haven't played Ys Origin though, but I've heard that the sprite work is still nice even if the art direction is a little lackluster.
Now onto the good. The gameplay is fantastic. It's fantastically paced with your characters moving quick but not so much that you can't keep track, the combo system works well since you can chain regular attacks into skills and cancel into dodges, the skill system is good too forcing you to balance which skills to use and when to charge up for a focus attack without being too restricting, and the bosses are fun to fight and challenging as always. You also have to go out collecting herbs, metals, other plant parts and enemy body parts in order to improve your weapons and armor. So yeah, this game is kind of like Monster Hunter... only it isn't boring as shit. The only real issue I have with the game is that the Super Attacks you get take waaaaaaay too long to charge up. I wouldn't mind them being a bit weaker if I could use them more than once a boss fight, maybe twice if I have a full charge going in.
So for those of you still wondering: It's Monster Hunter meets, oh I don't know, Lunar Knights, and it is freaking glorious.
Second game: Ultimate Knight Windom XP
Sure does look exciting now doesn't it? Well it is, but it's not worth the $20. Why? Just go get the prequely prototypey thing Bootfighter Windom XP SP2. Trust me, you're not missing out on much. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with Ultimate Knight, but I'm a giant robot whore. It only adds three new mechs, the ability to power up specific categories of your mechs, the ability to change their colors, and an arcade mode. Oh and a new soundtracks, but that's actually pretty good. Problems? Well the power-up thing screws with the balance, the Arcade mode kind of sucks but you have to do it to unlock all the mechs, and the game hasn't fixed any of it's problems. The sound is still kind of glitchy, Blitz Tactics mode is still coded like a monkey took a wrench to it and lags like crap, and the gameplay hasn't improved one bit, all it did was replace the bars with some shiny new ones. Bootfighter's gameplay is fun, but it's still incredibly unpolished. The knockdown system is broken, the mechs could stand to give you a little more control over their movement, and it's way too easy to get stun-locked.
They really need to fix these issues if they want the game to be worth buying over just downloading Bootfighter. You're selling the game for money now, the quality has to match.
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