Developer: Falcom Publisher: Falcom Release: 12/29/95 Genre: Action RPG
Ys V remains a mystery to long term fans of of Ys and action RPGs in general. Nearly every game in the series is officially available on PC to go alongside the first three games from the 16-bit era. All except Ys V. Falcom seemingly ignores its existence as it has never been re-released with the exception of a cheap PS2 remake. It took a long time but thanks to the extremely hard work of fan translators Ys V is available in English. Fans can judge for themselves whether the game is worthy of upholding the legendary Ys name rather than take the word of others. My opinion? While it ultimately has its faults it is still worth playing, especially since it will not require much of your time.
Adol Christian, once again on a journey of adventure, finds himself in the Xandria region of the world. Here the people tell of the Lost City of Kefin, a civilization that specialized in alchemy but disappeared from the world 500 years ago. Many seek the secrets of Kefin, some for personal gain but most of all to stop the spread of the desert before it swallows the cities built on top of Kefin’s remains. With Adol’s reputation preceding him forces conspire to get him to find Kefin but all is not as it seems…..
As much as I like Ys V the one emotion I cannot let go of is disappointment. Not at what the game is but what it could be. Going from a CD to a cartridge means there are sacrifices such as cutscenes and voice acting. But it does not explain why the game is so short. That brevity hinders the game as just when it picks up the quest is over. My feelings of disappointment were echoed by fans in Japan as the blow back was huge, especially when it was announced that this was the final installment in the series. A slight update of Ys V did not assuage fans and for 10 years Falcom were true to their word. Ys VI was the return of the series and made up for this lacking installment. What is here is good but Ys deserves better.
Like the third game Ys V abandons the tackle method of combat for traditional sword swinging and I say thank god. I get that ramming into enemies was a Ys “thing” but no one can deny that at its core it was unsatisfying. In addition you can manually block with your shield and actually jump. Ys V takes advantage of this with some light platforming and variable terrain. Both weapons and magic level up separately although for reasons I’ll describe below I doubt most will bother with magic.
The magic system is pretty elaborate with some depth. By collecting the six elements (fire, water, earth, wind, light, dark) hidden in random objects throughout the world you can create a flux stone to equip with a weapon. All spells require three elements meaning there is a large number of combinations with a variety of effects.
Unfortunately as fun as it is to experiment the effectiveness of magic in combat is small. The game uses an asinine method of casting spells; you hold R until the gauge reaches 100 to unleash spells. Releasing it beforehand will cause it to drop. It works more or less but is needlessly complex. The damage also leaves something to be desired. To make matters worse you cannot use magic during boss battles! Granted the boss fights are simple as is but why limit magic use? Adol’s regular sword swings are more than sufficient so I imagine most won’t bother with magic outside of curiosity.
Ultimately the biggest letdown has to be the brief quest. Even the slowest gamers I am pretty sure most will complete the game in five hours or so. The majority of the dungeons are only a few screens long until the game’s second half. Here they feature complex layouts with some simple puzzles thrown in. These later dungeons are excellent and offer a taste of what could have been. The game glosses over important story events that could have been dungeons and handles them off screen. If the game had a few more hours of content to flesh things out it would have been excellent. I wonder what did they spend the 24 megs of memory on? Something is seriously wrong when Soul Blazer, a first generation effort is only 8 megs and three times as long.
Also aiding in the game’s brevity is the ease with which you’ll breeze through it. Overall the game is absurdly easy. I never had to grind and was still able to waltz through the game thanks to the generous regenerating health. Equipment upgrades are sparse so that further reduces the need to grind. The few bosses are largely disappointing since they are mostly stationary and spam the same repetitive attacks. Ys V Expert increased the difficulty but that still only fixed half of the game’s problems.
In Closing
When viewed on its own merits Ys V is a pretty good game; criminally short but still good. It is when you compare it to the legendary entries in the series that you it comes up lacking in comparison. With just a little more content this could have been an excellent entry in a series lauded for its greatness. Instead it is a solid but flawed adventure.
