when i should have been writing an essay, doing a triptych, planning my wood carving, drawing a million thumbnails, taking some pictures and working on my web design…. yay for procrastination?
Anyways…. to the review
First though a quick explanation for why i jump from 3 to 7…. essentially ys 4 and 5 have yet to make it to north America, they are scheduled for release on the PSVita but as of this moment i can’t play them. ys 6 was released on ps2 and psp but i haven’t been able to find it yet…. apparently the psp port is really bad so that makes it even trickier to find.
So, shortly after being ys 3 my friend asked if i had played any other Falcom games… i mentioned that i hadn’t played 6, 7 or tales of heroes: tears in the sky because i couldn’t find them and my school load was starting to pile…
being the good friend he was…. he told me that they had the special edition at an Electronic Boutique near my school… i said i’d keep it in mind but probably wouldn’t get it for a while….
3 days later i get it…. cause i have no will power.
but it did come with some cool stuff, a cloth map, a soundtrack and an artbook with pictures from ys 1,2,3 and 7.
so once again we are with our young adventurer Adol Christian and his pal Dogi. They come to a land known as Altaigo which they have been told has been having issues with monsters.
of course…. it’s so much more then that.
shortly after coming to town and being arrested since the guard things your a spy from a formally warring neighbor…. you get called before the king…
ok thats an odd turn of events….
he wants to check out a recently discovered ancient shrine… none of his guards found anything but maybe they just weren’t looking hard enough.
so you go…. and Adol starts to feel a strange presence. the alter begins to glow and Adol is given some odd new powers and starts being called the dragon warrior.
the game even starts to make fun of this because Adol has been so many different legends chosen one…. i mean this is the 7th game in the series and i think all but one star him.
anyways you soo find out there are 4 more shrines and unless you go and get the power from each the world will be dooooooooooooomed…. or something…. no one seems to know much but they all agree that adol should go around and continue being the dragon warrior.
you eventually find out that monsters aren’t the only bad things going around… a nasty plague thast turning people to stone it hitting people randomly… so i guess being the dragon warrior will help that too?
after visiting all the shrines you find out you need to visit them all again? see apparently behind the alters is a hidden dimensions where the dragons sleep and we need to go wake them up…
heading into spoiler territory…. this is your warning…. i will avoid giving names just incase.
so after you wake them up, fight them and get their stones you head down into the well of souls to kill the one causing all this great destruction. To be fair…. their argument is that they will return the balance by cleaning the slate and starting new… it’s not for the entire world…. just this continent….
but still… killing everyone kinda sucks so you fight what essentially is a god and win and destroy this tradition.
all is good and happy…. well…. except a few character who don’t make it… but who cares about them right?
and so now that your role is complete you decide to go to new lands for new adventures…. hurray!
spoilers should probably end here…. for now.
Gameplay wise this is very different from all the other Ys games i have played. you actually get a party of three who have semi intelligent AI… when they aren’t running around in circles…. each party member has either slashing type weapons which are good against soft enemies but useless against armored…. strike type weapons which are the opposite of slash or pierce type weapons which are good against flying and not much else.
unlike ys 3 you have not only potions you can hold…. but revival items which was a welcome edition even if it made the game easier. a lot easier. ys 3 made me bump down the difficulty for bosses quite a few times…. never did that for 7… in fact only 2 game over screens and one of those i tried to fight an optional boss when i was way too weak.
this game also adds quests with various rewards and a synthesis system…. which is good and bad
see in y’s 1-3… there were only 6-7 pieces in each set…. what i mean is only 6 armor, 6 swords, 6 shields and 6 accessories for the entire game…. you never bought the items (cept a select few in some games) and the ultimate items were always found in the last dungeon) this game the Ultimate items ALL need to be sythed….. for 7 characters…. if you wanna have an easy time of the final boss…. which i did.
this meants a lot of grinding and harvesting at the end of the game which was fine other then it broke the flow a bit.
there are 9 playable characters but 2 of those replace other characters… my fav was Geis as he had great range, speed and his ability was to boost the amount of exp you gained… apparently he’s in 6 so thats something to look forward to.
this is the longest ys game i’ve played so far which was nice but i wished that instead of just adding bigger monsters to the world map they would have also made the world map monsters stronger like they did in ys 3…. but heres the kicker…. apparently the psp releases have been a little backwards…. this one came out before 3… which came out before 1 and 2…. Falcom you seem to have some serious issues with releasing your games over here…. but your games are fun so keep it up.
Also, as standard to the series the music is amazing. especially near the end where it nearly gets heartbreakingly beautiful… i will admit i did tear up.
so yeah…. if you like Action RPGs/shootemups (the bosses get very shmupy the further in you go to the game) this is perfect for you…. just be warned…. it’s not easy. but seriously give it a shot… not enough people have heard of this series.
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