Ys I & II Chronicles+ Reviews

It's Ys 2.

So much better than the first game, navigating the canals and shrine sucks tho

The sequel to Ys I, not much to say. They're pretty much the same game split in two.

The second half of the story, and it actually feels like a proper conclusion unlike Ys I had. Generally speaking, I would say I had more fun with this one than the first one. Heals were more avaliable since you could find Herbs and use Apples to heal, magic was a nice addition since you now had a ranged option among lesser used things like Light Magic to find hidden paths and Shield Magic, which was very fair and balanced and locked to basically the end of the game for that reason. The game generally felt less harsh on the difficulty on Normal than Ys I, but the sheer reliance on using Fire Magic on all but the last two bosses in the game was a bit eh, in my opinion. At the very least, the bosses weren't as absurd as the first game's was, so that's a plus. No vampire bat boss who's only able to be hit for about a fraction of a second here. The main things I would say are issues I had though are the backtracking and the sheer length of the final dungeon, which alone felt three times longer than all the other areas you visited. There's also a healthy amount of backtracking, but that gets a bit easier when you get the Return Magic, which was mandatory anyway. To end this, Feena is a nice girl and if anything bad happens to her, Adol will come and bonk them to oblivion...since magic is gone now, so he can't use Fire Magic to burn things now.

Alright, I've finished the Ys I and Ys II duology and can definitely recommend it. Love how it all came together at the end and answered all the questions and uncertainties I had about the story/characters. The bump-action combat is very fun and satisfying, exploring and talking to NPCs is great. The localization was handled by the same team that translated the Trails in the Sky trilogy so the dialogue is top notch and really fun at times. As expected from Falcom the music is stellar and hits when it needs to.

They somehow took the first game and made it even more insufferable -- these first two games in the series just skip them and watch on youtube these suck big time