Ys SEVEN Reviews

sh1 t padded game with a switching mechanic that isn't even used on the final boss, disgusting game and disgusting translation with that chungus reddit karma movie reverences left and right.

I really wanted to like this, I really did, the story was great and it's one of the friendliest series I've found for someone very much directionaly challenged. Unfortunately this game was essentially the first implementation of party play at the time. Which, unfortunately some not so great decisions were made in designing the systems for the game. However, that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the speed of gameplay and movement. You'll be rolling for 80% of the game to get places because the default speed is atrocious (despite some characters being faster than others, speed never improves). The speed of attacks are atrocious as well. This effects doing boss fights as the slowness of rolling can throw you off and the flash guard window is kind of weird. When you get to cutscenes it takes **forever** for characters to do simple movements. I hope it gets a remake Probably the worst part was [spoiler]Finding out you have to use all 7 characters in the end boss fight. Adol getting special treatment is fine, but having to handle 7 different characters? Not only that but Adol, despite having ultimate gear, felt subpar damage wise in the last part. The same Adol who, up until then, had be traditionally been taking care of things solo. He's the hero of the series let my man be OP and awaken his true powers! [/spoiler] How party capable players were introduced also felt very inconsistent. I kind of wish everyone just stayed in the party all the time. In fact one of my pet peeves in RPGs with lots of potential party candidates is when you invest a lot in a character who you like and somewhere in the game they get ejected and don't come back for a while. Another issue I had was how they did different damage types. Power types were made slow for a reason but given that attacks overall are slow this makes the whole experience painful. Don't even get me started on Dogi's terrible aim. Then there's the ranged attackers. Normally with the party type games with different damage types you do reduced damage if your attack type is incompatible. Even so that reduced damage is still damage. What did they do with ranged attacks? They get auto-guarded for high armor type enemies. No damage at all, no SP buildup, just auto-guarded. Should have just been reduced damage like the other types. Adol's weapons were also really weird. At a point you have the ability to give Adol swords with different damage types. This makes party compositions really weird. Especially so because weapon upgrades can often change Adol's damage type which just makes things really inconsistent. Well, unless you're working in a boss fight maybe.

I love pixel art RPG's with artstyle from the NES, SNES or PS1 era. I also love modern games with 3D graphics, whether realistic or cartoon/anime inspired. You know what I've always hated even since back in the day when it was a thing? 3D polygonal graphics that make the characters look like they're made or cardboard or orignami paper. So here we are, the first "modern" Ys and the fifth in my playthrough of the series following the gameplay-oriented suggested order. Thankfully, this one doesn't look Final Fantasy VII levels of blocky, nor Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song levels of ugly polygonal anime characters, so after about an hour I got used to the new way the characters looked, even if I still think the way they looked in Ark of Napishtim or Oath of Fhelgana is my favorite so far. Amazingly enough, this time around instead of washing ashore after a shipwreck or some other boat-related mishap, Adol makes his way with Dogi to the kingdom of Altago though, as it was bound to happen, Adol ends up becoming a chosen one destined to save this land from some ancient evil, like he does every few months or so, only this time you get to form a party of adventurers with his long-time bro Dogi and some new characters and you can cycle between them in combat. This time around instead of emelas weapons, rods or bracelets for spell-casting, you get some local weapons that allow you do special attacks and as part of his chosen one role Adol gets some special elemental attacks granted to him by the Five Ancient Dragons who called upon him to save Altago. The word is much bigger, with larger towns/cities, much larger sections connecting each location, and a ton of NPC's, several of which can join your party. Oddly enough, you can no longer jump, and instead you have a dash button. Also, there's an equipment crafting mechanic and some other small differences, but overall it still feels like Ys. I did like that everything feels larger and more detailed, but the downside is that, as games of this era were wont to do, you get the usual boring fetch side quests and stuff like that which include a lot of backtracking through way bigger maps than ever before, instead of actual interesting side quests. Of course, you can wait to do them once you unlock fast travel, but still. On average I'm enjoying the game, but it's probably my least favorite so far not counting the very first one, and that one has the excuse of being ancient and outdated in many respects. Also, this one for some reason ran correctly on my Steam Deck after trying out about half a dozen different Proton tools, but the screen didn't fit and I could only see part of the images being displayed, so I had to tinker with the resolution until it did, both from outside and inside the game. Then, every time I went to a different screen in the game, for instance when I entered a house, it took like 10 or 15 seconds with the message Now Loading...even when the house was small and had like one NPC inside, which was ridiculous. It only started working correctly after I went to the options menu in the game from the camp menu and changed the screen to "Borderless." Why? Who knows. This is the only game in the franchise that has required any troubleshooting of that level to run correctly. Edit: After finishing the game, I have to admit that it grew on me and I became invested in the story and the different peoples of the settlements of Altago. It's a solid next step in the series and it got me hyped for the next entries.

IGN/10 (7.8/10) you can play it or skip it - it's rough around the edges since its the transition point from the Ark System the Party System which continued for four games. The game was still fun albeit extremely slow to the point you'd have to hold down the button but keep having to release it so dialog won't skip, and you wouldn't have to reload a save to catch up on what you missed reading. There were framerate issues as well that made combat a little more clunky and especially during boss fights where the camera works against you most of the time (you may get a little nauseous from how it whips you back and forth).