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« on: November 10, 2013, 02:34:24 AM »
I finally finished Ys II today, which I can honestly say that it was a blast to play through until around the endgame. My thoughts on each game:
The first game felt short but had an amazing level of depth in terms of characters and story. The best word to describe the entire game is "simple"; the combat system is very easy to understand once you get the right equipment (make sure you get a sword before you fight the monsters!) and it's hilariously fun to run into monsters and watch their life drain like a rock. The bosses? They're annoying as hell. Most of them fit one of three categories:
1. TOUCH THIS BOSS A LOT BUT THEY ONLY APPEAR ONCE IN A WHILE ALSO THEY SPAM LOTS OF PROJECTILES THAT DRAIN YOUR HEALTH KAY THANKS
2. TANK ME OR DIE (about when you're in the tower)
3. Dark. Fucking. Fact.
Let's say I'm not looking forward to playing through either the time attack mode or the nightmare difficulty.
Music is great as always, featuring really awesome remixes of Koshiro's compositions by the jk band. The level system is also pretty alright, capping at ten but you'll definitely get there before late game (since it's a requirement for a certain vampire boss that fits the first category). Characters are pretty memorable two and it nicely leads to the next game in the series.
Ys II is just plain fun. Early game it suffers the same sort of quadratic curve that Ys I suffers from, and the magic system isn't that great until about mid game. But unlike the first game, mid game becomes bearable, and there really isn't anything that is bullshit tier like some parts of the first game. However, there is a lot of fun to be had by the interactions between Adol and other characters, from leveling up the useless Tarf and watching him kill enemies with rocks, doing some of the odd and funny sidequests for achievements, and the dialogue between the NPCs and the enemies, when you obtain the ability to turn into a Roo, which makes each forgettable enemy you dash through have character. I have about 53 screenshots of some of the hilarious moments in the game, and I'm very surprised in the quality of the localization, especially the amount of wooleyism present in the translation.
Gameplay is sort of boring/hard early game but picks up very well late-game. The magic system adds more then just "run into enemies = win": you can shoot them from a distance and eventually gain homing fireballs with a massive splash radius. Bosses aren't as annoyingly difficult as they were in Ys I. Most are actually manageable when underleveled, due the increase in the level cap to about 62, and the time attack is no longer a luck based mission.
The dungeons are hit or miss. I appreciated every one except the Solomon Shrine, because it was confusing as hell to navigate through. Then again, it is a final dungeon, but the amount of empty rooms seemed pointless and made navigation confusing. Although few felt empty in a sorts, using the Roo spell on the enemies mitigated this, as almost every enemy had something interesting or funny to say. That probably prolonged my sanity through Solomon's Shrine, going everywhere in the map to listen to what each enemy said in reaction to Adol the Badass Roo storming the Shrine.
I enjoyed playing through both games and I'm looking forward to playing through the third game in the series, Oath in Felghana. I've heard mixed reactions to this one, but it's something I need to see for myself. I enjoyed the taste of the Ys series so far, so I'm probably gonna love this one anyway.
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