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Ys Book I & II Review
Summary
Ys Book I & II chronicles the first adventures of Adol Christin, a young, red-haired swordsman on a quest to unlock the secrets of an ancient kingdom.
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Though it bears a lot of the grindy esoteric problems of its time in RPG's, Ys brings a level of presentation and quality that brings it one step above its peers. Its worth a try for RPG fans
An incredible experience, ESPECIALLY for something that came out in 1990. Absolutely nothing like this existed at the time. This game really utilized the CD medium to the max when it came out. The graphics, while not extravagant were still very clean, very colorful and very diverse from location to location. The anime style cutscenes were just straight up mind blowing, and so were the full screen portraits inside buildings and when talking to certain characters during key story moments. The plentiful voice acting was, first of all, MIND BLOWING for the time, the fact that it existed at all, but also of very high quality. The voice actors killed it! The last but far from least CD advantage I wanted to mention was one of the main reasons I couldn't put this game down and wanted to keep progressing - the soundtrack. It was God tier and one of the biggest pleasant surprises going into this game completely blind. The RPGs out around the release of Ys 1&2 were Crystalis, Final Fantasy 3, Dragon Age 4 and Phantasy Star 2, and obviously none of these were CD games, so none had voice acting, none had CD quality music and none had the plentiful storage space available for cutscenes - all things that make the TGCD release of Ys 1&2 feel surprisingly modern, even playing it in 2024.
Overall Ys Book I and II was a very good game with plenty of catchy rocking tunes, sweet lore, cool graphics, good voice acting, fun combat and great progression, both in terms of items and options, but also as far as the level balancing and pacing. If it didn't trip up a bit with its confusing maze-like level design, I'd give it full 5 stars.
IGN Review