Couldn't dance around Ys forever. One of the greatest action RPG franchises ever made and still seeing new entries, Ys has been criminally underrepresented in the West until fairly recently (it's established a firm foothold on Steam, and I'd recommend trying Oath in Felghana or Origin). Each game in the core series features the red-haired swordsman Adol, who travels to some other region in Not-Europe to sort out their problems. He's essentially the fantasy anime equivalent of Winston Wolfe.
I wanted to cover Ys IV: Dawn of Ys in particular for two reasons: First, I've already played Ys III: Wanderers From Ys (quite a bit, even) and this is the only other Ys game released on the PC Engine CD-ROM (Ys V: Kefin, The Lost City of Sand was a 1995 SNES game and Ys VI, best known as Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, was a PS2 game that came way later). Second, Ys IV: Dawn of Ys is unique for being an entirely different take on Ys IV: Mask of the Sun, despite sharing a numeral and the same setting. There's actually four different versions of Ys IV all told, each very different. This HardcoreGaming101 article on the Ys series goes into more detail, but suffice it to say this is a very curious point in the Ys series' history.
Ys IV, or at least this Ys IV, sees Adol make his way to Celceta on a new adventure, after a temporary layover in the town of Minea in Esteria (from Ys I and II) continuing right after the events of Ys III. Though there's a bit of a serial storyline going on between each game, it's fairly unimportant: Each new game introduces you to a brand new region with new people to meet fairly quickly after starting. The only constants are usually just Adol himself and his large, gregarious friend Dogi. Ys IV also goes back to classic Ys combat, which is to say that you run into monsters at an angle and they die. Not the most sophisticated combat engine, but it works better than it sounds.
If Iron Galaxy Created This Series, Would It Be Called "D Ys-y"?
The game starts with this cool sinking island animation. Though my memories of the first two games are fairly dim, I believe the island is the legendary floating continent of Ys (for which the series is named) and the tower is the Tower of Darm, the enormous dungeon that makes up most of the first game.And here's Darm, the big antagonist from Ys II. We join him in a fight against this glowing blue hero, but who could that be?Well, I mean, it's Adol. I already said he's in all these games.These are Feena and Reah (I forget which is which). They're two amnesiac girls you bump into in Esteria, who just so happen to be the lost Goddesses of Ys. They're the ones responsible for Adol's blue forcefield right now.I feel like I probably should've put "spoilers for Ys I and II" somewhere. My bad.Anyway, Adol destroys Darm and peace is restored to the land of Esteria. That's mostly how Ys I and II went. Also these animated cutscenes look pretty good! I hope they persist.Welcome to Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys! I wonder if it's going to tie into the first two games in any way?Adol's coming back to Esteria after the events of Ys III, with his best friend Dogi. Dogi's psyched to be heading back, but of course Adol doesn't voice his excitement one way or the other. He's one of those silent protagonist types (well, usually).Meeting Dogi's pal Goban, who played a pivotal role in Ys I and II, we're escorted back to Minea as a late title card drops. Wait, didn't we already get a title screen?Damn right, little girl. I can see why Dogi wanted to come back, we're practically rock stars around this town. I'm using an English fan translation for the text boxes, but all of the important dialogue is voiced (in Japanese, naturally).You can visit all the shopkeepers from the first game, but they've got nothing to sell you. It's peacetime! Makes you wonder how they're making a living these days.This is Sara. She's a fortuneteller you meet in Ys I who sends you off on the quest to recover the Books of Ys, the first stage of entering the Tower of Darm. She also got killed mid-way through that game. I guess she got better?Anyway, she hasn't given up the day job of telling Adol where to go next, and so we're given some vague premonition of demons in the forested land of Celceta. I don't know why this translation spelled it with an S, given that the recent remake is called "Memories of Celceta". I guess the translation must pre-date it.Dogi and Goban are busy getting blasted when I enter the bar after meeting everyone in town. They're not just getting spry on "frothy milk", either: this isn't a Nintendo game.This is Lilia. She shows up the next morning to wake up a hungover Goban to see Adol. We rescued her in II and she's kind of had a giant crush on Adol since then. But Adol ain't here! He departed sometime earlier, on the way to Celceta.Meanwhile, something gross and weird is happening in a cave somewhere.Monster Mash here doesn't last long before melting. Presumably, he's some evil deity trying to be brought back by his minions, just not quite in solid form just yet. I suspect this is one of things we'll discover later into the game.We now get a second intro, animated this time, that does the usual JRPG intro thing of flashing through scenes and characters in the game. These three just scream "recurring bosses" to me.And, of course, the antagonist is some handsome androgynous guy. I actually know that his name is Eldeel, because it came up a lot in Memories of Celceta's promotional stuff. Man, I want to play Memories of Celceta.I'm finally given control again, as I wake up on the ship that brought me to Promalock. This town is right next to the forests of Celceta, and will be the first of a few hub towns.I've still got the Cleria gear from the previous game, which is all absurdly powerful and I'm absolutely certain I'll be allowed to keep it. Absolutely.This isn't foreboding at all.Anyway, there's not much to do in town, so why not go out and beat some stuff up. You can't be hurt by any of these low-level creatures, so this is really the game letting you discover on your own how combat works. If you run at a monster in a straight line, you'll bounce off and both you and the monster will take damage. Run at them at an angle, however, and only the monster takes damage. This is the key to Ys's combat, and each game has different levels of leniency for how precise these angled attacks need to be. Fortunately, Dawn of Ys is super lenient.We were given a side-quest of sorts by a couple back in town. The husband got drunk and depressed because he dropped this super valuable crystal bottle while outside.Dude's sleeping off a bender (certainly is a lot of alcohol abuse in this game so far) but his wife assures me that they'll be using this money to start a store and that I'll be rewarded at some point. I'll believe it when I see it.Getting a little further into the forest, we bump into this fair maiden getting accosted. It's Adol to the rescu-Nope, she took care of it. This is Karna, and she's a badass.We also meet Leo, the captain of the local Romun forces. The Romuns, like their similarly named historical counterparts, are something of an ubiquitous presence on this continent, and are almost always presented as minor antagonists. In the sense that they're mostly jerk bureaucrats rather than out and out demonic villains.Anyway, I'm not about to argue with this cannon, so I decide to let myself get arrested for the crime of assaulting those two soldiers Karna beat up.Well, here we are in chokey. I suspect this is a foregone conclusion, but let me just check my inventory real quick...Goddammit. It'll be a while until see those again.This is Duren, he's got kind of a roguish ne'er-do-well vibe to him. A Han Solo, if you will.The first thing he does when we wake him up is run around the cell several times. Gotta keep in shape, I guess.We are eventually rescued by Karna, the girl we met earlier. She feels a little bad for letting us take the rap, I'm guessing. Duren comes too, and immediately starts hitting on her, because of course he does. He is informed, tersely, that his rescue was entirely incidental.While those two do the Leia and Han thing, we manage to grab some stuff from the armory. It's all super low-level, obviously, but it's better than nothing.We have one more tutorial fight before we can leave (which Duren immediately bails on). Though you get attacked by six soldiers, Karna will eventually defeat all of them after enough time has passed: The player can get as involved as they want to with their new weaker equipment. Just another cool way the game finds to ease the player into its combat system.
Anyway, Ys IV starts proper as soon as you leave the Romun fort, and I've probably spent enough time looking at this game. Blame all those protracted intro sequences. Like any Ys game, there's plenty to like about it, from its excellent music to its extremely fast-paced but still tactical combat (which will eventually also include spell-casting) to its solid story and characterization.
It seems like if you wanted to play this particular Ys game, you might be better off tracking down a PSP copy of Ys IV: Memories of Celceta, which is Falcom's own retelling of the events of Ys IV: Dawn of Ys and Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. It also builds on the combat engine of Ys Seven, another PSP entry which comes highly recommended, and does a much better job fleshing out the region of Celceta and its denizens. It's also available in English, unlike this game, though apparently there's also a fan-dub of the voiceovers in addition to the script translation I was using. I can't even begin to imagine what that's like. Anyway, thanks for checking Octurbo today, and take it easy. Or Ys-y. Both, do both.
Ys IV OST: A Great Ordeal (all these Ys tracks are from the official CD OST for the game, released shortly before the game itself)
