Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim

I consider Ys [イース] to be one of my favorite video game franchises, despite what turns out to be a rather limited experience with the series. I have only beaten Ys I & II Chronicles, Ys: The Oath in Felghana [イース -フェルガナの誓い-], Ys: Memories of Celceta [イース セルセタの樹海], and now this. I'm also roughly halfway through Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana [イース VIII -Lacrimosa of DANA-] (which, for no particular reason, I haven't touched in years), and I own but haven't played Ys Seven [イース7], Ys Origin [イース・オリジン], and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox [イースIX -Monstrum NOX-]. Perhaps somewhat controversially, my favorite games in the series are the (PSP ports of) the first two installments, and specifically the very first game, as I feel the addition of the fireball magic in the second takes away from the rather unique "bumper car" combat. Oath is widely considered one of the best games, but I'm still somewhat salty from Galbalan kicking my ass so hard I had to lower the difficulty to defeat him, in large part because grinding in the nearby halls felt like it would take much longer than I wanted. Oh, and on the note of difficulty, I say I love these games, but I've only played Normal, with the exception of Celceta which I started on Hard because I was told Normal was way too easy there.

The Ark of Napishtim is relevant for establishing a new gameplay engine on which Oath and Origins were based, and apparently improved upon. So it's maybe a little weird I came away from this game feeling I ultimately enjoyed it more than Oath, though I guess at the same time I feel I'm primed to enjoy Origin even more....

As is standard with the series, the game begins with Adol experiencing a shipwreck, washing up ashore a new island, and getting roped into an adventure to save the island's people from an ancient evil. Adol also catches the eye of two or three girls, but blows off their advances in favor of more adventure. We get interacting with the Romun Empire, which I believe is the first time we see them in Ys, so that's kind of neat, even though our big Romun villain is actually a descendant of one of the ancient races native to this island, which... is to be expected with these games.

The central gameplay "gimmick" here is a trio of elemental swords (actually keys) Adol must cycle through in combat, though luckily it's not as "bad" as such a thing could be; other games are quick to adopt color-coded enemies that must be hit by a corresponding sword, but that sort of gimmick is only really in play for the first phase of the final boss here. There are a few enemies who at least feel like they take more damage from certain swords, but I think the DPS balances things out; the fire sword, Brillante, seems to hit the hardest overall, but I think the lightning sword, Ericcil moves faster, and the wind sword, Livart, has a longer combo. That actually leads me to secondary and tertiary elements to the sword gimmick: each sword has a special move as well as a super move. Brillante can do a short-range sword beam, Ericcil does some kind of charged dash-attack or something by spamming the attack button (I don't remember well, as there was a long gap between play-sittings for me, and I mainly used Brillante and Livart when I finished the last couple dungeons of the game...), and Livart has an extended combo attack (as mentioned above), which is really easy to pull off, but I've seen people complain about it online, so whatever (in principle, it's the same as how combos worked in Phantasy Star Online [ファンタシースターオンライン], though I found that game to have trickier timing for inputs). Super moves are universally activated with the Circle button (on PS2 and PSP; I don't know the PC key binds), and I guess are tangentially related to the special skills: Brillante shoots a giant long-range fireball, Ericcil shoots lightning that zigzags through multiple enemies, and Livart forms a giant tornado around Adol. The only thing I dislike about these swords is that your base sword becomes worthless as soon as you start collecting these, whereas other Ys games allow you to find or purchase new swords. The trade-off is these swords are upgradeable up to Level 11, which is neat.

To me, Ys was always something like "what if The Legend of Zelda [ゼルダの伝説] provided anything remotely like a challenge after the second game?," though with particular focus on combat (primarily) and exploration (at a somewhat-distant second-place), with few puzzles. The primary difference between Zelda and Ys is that Ys has an experience-points system, and it makes all the difference for combat. I've never really looked into the coding behind these games, but the numbers work in such a way that you can be, say, Level 36 attacking certain enemies, and they'll fucking demolish you, but as soon as you reach Level 37 you even the playing field, and by the time you hit Level 38 they'll do single-digit damage to you. That's possibly a slight exaggeration, but it is true I went into the final dungeon here around Level 43 and was getting minced by the spinny red guys, only to level-up a couple times against them and all of a sudden I can tank everything they threw at me, and grind easily as a result. That said, and this is true for a number of Ys games I've played, there's a point where you reach a "soft" level-cap, at which it becomes utterly tedious to grind any further, which in this game is Level 50. It's recommended you reach at least Level 58 to tackle the hidden superboss (Adol is at 58 for the Nightmare version of Time Attack), but you're stuck with the last dungeon's mobs, and I'm sure it will take hours to get those last ten levels. You can technically dodge the boss to loot the chest he guards, though I didn't do that in my own run of the game. I'm satisfied to have fought him via Time Attack, where he wasn't too hard so long as I spammed Ericcil's magic, and overall I appreciated the "bullet hell" element of his attacks.

The real pain in the ass comes in the "exploration" side of the game: Ys VI features the least intuitive input for a Dash Jump of any game to ever exist. To dash, what you must do is: hit the direction button you want to go, wait a beat, then press Square to attack, plus Cross to jump if you aim for a Dash Jump rather than a mere Dash Attack. I think I've gotten the timing down, a little too "late"; I wanted to rush the end of the game so I can knock out a replay of Resident Evil 4 before its remake comes out in a couple weeks, and I think the Dash Jump is only really "necessary" for one or two hidden items, and even then they could probably be reached through more careful normal jumps (my real problem was I couldn't warp on PS2, so I'd have to crawl through a couple labyrinthine dungeons again in order to attempt Dash Jumping to items I was missing, but I'd already missed other items I could not return to, so I figured I may as well miss more...!).

I'm not really sure why, but this is the "horniest" Ys I've played so far. There are big boobs and stuff in other games, but I feel this game went harder with the different body-types of the semi-nude fairies, as well as especially Crevia's gigantic fuckin' torpedo tits barely covered by her mermaid-scale-bra-pasties. On one hand, these designs don't exactly add anything to the game, as it's not really dedicated to "ecchi" beyond simply having sexy women, but... on the other hand, I think I enjoyed this game so much because of the art....

As I said above, Ys is one of my favorite game franchises. Number one for me is Resident Evil [バイオハザード], with a special interest in the PS1 trilogy, even taking into account all the backtracking therein, but... holy shit, is it annoying to have to run over the entire map to get anywhere in the PS2 version of Napishtim! My understanding is the newer Steam/GOG release upgrades the Wing of Alma item to allow fast-travel between save-points, but that's not a luxury Sony players enjoy. I'd had a mind to complete this sidequest to collect Pikkards for this kid, but simply did not feel like running around the entire map to do so. Maybe I'll play again on Hard or Nightmare soon, maybe I'll just by the GOG release to have the enhanced warp.

There are a couple more small-ish problems with the PS2 release, but they are "fixed" with in-game cheat-passwords. By default, the game uses an English dub and pre-rendered CGI cutscenes, but you can use passwords to unlock the original Japanese audio and anime cutscenes.

I really want to replay Oath now, to see better how that game improves on the engine here. But... I think I deleted the main file off my Vita to make space for other shit, and I'm too lazy to swap memory cards again, so I'll probably leap into Origin, which is sitting pretty on my PS4 harddrive. Regardless, I feel Ark is considered one of the weaker "major"/"modern" Ys games, and I enjoyed it quite a lot, so I'm probably in a position to see the other two games in this "trilogy" as near-perfect.

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim disposed of the series' renowned combat system, and implemented a jarring mixture of 3d environments alongside sprites and generic action-RPG combat in its place. Much of the gameplay itself feels rather dull, even though the addition of 3 main weapons boasting different combat skills was at least an entertaining venture.