Ys Book 2 Pc Engine Cd Reviews Mobygames
Hudson Soft, founded in the 70s, did simply nigh everything a studio and publisher could practice in the video game industry before it was fully absorbed into Konami on March 1, 2012. For the next month here at Retro XP, the focus volition be on the roles the studio played, the games they developed, the games they published, the consoles they were attached to, and the legacy they left behind. Later on all, someone has to remember them, since Konami doesn't ever seem to. Previous entries in the series tin can exist found through this link.
The very concept of Ys Four takes a bit of explaining, and then permit's start at the beginning. Nihon Falcom developed and released Ys I: Aboriginal Ys Vanished, in 1987, with a team led past the likes of Masaya Hashimoto. Ys II: Aboriginal Ys Vanished — The Concluding Chapter would follow in 1988, so a year after that, the 2 would exist combined into ane release for the PC Engine CD-ROM and (in 1990) the Turbografx-CD platforms, with a new and improved name: Ys Books I & 2. Different the original releases of these games, though, the development was non handled by Falcom. No, Ys I & II were programmed for the Hudson'south consoles by Alfa Arrangement, and published worldwide by Hudson Soft.
Alfa System and Hudson would also partner together to port Falcom's Ys III: Wanderers from Ys to the Turbografx-CD in 1991, but that was the last of the Ys titles that were developed by the original team making those games at Falcom. Sometime after the release of Ys III, Hashimoto, besides as the scenario writer for the first iii Ys games, Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, left Falcom and went on to form Quintet, known for titles such as ActRaiser, Terranigma, and Illusion of Gaia. Then, when Hudson wanted some other Ys game for the PC Engine CD after Wanderers from Ys, Falcom didn't have one to requite, as the always-small studio had just lost an immense amount of talent, and key developers who originated the franchise in question.
Falcom nevertheless took Hudson up on the idea, though, sketching out a scenario and songs for use in a game that Hudson would take to brand themselves. Since Hudson wasn't the only company programming Falcom'southward Ys titles for habitation use, Falcom likewise reached out to Tonkin Firm, the SNES and Super Famicom developers for that version of Wanderers from Ys, to license out the plans a second fourth dimension to a dissimilar audition. A pretty good deal for Falcom, considering that they didn't have the evolution staff to brand one Ys game, so instead they licensed outside studios to do the heavy lifting for them while they focused on projects that didn't just lose their scenario writer and managing director instead.
Hudson's version of Ys IV is titled Dawn of Ys, while Tonkin'due south is Mask of the Sun. There are many differences between the two, but besides enough of similarities, also, which makes sense as both studios were working off of the aforementioned starting point. Hudson, though, veered off from the script far more than than Tonkin House did. Every bit this transcribed interview from the time explains, this wasn't done without Falcom's approval, but information technology did even so lead to the owners of the Ys franchise eventually choosing Mask of the Lord's day every bit the canon version of Ys Four. At to the lowest degree, until the remake that blended the two together, Memories of Celceta, ended up superseding both.
Equally far as the quality of the original Ys IV titles become, in that location is no contest between them. Dawn of Ys isn't only the superior Ys Four, but it might as well be the superior title among the classic Ys games, period. Information technology combined the best elements of gameplay from Ys II and Ys III together — the add-on of magical that gave our hero Adol ranged attack options, as well the addition of power-augmenting magical rings — while going back to the bump combat that Ys was known for before Wanderers from Ys brought us workable but dicier sword-swinging combat. And information technology went dorsum to the overhead style of Ys I and II, likewise, removing the sidescrolling elements that so angered Ys fans of the fourth dimension period. I like Wanderers from Ys plenty, past the fashion, despite its faults, but it'southward at or toward the bottom of the rankings for the Ys titles of the 80s and 90s, depending on how you lot feel about Ys V.
Mask of the Sun isn't a bad game, either, but it'south frustrating in comparison to Dawn of Ys, and to Ys I & II, every bit well. The collision detection merely isn't right, and the game'due south residue, both in terms of enemy difficulty and the feel they give y'all upon defeat, are both off, besides. It doesn't feel every bit advisedly crafted in this sense every bit Falcom'south work with Ys, nor Hudson's work replicating Ys for their own consoles. The crash-land combat is choosy: you need to exist slightly off-eye when attacking an enemy in order to have the initiative in bump combat. Come at them head on, even if you are equal to or exceeding their level and strength, and they might very well impale you, and fast. It'south more likely that you lot just have a lengthier than usual battle with the enemy, but allow's take this example from my own time with Mask of the Sun to consider how aggravating the worst-case scenarios can be.
Experience points received in Ys games are scaled to Adol'south level, and so, enemies that were worth, let's say, twoscore experience per kill when you were level 10 will give y'all just a single betoken when yous're level 15 or 16. In these scenarios, enemies giving y'all but 1 XP are too enemies that are not worth chasing down since they requite you slightly more than nothing in return, only you tin can still plow through them with bump combat if they happen to be in your path, because you're just going to effortlessly tear through them, anyway. Not then in Mask of the Sunday! Despite the best available equipment — similar, literally just opened a chest to go the next sword after getting the latest armor and shield minutes before —and being leveled to the indicate that enemies were worth only a unmarried experience point, they were nevertheless able to have Adol from total health to death almost instantaneously, because I did not come at them off-center, but instead caput-on. Luckily, I had just saved, just I replicated this once more a few times to run across what happened, and the answer was e'er that they struck me kickoff, and so again and again and again in such rapid succession that Adol's health simply melted away before I could maneuver my way into turning the tide.
Without gaining whatsoever additional levels or irresolute my equipment, I so took down the next boss in the game in about 10 seconds, without having to heal Adol's HP, despite taking damage a few times in the process. What? That is actual bad design, in the sense at that place is no consequent internal logic at work, and again, given the intendance of Falcom'south previous outings in the serial, and contrasted with how Hudson handled their own version of Ys 4, Tonkin's missteps stand out that much more. Role of the joy of playing Ys games is how they perpetually push button yous forward, and the crash-land mechanic makes that even easier to do. Unless you create a situation in which you are afraid to engage with even lowly enemies worth a single experience bespeak, for fear they're going to trap you lot against a wall and finish you earlier yous can react to their attack, anyhow.
Dawn of Ys, meanwhile, actually congenital on the bump combat past adding diagonal movement, giving Adol far more freedom of motion both in maps and in combat — Dawn of Ys' crash-land combat is seamless in a mode Mask of the Sun'south is not, merely if it hypothetically did have the latter's issue with weak enemies being able to trap you, the diagonal motility would have made it far easier to escape those moments. Hudson as well introduced some groovy new items to the series, like the Samson Shoes, which make Adol move at the slowest possible pace, but also allows him to defeat non-dominate enemies in a single hitting. It'due south extremely funny to flit into a new area, slightly underleveled, and then slooooowly walk effectually in a petty circle for a minute wearing those shoes to just lay waste to everything and bring your experience up without feeling similar you were grinding for levels by doing so. Highly recommended.
The bosses take ramped upward in difficulty, with even the 2nd 1 in the game being tougher to defeat than everything but the stop bosses of the commencement ii Ys titles. They require that you larn their patterns and figure out your timing in gild to defeat them: this isn't a situation where you can simply run up to i and win without having to recall much virtually what you're doing (again, unlike some of how Mask of the Sun went downward). While everything looks very much like Ys I & 2 on the Turbografx-CD stylistically, there is far more graphical detail in everything you look at here: it's not "just" a redo of the past, fifty-fifty when regions from the older games are revisited. Hudson didn't simply go, "Hey, remember Ys?" when making this, though, they certainly did some of that, also. They aimed to build on what was already here, to better the experience in a number of ways while introducing some newness to the series of their own, and they succeeded in that goal. Information technology is the superior Ys, and for its tweaks and improvements to the series, arguably the superior of the classic-era Ys games, too.
Other than the quality of gameplay itself, the most significant departure betwixt the two Ys IVs is in the story. They hitting many of the same beats — the ancient, lost state of Celceta, the lost, winged race of the Eldeel, the conquests of the Romun empire in Ys' mirror version of the bodily world, etc. — but Dawn of Ys is designed equally something of a bow with which they could tie up Adol'southward PC Engine CD run. He returns to multiple locations from Ys I & Two, sees characters from those games in more than and in more meaningful ways than in Mask of the Sun'due south cameos, and has the main thrust of the story tied into the history of the land of Ys itself in a way that neither of Mask of the Sunday nor the eventual Memories of Celceta would.
And that makes a lot of sense for Hudson to exercise in order to (1) brand their version of the game stand up out from Tonkin's and (2) create a scenario in which someone purchasing Dawn of Ys as their first-ever Ys might then become back to buy the other two that were bachelor on Hudson's console, and also published by them, likewise. Information technology helps that none of it feels forced or unnecessary, either: information technology's all but a seamless fashion to tie Adol'south and Hudson's pasts together with their nowadays, and information technology works for both parties.
And this distinction too makes Dawn of Ys worth playing in the nowadays, too, equally you can play Memories of Celceta to get a vastly improved version of Mask of the Sun and go on with your life, but in order to experience the very Hudson-specific iteration of Ys IV? Well, you'll have to play that ane, because while in that location are elements of it in Memories of Celceta, it was not the catechism Ys Iv, and therefore didn't get most as much meaningful attending in the transition to the modern age.
As ever, a moment needs to be taken to talk about the music of a Ys game. Having something every bit driving as "The Estrus in the Blaze," with this sound quality, on a panel game in 1993 is not really something Northward American audiences were used to, generally because the SNES and Sega Genesis just did not produce these kinds of sounds. The PC Engine CD-ROM did, though, thanks to its power to utilise Red Book sound:
Tracks like "Temple of the Sun" are also incredible standouts that audio not bad even at present, never mind by 1993's standards:
And so there is "The Called-for Sword," which might be the almost Final Fantasy runway Falcom has composed, even though the song it reminds me of the nigh wouldn't come out for another five months:
What an exceptional soundtrack, and while Falcom equanimous it, Hudson did take to arrange it for their system. Information technology sounds amend than what Tonkin managed on the Super Famicom, and I'm not certain all of that has to practise with but the hardware in question. Hudson showed over the years that they understood the importance of music in games, too, and that fact is on display in Dawn of Ys.
Of course, to play Ys 4: Dawn of Ys will require you to emulate it. For one, it never released outside of Japan: Memories of Celceta was actually the commencement international release of any version of Ys IV. Second, it's not just something you tin can go to a retro shop and stumble upon, and even if you could, you'd demand to have a working PC Engine CD to practise information technology. Luckily, the game has been translated by fans (every bit has Mask of the Dominicus), and the localizers, Burnt Lasagna, fifty-fifty did English language phonation work for the game's many voiced scenes, also. They did a astounding chore with the text localization work: yes, the voice acting doesn't sound as professional as what you'd hear in games released today, only information technology certainly does the trick, and fits very much with the aesthetic and era, also. I've played official vocalization acted releases from the time that don't concur upwards as well, so yous can't enquire for much more that out of a labor of love.
It's unsurprising that Hudson nailed their version of Ys IV and so well. They had already shown an power to port over Ys games to their systems, and porting other studios' games was a thing they had shown aptitude for over the course of an entire decade before they had the adventure to make Ys IV a reality when Falcom originally didn't have whatsoever plans to become that route just withal. They had as well already shown that they could make a from-the-basis-up Falcom championship that felt like it belonged within their corner of the role-playing world, with Famicom/NES classic Faxanadu: Ys IV just continued on a legacy that Hudson had already been building for itself. It might not have been the canon Ys Iv, only every bit a representation of what Hudson was capable of as a programmer and just a damn fine game in its own correct? Dawn of Ys is certainly those things.
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Source: https://retroxp.substack.com/p/remembering-hudson-soft-ys-iv-dawn
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