Ys: Origin Review

Ys: Origin Review

I just want to preface this by saying that I have never done any sort of meaningful, efforted review before. So don’t be surprised if it’s awful.

With that out of the way, let me give a little background, Ys: Origin is the 7th game in the Ys series, (pronounced Eez), but the first one chronologically, hence the name “Ys: Origin”. The game was originally released in Japan in 2006 for Windows, and was re-released recently on Steam. I had been keeping an eye on it, and was somewhat interested in it, as I hadn’t played a good JRPG in a while. So when Ibrin offered a key on the forums in exchange for a DR update/fix, I snapped it up.

My first impression was a little dull, the game opens up with a very long cutscene, and then a few walls of text, with very little in the ways of gameplay for a good 15 minutes. About this point, I found the first save point, and just took the necessary comparison screenshots for a DR update, since this version has far superior widescreen and triplehead support. After that, for a while, the game sat quietly in my Steam library, wondering what it had done to offend me.

A week or two later, when my summer began, I had recently taken up fixing games for triplehead, and decided to take a crack at fixing the HUD on this game, since it was mostly right anyway.I played the game half-heartedly, intending to assess the difficulty of a fix, and then either do so, or drop it. A few hours later, I was still playing.

The gameplay has been described to be similar to Legend of Zelda, and really, that couldn’t be more spot-on. From the loot dropped by enemies, to the larger-than-life, brutal boss battles, this game could easily pass for a Zelda sequel if somebody swapped out the visuals and storyline. There are light RPG elements, which add to the game, but do very little to complicate or confuse you, the game is just very accessible to the layman gamer with little to no experience with Japanese games. Another aspect which screams similarity to me, is the system for items, normal enemies drop experience, immediate health vials and the like, and bonuses, but the real items are all acquired from chests, much like Zelda.

The gameplay itself is simple, but the game isn’t quite so. It’s got the feel of Zelda, in positive and negative aspects. Most of the time, if you die, you are returned to the last checkpoint you saved at, with a few exceptions. This can be very disheartening, as the checkpoints are about as spaced apart as they are in Final Fantasy X, and you can easily waste half an hour, die of some freak accident, and lose all of that progress. Some players may enjoy this, but I was raised as a PC gamer, and a lover of all things first person shooter, so I feel I have the unalienable right to save whenever and wherever I please.

The boss battles, are another bone to pick, they are incredibly vicious, and you will spend a lot of time playing tag with an otherworldly demon waiting for you to slip up, so it can tear your pretty face off. Adding to the frustration, is the fact that you cannot pause. Why? I am not sure, but you are not allowed to pause, and in a very long boss battle, this is a huge nuisance. Fortunately, if you die, you start right at the beginning of the boss battle, however, there’s no way to save your progress, so you’re forced to finish the boss battle, lest you forfeit and lose all of your progress prior to the last checkpoint.

Now, the storyline, I expected it to be convoluted and inaccessible, but, it’s really quite simple, the two goddesses of the land are wandering around in a tower full of demons, and you’re part of a team trying to find them before the demons do. There’s more to it than that, but there’s little point in my ruining of the story.

Another point to mention, is the translation. Right now, you’re probably thinking that you’ll need an Engrish Major to enjoy this game. Surprisingly enough, the translation was done quite spectacularly, it feels like every little joke, reference, term, and whatever else, was ported over flawlessly. Everything makes perfect sense, you don’t have to strain your head to try and figure out the meaning of a sentence, and there’s good usage of higher language, and English phrases and sayings, the game feels like it retained its original feel.

The graphics, are amazing, considering this game is more than half a decade old, and it doesn't take much power to crank it up to maximum. Not only that, the backdrops are beautiful, and, at the risk of sounding cliche, breathtaking.

The music, now, I'd like to take this moment to mention I am tone-deaf, but I really enjoy the music as well, it's varied, and fits the many moods perfectly. Keeping it brief here, as I am not the most qualified person to judge.

Now, the widescreen and triplehead assessment, this is where I’ll have to knock the game just a tad. The game supports any resolution out of the box, and the actual gameplay is Hor+, but the HUD is spanned, and for some reason, some elements are stretched, while others are just fine, it doesn’t make the game unplayable, but it is definitely a bother to look all the way to the left edge of your leftmost monitor in the middle of a fast-paced brutal boss battle to check on your HP and MP, when you’re playing in triplehead. But the real issue, is that cinematics are stretched horribly, and also letterboxed, the result being a video stretched across three screens, and squished vertically.

Overall, I am enjoying this game very much, and I fully intend to dig a little deeper and see if I can’t fix the minor HUD issues myself, and hopefully the horrific cinematics issue, or maybe get in touch with the developer, and see if we can’t kill the problem at the source. I would recommend this game if you enjoyed any of the 2D dungeon crawling Zelda games.