Review: Ys SEVEN (PSP)
Ys SEVEN (pronounced “ees”) is the latest chapter in Japanese developer Falcom’s legendary action RPG series starring red-haired swordsman Adol Christen, translated into English and brought to the US thanks to XSEED Games. Like Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim before it, the latest sequel in the series rebuilds the series from the ground up, while retaining the fast-paced action the series is known for.
After the events of Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (available in English on the PS2 and PSP), Adol and his longtime traveling companion Dogi end up in the land of Altago. Actually arriving to the scene via ship as opposed to washing up ashore as usual, Adol and Dogi are almost immediately greeted by trouble as they enter the capital city. After a showcase of reckless chivalry and being jailed, Adol and Dogi are tasked to investigate a nearby shrine and thus, Adol’s latest and biggest adventure beings.
Now keep in mind that, like most games in a long-running series, Ys SEVEN is a completely stand-alone story. Even if you don’t know who Adol and Dogi are, you’ll feel introduced to them as if they were new characters and the game only makes very small references to characters and places from past installments. So don’t let the number in the title scare you away.
Ys has always been about blazing fast action and Ys SEVEN is no exception. As soon as you get control of your characters and start rapidly hacking away at monsters and furiously grabbing the copious amounts of loot that explodes from each one defeated, you’ll get hooked. New to the series, you’ll be controlling a party of two or three characters at once as opposed to just Adol and you can rapidly switch between any characters in your party at any time during the action.
The characters are pretty varied, you have a couple that move and hit quickly, a couple that hit slow but hard and a couple that fire projectiles. Each character also has numerous unique secondary skills, which are obtained through new weapons. Each character, based on the weapons they use, also have an attack trait and some monsters may only be able to be damaged by certain characters (for example, sword attacks won’t work on heavily shelled monsters, but a nice smash from a giant hammer will). This great variety in characters helps keep the hack-and-slash style of gameplay stay fresh through the long adventure.
On top of playing and feeling like a straight-up action game, Ys SEVEN has some very heavy RPG elements that add a great layer to the action. You’ll get stronger through experience points and leveling up and you’ll want to collect money along the way to buy stronger weapons and armor. But that’s not all, there’s also a crafting system. By picking up various items from defeated enemies and certain spawning points in each area, you’ll be able to trade these in to create even stronger weapons and armor. If an area or boss fight is too hard, you can try leveling up or crafting a new weapon to give you the extra edge you need.
The absolute best part of the game is the massive boss battles. Instead of simply being large damage sponges as so many bosses can be, the bosses in Ys SEVEN will seriously test your reflexes and mastery of the game’s various mechanics. Given the number of bosses, there is a surprising variety of them, with many really changing up how you approach battling them past simply dodging and counter-attacking.
Now other that the fast-paced action, Ys is also well known for extremely awesome soundtracks and as expected, Ys SEVEN continues this tradition. Most of the music is pretty fast and rocking, though you still get some slower tunes for cut-scenes and certain areas. It’s a good mix of styles and most of the music you’re going to be hearing often is very well made so it doesn’t get old. Typically, the boss battle songs are some of the best in the game, combining hard rock guitar with violin melodies. A limited edition of the game comes with a CD with a selection of tracks from the game, definitely something to look into if you’re going to get the game.
Story-wise, Ys SEVEN sees Adol and his companions uncovering a mystery revolving around the five ancient dragons of Altago and the three remaining tribes representing them. The story starts off small but continues to unravel into something bigger and bigger at each point in the game. Overall, the story is pretty simple and mostly typical for a Japanese RPG, it doesn’t break new ground nor does it come off as intending to, but it does a good job of giving you a break from the action (though some cut-scenes can tend to drag on a bit).
On that, one thing I noted is that the localization is very rough; it almost reads like a fan-translation, everything seems very dry, literal and at times, almost machine-translated. None of the characters have any sort of characterization to their dialogue. It’s not exactly bothersome, but it’s probably the only time I’ve really gotten this vibe from a recent RPG localization. Basically, the lack of any flair in the writing makes some longer cut-scenes drag a little more and it makes talking to random townspeople completely uninteresting.
My only real issues with the game are that some of the longer cut-scenes grind the game to halt at times and because of the hack-and-slash nature of the action, the game feels a little bit longer than it should be, though it doesn’t quite reach the point of dragging on its feet. Expect to spend between twenty to thirty hours in Altago. There’s also no extra content or anything to give the game a bit of replayability, other than a few different difficulty levels.
Ys SEVEN is a fantastic game. With a large cast of playable characters, addicting gameplay, heart-pounding boss battles, a story that paces itself well and a soundtrack that will make you attach headphones to your PSP, Ys SEVEN gets my highest recommendation. If you are a fan of action RPGs, you don’t want to miss this game.
