35 - Ys I & II Chronicles (PSP)

Genre: JRPG
Rating: T
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: Xseed Games
Platform: PSP
Release date: 2011

Never before in my life have I played a Ys game. For one, they were never as in my face as the likes of Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, and others. To be fair, I was never a huge JRPG player anyway so it makes sense they weren't really in front of my face much. However, from time to time they would get mentioned and I would wonder why the hell they called it Ys.

Apparently you sound it out more like Es but what the hell does that even mean? Playing through the game didn't really help me much to decrypt the meaning. However, I found out that the Ys in question were some sort of magical tome scattered around in dangerous places. Lovely.

What really was too bad about this game was that I died so damn fast. The health bar is very small and very unobtrusive. So much so in fact that I didn't realize I was losing life at all until it was too late. Upon discovering that I made sure to check it out when ramming headfirst into enemies but still ended up dying a lot. Apparently, there is some strategy to this although at first it appears there is none. You see, your character auto attacks so it seems like it would be a game of chance. After spending enough time with it though I realized hitting the enemies from certain angles was the way to do it. Then I stopped dying so much.

The game was pretty charming and had some pretty hilarious text. Whoever was at work at localization did a fantastic job. However, these types of games just aren't my thing. They're also pretty short which seems weird considering RPGs of any variety typically take dozens, if not hundreds of hours. I'm not complaining though. I barely could muster up enough interest to beat these.

Would I play again? Nah.

Feel free to look at my more serious review of Ys I & II Chronicles here.