Ys V a special entry into the series for a
lot of reasons.
Especially in the eyes of people who haven't
play the game, of which there are plenty.
It was the last of the old titles, closing
off the series on the Super Nintendo until
The Ark of Napishtim brought it back in the
PS2 era 8 years later.
A lot of people often question, just how bad
was this game to kill of the Ys series for
two whole console generations?
Since Ys V was one of the last games in the
series to get a fantranslation, and as of
now, is still the only of the older Ys games
to not receive a modern remake.
not too many people have experienced Adol's
adventures in Xandria.
As it's still listed as missing on the modern
timelines as an empty entry.
As there's no modern remake, and the only
other major release of Ys V is another Taito
PS2 release, this video only covers Ys V - Lost
Kefin, Kingdom of Sand on the Super Nintendo.
So let's get this review started.
Ys V takes place after Adol's adventures in
Felghana in Ys III.
Traveling alone, he reaches Xandria, a city
located in Afroca.
His reputation precedes him, as he's quickly
put in contact with a rich merchant by the
name of Dorman who wants him to hunt down
legendary crystals.
It's not long after this, that Adol finds
out there's an ancient legend in this land
about a red-haired adventurer who will one
day bring ruin to Afroca.
A few comic relief bandits try to trip Adol
up, also in search of the same crystals.
They bring a strangely high amount of slapstick
comedy with them to this game and it feels
a bit weird whenever they're on screen.
In the meantime, there's talk about how the
desert has been spreading rapidly, destroying
towns in the process.
And the crystals themselves appear to be linked
to the disappearance of Kefin, an all-powerful
kingdom of sand that one day simply vanished.
For most of the game, the story feels like
a throwaway plot of no real importance.
Which was a huge let down after the previous
4 games.
And this is something that's reflected in
a lot of the game's design and appearance
too.
I wouldn't say Ys V is especially bad as a
game.
It's not the worst Ys game I've covered so
far, but I can see how people would just bounce
off it if they picked it up blindly.
It feels strange to say, but I think Falcom
was trying to mimic their competition in a
very direct manner.
The gameplay and Adol's sprite reminds me
very heavily of Brain Lord, a game that came
out a year prior.
This might just be me though, but I just couldn't
stop shaking that feeling off the entire game.
The rotational menu and the way it looks and
moves reminds me a lot of Secret of Mana's
menu systems.
Except a lot more confusing because for some
reason you actively switch the position of
the menu elements after moving them, so the
same directions don't move to the same elements
every time, as you're replacing them horizontally
and vertically.
It's incredibly confusing and I don't understand why it works this way.
The cutscene direction very much feels like
an early Squaresoft SNES RPG.
with that very specific ways NPCs move,
and the way the camera
cuts to scenes with heavy pixelation effects.
And the music....
While not bad, doesn't sound like anything
by Falcom.
It sounds like typical JRPG music from the
SNES.
While not bad, certainly isn't as memorable
as the music from other titles in the series.
And they switch the songs per map so often,
that you often only hear the intro sequences
to most songs, making the repitition just
really stand out all the more.
Mask of the Sun had a problem of giving great
compositions lackluster renditions, but Lost
Kefin has the opposite problem.
The songs just sound bland and uninspired
while fitting the SNES sound chip a lot better.
I think one of the biggest problems with the
music is just that it's on a really slow tempo,
not giving you that typical fast momentum
that Ys tracks are generally known for.
Though at least this is something that's also
reflected in the gameplay.
The combat in Ys V is traditional top-down
action RPG combat.
You walk up to enemies and swing your sword
at them.
You have a button you can hold to hold up
your shield as well.
Either action locks you in place, even attacking
while jumping locks you in your position when
you do it.
So the typical workaround most games give
you for slow attacks doesn't work as well
in Ys V. A lot of enemies can also guard.
As you can probably guess, every element of
combat slows the game down just that bit more.
Including the actual slowdown.
Of which there is surprisingly plenty.
Ys V doesn't like it when there's a lot of
sprites and effects on the screen, which there
are during most boss fights.
Even regular combat encounters with normal
enemies that have ranged effects can have
a huge impact on the game engine's capacity
to run normally.
There's also a weird problem the game has
dealing with slightly elevated terrain.
Moving upwards on elevated terrain can be
a pain a lot of the time.
Like the game is stopping you from going up
a pixel or two.
At the same time, there's highly elevated
platforms that the game has no problems with
you accidentally dropping from if you even
move the slightest bit too close to it.
This is something that becomes especially
annoying during a certain moment dealing with
a jump puzzle near a waterfall, where near
the end they start placing enemies firing
projectiles on small platforms.
Falling off the platforms ensures you have
to redo the entire section.
It's the only part of the game where I can
see people struggle with, not because it's
hard, but because the platforming is so fickle,
and the combat not all that accurate, and
being forced to repeat this entire section
can leave you especially frustrated.
To add to this, the rotational menu is pretty
slow, and if you want to use a healing potion,
you have to use this menu to go to a traditional
RPG menu, and then select it from there.
A lot of extra steps for basic actions are
pretty typical of this game.
The most confusing extra step in Ys V to me
was that enemies drop gems when you kill them.
You sell these gems for money.
There's nothing else you can do with them.
And it's also the only way to get money in
the game.
Almost every shop in the game lets you trade
your gems, so there's basically no reason
for it to work this way.
There shouldn't be a middle step between killing
enemies and getting the income needed to buy
items, but for some reason there is.
Add to all of this that the hitboxes on enemies
and you sword are incredibly fickle, and a
lot of attacks that feel like they should
hit typically don't.
It's not a great combat system, and I'm not
surprised that Falcom took a break after this
to try and figure out how else to do combat
because it's a bit of a mess.
That said, as much of a mess the combat is,
at least it's not unfair or even remotely
hard.
The game is incredibly easy.
Ys V throws absurd amounts of exp at you,
and it doesn't take too long until you're
overpowered compared to most enemies with
no grinding required.
To add to this, you can stock up to 10 potions
so you're pretty much never in danger of dying
to anything all game long.
Bosses are a cakewalk, and most of the time
you can just out DPS them by just continuously
attacking them.
You might need to heal once per boss, but
that's about it.
Most of the time I ended up using a healing potion it was usually two hits before I beat them.
There is a rebalanced version of the game
that came out later in Japan called Ys V:
Expert.
I haven't tried this version out myself, but
from my understanding all they did was rebalance
some numbers around.
Ys V's combat needs a lot more work than that,
and I think padding numbers is only going
to make it more tedious and slow-paced than
it already is.
Given that it's the the slowest paced game
in the series I've played so far with no positives
about this reduction in pacing...
I'd rather just pass on this version.
There's also a magic system.
During your journey, you find magical ingredients
hidden away without any indicators of items
being there.
You need to mix three of these ingredients
to make a magical item that you can attach
to your weapon.
Once equiped, you can charge your weapon to
100 while holding to the R button.
After you've filled it up, you can cast a
spell with the regular attack buttton.
I get what they were going for here, this
is very close to the magic system that Secret
of Evermore used, except there you had a dog
to sniff out ingredients for you.
And magic used these ingredients up immediately,
so you needed to keep stock of all these ingredients
to keep casting spells.
Also magic did a decent amount of damage to
a lot of enemies, whereas in Ys V, the few
times I did use magic, I did no more extra
damage than just normal attacks.
Considering the game is already very easy
as is, I never found a reason to bother exploring
magic.
There's too many hassles in the way to bother
dealing with something cumbersone in use that
doesn't really help you all that much.
One thing that confused me is that in the
options menu for the game, you can customize
what color armor and cloth Adol is wearing.
While customization is nice to have, having
a small set of preset armor and cloth options
feels a bit strange.
Why not have your character sprite change
to these colors after equiping certain armor,
to make the change feel like it's more than
just a number going up?
Though I guess this was a first step towards
actually visualizing armor changes that they
would in a few games later on.
There's also weird visual bugs in the game,
like how text boxes in certain areas turn
off background layers.
Likely because they're somehow pushing the
game's engine to its limits with the amount
of layers used, something that is also supported
by the amount of slowdown the game has.
It does seem strange for that to happen though,
since nothing about the game's presentation
or mechanics are impressive enough to suggest
a SNES should struggle to run it.
There's still some things about Ys V that
I admire though, and it pains me I can't really
talk about it because I don't want to spoil
the game.
Let's just say that the moment in most Ys
games, where you go to the big final dungeon
at the end of the game is the part where Lost
Kefin really shines.
This final dungeon is big enough to have an
actual town in it, isn't too cumbersome or
mazelike in structure to explore, and has
some really great story setup and execution
in it that is almost entirely lacking from
the rest of the game.
If you do consider checking out the old version
of Ys V and are patient with a very middle
of the road SNES action RPG, it's entirely
worth experiencing it just for what it does
near the end.
The game isn't too long, so it's not that
big of a struggle to make it there.
If you're not, and you're holding out for
the modern remake, I can't say I blame you.
Though I am curious what the modern remake
will do with the game's setup and story.
Fleshing out the early parts would really
help the game's flow a lot, and I wouldn't
be surprised if they switch events around,
and have things happen for entirely different
reasons, like they did with Ys III between
Wanderers from Ys and Oath in Felghana.
What I'm mostly curious about is how they'll
make the game fit in the modern overarching
plot, as for the most part the game feels
like an isolated incident.
The overarching plot in Ys games didn't exist until Ys VI.  The next entry that we're going to cover.
And has since been retroactively added into the story with the current remakes.
For all the missteps Ys V takes, it's still
an important game in the series.
It's very clear how this game ended up leading
the series to the direction Ys VI took it
into.
And while it's far from my favorite game in
the series covered so far, at least it's a
lot more playable than Mask of the Sun.
And like I said previously, I do really appreciate
how they used early setup for the game near
the end with the ending.
Anyway, this was AboveUp.
I hope you enjoyed the video...
I'm not sure if I would call covering this
game having been an entirely fun experience,
but I think the ending by itself was worth
it.
Things are going to get a lot more straightforward
from here, as the next two Ys take place after
each other.
At least, all the ones except Ys 8, which
takes place between Ys V and VI.
Though having already covered it in the past,
I'm not going to go back to that one a second time.
