Your Retro 2022 Top Favorites!

I missed this thread earlier. Considering that I played a lot of Ys last year, you could pretty much say Ys in general was my top favorite of 2022. But which ones? Let’s see…

1. The Oath in Felghana - of course, the one Ys game I played all those years ago is still my favorite. There’s just something about it that clicks with me. It has a varied set of locations such as a volcano and a snowy mountain. Sure, they’re bog-standard locales in video games but it doesn’t bother me.

2. Ys V - It’s weird to me how disliked this game is because I had an absolute blast with it. Something just clicked with me. Some things don’t get fleshed out and sure the difficulty isn’t really challenging or anything but I’m fine with that. I’m not really looking for challenge but rather just escaping to this other world. It’s not a flawless game; the magic system is garbage and I only really used the screen clearing one to raise my stats and each time I used it, I’d turn fast forwarding on which means this would likely have been awful on real hardware. Still, as it is I enjoyed it immensely.

3. Ys Memories of Celceta - I really liked having rewards tied to exploration and cartography. This was the first Ys game I played with the party system. In hindsight, it made playing Ys Seven a little difficult at first because it was like taking a step back. This game had just become retro in 2022! As of September 17, in fact! I mostly stuck to using Adol the entire time and allowed the AI to handle monsters that Adol couldn’t hit as hard. Fortunately, there wasn’t any of this clanking business as there is in Ys Seven when you hit something too hard for your sword or missing because it’s a bird. I also liked Ys Seven and its story left a bigger impact on me than MoC’s, but I just felt like I had more fun playing through MoC.

4. Ys II on Steam - it’s an improvement over Ys I in every way and I appreciated having a much higher level cap than in Ys I. Really, what was the point of having such a low level cap in Ys I? I also liked having a distance attack and it works best in the Steam version as it is not quite as useful in the PCE version (I haven’t gotten far enough in the Famicom one to know how it’s like there).

5. Ys VI - I just liked the Napishtim engine and this is where it began. I played the Steam version which I understand has better fast travel than the original versions.

Honorable mention: Ys Origin - I enjoyed it as it was more Napishtim engine goodness but I was saddened by how little exploration there was. I think this happens to be a lot of people’s favorite but I miss exploring wide open areas under a(n implied) clear blue sky and entering different dungeons. The different sections of the tower were okay but weren’t enough to alleviate the fact that I was still running up the same tower. I liked the call-forwards to Adol’s adventure through Darm Tower like the evil corridor and the annex.

Honorable mention: Ys I - I can’t say that I love this game but after playing a few different versions of it, I have to admit that I don’t dislike it. The Steam version is by far the best and continues to be my favorite while the PCE version is serviceable and is most notable for the soundtrack. The Famicom version is like taking a full body dive into gooey fecal matter sprayed with Febreze. Everything leading up to the bat boss is great in every version thus far, though. Except on the Mastersystem version- I finally got around to trying (albeit in 2023) and I don’t know how much grinding it wants me to do in order to beat the first boss but enemies hardly give experience anymore. Maybe I just suck?