Ys Origin is an action role playing game that is a prequel to the Ys series. It was originally released for PC in 2006 and ported to PS4 and Vita eleven years later. Despite being such an old game, the graphics hold up okay. Granted, the sprites are blurry and there are sections of the game where it is displayed in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Otherwise, everything else including the environments are crisp and the gameplay remains fast paced and fun.
Origin is an action game with a simple control scheme. You use square to attack, X to jump or dodge, triangle for a temporary power boost and Circle for magic. The shoulder buttons are used to cycle through the different magic attacks. The camera angle is fixed. The whole game takes place inside a tower so the environments can feel a bit bland at times. There are some light platforming as well as puzzles. The puzzles only really amount to going through every fork to find the one with the button or item to open the locked door at the end of the other fork. That being said, it can be easy to get lost and get stuck before realizing you need to double back to try and find the one thing you missed the first time around.
This is a product of when it was released but you have to equip and unequip items for various effects in order to progress. It’s easy to overlook this and is one of the more annoying quality-of-life things about the game. The gameplay loop is addictive. You run through the floors of the tower, defeating enemies along the way to level up and find better equipment. The combat is fast paced which makes the game brisk and you feel that you are constantly pushing the game along. Enemies take seconds to kill and while there’s an element of button mashing, on higher levels, you do need to watch out and dodge attacks.
As well as providing experience, enemies will drop SP crystals and items that temporary improve your abilities. The SP crystals will allow you to gain passive effects at save points. Yes, the game uses save points but these are generously spaced and help you track your progress on climbing the tower. These save points also act as fast travel points to allow you to warp between floors of the tower. The boss battles are some of the funnest sections of the game. Although on harder difficulties, the bosses will be stopping points and can be a nightmare to beat. They mainly rely on recognizing patterns and then dodging the boss’s attacks before dealing damage of your own. It’s a bit tenser since there’s no way to heal during a boss battle, or even pause the game (unless you jump out to the Vita’s home menu). If you’re having trouble then gaining one or two levels will help immensely in damage dealt and taken.
Experience points are heavily scaled. If you are underleveled then you will level up extremely quickly. On the other hand, once you have hit the level that the developers want you to before the boss, then it will take a very long time to level up more. Thus through grinding, you kind of know at what point you are able to comfortably take on the boss and it never takes that long to get up to the recommended level. The difficulty is really well balanced.
The game features three playable characters, each with their own story that takes place entirely in the tower. You can only select from Yunica or Huge in the beginning and once you clear both of their stories, then you unlock the third one. Only one of the routes is canon, so it would have been better to have three different viewpoints of the same story rather than three separate alternate takes of the story.
The story takes place 700 years before the events of the first game. Set in the land of Ys, it was once prosperous thanks to the twin goddesses, Reah and Feena. As demons infested the land, the goddesses raised their temples up from the land in a bid to keep their followers safe. Unfortunately, the demons were intent on causing destruction and built a tower. One day, the twin goddesses disappear and their followers launch a search party into the tower to find out what has happened. Yunica is the one of those in the search party. Her story is the simplest one of the three. Her main aim is just to go through the tower to find Reah and Feena. During her journey, we understand her backstory, including her father and the reason for her abilities. She plays most similarly to Adol from the main Ys games, and is a mid ranged fighter.
The second viewpoint is from Hugo Fact, also one of the search party. He is a full knight and his battle style is long ranged, able to shoot magical projectiles. This makes him one of the easier characters to play with. His story is more personal as while he is also searching for the twin goddesses, his main focus is to chase his brother and kill him. There’s a bit of a backstory to the reason why.
The third and final viewpoint is The Claw. Once again, you go through all the same dungeons but there are more difference sin terms of bosses in his playthrough. The Claw is a close ranged fighter and he actually lacks any ranged attacks. Therefore, his playthrough presents the highest difficulty out of the three. Bosses are harder because you need to watch out for patterns and then dive in to strike before jumping back out of range. He is an anti-hero and part of the antagonist’s group. His objective is to gain power and as a result, he had accepted the demonic powers offered to him.
Don’t let the need to play through the game three times put you off. Each playthrough is not too long, the first time will probably take you 10 hours but as you get familiar, the second playthrough will take 7 hours and the third will probably take 5 hours. Once you have cleared all three playthroughs, there are additional modes unlocked such as a boss rush, time attack and an arena mode.
Overall, Ys Origin is a fantastic game. Despite being released almost 15 years ago, the game has aged remarkably well. The action remains fast paced and heaps of fun. The story is simple but it works and you end up caring and understanding quite a bit about the characters. Having to play it three times but only having one be canon is kind of annoying but otherwise, Ys Origin is highly recommended.
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