Anime Ys series

[4249]

Falcom pls, don't make Brittany-chan cry again

 

[LESS T_T]

At least we get PC version of Celceta from Xseed, it seems.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Pretty sweet! Don't have a Vita, so this'll be a first for me.
As much as Seven had it's faults, it was still a pretty fun game.

Anybody here play Celceta on the Vita? Does it have anything special to look forward to?

 

[LESS T_T]

Into the big hole it goes, one more indefinite delay to YS VIII PC: http://steamcommunity.com/games/579180/announcements/detail/1647623139647481008

Poor performance is to blame, again. For better or worse, now they will outsource PC port to other developer.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA Further Delay Announcement

To all of you who have been anxiously awaiting the PC release of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA, we have a very regrettable announcement: we are once again pushing the release to an as-of-yet indeterminate date. We sincerely apologize for this delay, and we would like to explain in detail the reason why we are proceeding with the delay. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand that many of you will be upset about this news. For that, and most importantly, for the delay, we are very sorry.

Please note, however, that this announcement does not affect the relocalization update patch planned for January 30th for the PlayStation®4 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game.

Low framerate issues and memory leak problems were apparent from the earliest PC builds we received. To help combat these, we looked into the drawing processes, which lead to an overall improvement in performance. However, we are still encountering framerate drops in specific circumstances. The systems regulating these framerate issues are heavily reliant on the architecture of the original PlayStation 4 version and, as such, are not existent in PC architecture. The memory leak issues are somewhat less complicated and expected to be resolved this weekend. But in order to solve these issues, we have determined that we must modify the core level of data in the game.

As the PC version of the game was originally envisioned as a port, we avoided touching the core programming as much as possible and focused on PC performance optimization. However, in light of the feedback of those who have participated in the second beta test, we have concluded that we cannot avoid modifying the core programming.

Once the changes from the relocalization efforts have been implemented at the end of this month, we will be moving development to an entirely different developer who will primarily focus on frame rate improvements as well as other PC optimizations. Once that process begins, we will monitor the progress and determine the release schedule. We will also be sure to give regular updates to our progress.

Again, we truly regret that we underestimated the severity of the issues that have surfaced (and how long it would take to resolve them), and for that, NIS America sincerely apologizes to all of you for this unexpected delay. We are fully aware of how much our fans have been anticipating this release, and will do our very best to launch the game the way it is meant to be launched: without any issues, game-breaking bugs, or errors.

If you have made a pre-purchase on Steam and would like a refund due to this delay, please use the link provided below:

http://b it.ly/YsVIIIPC_refundprocess (remove the space on the hyperlink).

For any purchases or pre-orders made outside of the Steam channel, please contact the corresponding refund support for that channel.
Thank you very much for your understanding, support, and patience through this time.

-VP and COO, Mitsuharu Hiraoka

 

[Jack Dandy]

1.

2. Falcom should really make their own equivalent of Capcom's MT framework. Make every game on it, ensure easy PC porting.

 

[flyingjohn]

Why do i have a feelingthe outsourced developer will be some subsidiary of nisa and will make the same mistakes again.

 

[LESS T_T]

Probably (and hopefully) Ghostlight? They already have experience with porting a PS4 Falcom game to PC (Tokyo Xanadu eX+, its port was well received as far as I heard).

 

[flyingjohn]

As the PC version of the game was originally envisioned as a port, we avoided touching the core programming as much as possible and focused on PC performance optimization. However, in light of the feedback of those who have participated in the second beta test, we have concluded that we cannot avoid modifying the core programming.

wat

Translation from steam:
"So apparently, they fail to understand that, in order to make a 'good' pc port they HAVE to modify the core system so that the game will be compatible to run on PC instead of PS4, that's what a 'port' is. But instead they think they can just toss the game on an emulator or something and the game will be fine with a few optimization. Really speaks a lot for their competence."

 

[Ash]

You don't play Ys games for the story- play them for the fun bosses and awesome music.

Interested in possibly getting into the series. Am gameplayfag.

Fun bosses, or gameplay as a whole? Why would I play a game that only has good booses and the rest is a slog when I could play a game that has good gameplay from start to finish?

If the series does have generally good gameplay, then which is the best in that regard? And I pray it doesn't have a grating art style as the latest Ys game appears to have.

 

[Jack Dandy]

The gameplay in the stages themselves is fun - but a bit mindless. No highly-technical "crazy action". Think something more like in Megaman games.
You do need to watch out for enemy attacks, but they can only pose an actual danger only in the higher difficulties.
The bosses are where the true challenge lies.

I'll say again that even in the stages themselves the gameplay is fun - the combat is always very finely paced, exploration is nice, and it's just good times to run around and chop enemies into bloody gibs.

Now, if you want the best gameplay, I recommend you start off with Oath in Felghana on the PC. Play it on Nightmare or at least Hard. You will have a blast.
The artstyle is always generally anime , but it's never "grating" imho. Especially since most of the sprites are 3D models stamped into 2D. You get some anime portraits for NPC chats, but they're all pleasant to look at.

From what I've seen, Celceta's the only one whose artstyle was really bad.

 

[Declinator]

You don't play Ys games for the story- play them for the fun bosses and awesome music.

Interested in possibly getting into the series. Am gameplayfag.

Fun bosses, or gameplay as a whole? Why would I play a game that only has good booses and the rest is a slog when I could play a game that has good gameplay from start to finish?

If the series does have generally good gameplay, then which is the best in that regard? And I pray it doesn't have a grating art style as the latest Ys game appears to have.

Definitely play Oath in Felghana or Origin. Oath has higher heights but Origin is more consistently fun I'd say.

It is fun outside of bosses too. In fact these games might very well be at their best outside of boss battles. The controls are snappy and moving and fighting are refreshingly fast compared to most action games. The higher perspective allows for bigger and more deliberate crowd control situations than the usual third-person perspective. Unfortunately the games employ flying enemies far too often for how difficult heights are to estimate with this sort of perspective.

 

[Ash]

I wouldn't call megaman gameplay mindless. Simple yes, but the games are hard as fuck and always engaging the brain or hand-eye coordination albiet with simple platforming, dodging and shooting gameplay. You've always got to be thinking, thinking about your next action, studying enemy patterns, the actions required to make that series of jumps, wether or not to grab that pickup now or later etc, and if you don't do this you're fucked (unless you've played so much and got everything memorised to the point of automation). Always thinking (even if only on simple terms) which is key in it NOT being mindless, unlike your average modern popamole. So if Ys delivers constant engagement of the brain or hand-eye skills even on that simple level, good enuf.

 

[Durandal]

Combat in the Ys games is very fun because you're always moving and attacking at the same time, rather than the two being entirely separated. You're not waiting for the boss to do an attack after which you can perform your counter move or whatever and then attack safely, but here you should always be on the offensive and on the move. That's probably because of the series roots, where the first games featured the 'bump system' where you'd attack enemies by directly running into them off-center, and that feeling managed to be preserved in the sequels, though in the sequels you have a regular attack button. Vs. enemy combat feels like popping bubble-wrap as one of the developers put it. It's fast, simple, responsive, and satisfying, but still challenging. Oath/Origin feature a system where every time you hit an enemy, the exp you gain is increased by 0.01x, up to 2x from a base 1x. But the multiplier runs on a gauge which depletes over time and is only completely refilled when you hit an enemy. On top of that, enemies will drop temporary stat bonuses called draughts which temporarily up your strength and such, encouraging you to stay on the move and keep killin'. You can't carry any healing items in these games, so if you want to heal up you need to find a nearby save statue or kill enemies until they drop a health item.

Though Oath/Origin are the best, if you're determined to tackle most Ys games, then I'd recommend you start with Ark of Napishtim. It's the first 2.5D Ys game upon which Oath/Origin built and improved, so Ark is very much rough around the edges in terms of gameplay, pacing, bosses, and dungeon design. While still a good game on it's own, it doesn't really compare to the sequels, so I'd suggest you start off with Ark because otherwise after having played Oath/Origin it might be difficult to go back to Ark.

 

[Momock]

Or you can just play Oath and Origin, and ignore Ark.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Ark is still barrels of fun.
The boss design is a bit flawed compared to the latter games, but it still has a fun story, and good exploration and combat.

Also, one of the more interesting settings of the Ys series.

 

[Momock]

Still, it's not a good idea to play Ark first I think, because it's not so good and it's very grindy and it could, maybe, repulse new players who won't give a chance to the other games of the serie. It's better to play Oath and Origin first and if you liked them then try Ark just "for science", knowing it's just a draft for the other two.

 

[spekkio]

Ark "more grindy" than Oath? I had zero problems in Ark without any grindan (just chillin' and killin'), while in Oath the final dunegon was unbearable without proper EXP level...

 

[Damned Registrations]

Been playing Ys 7 the last few days. Some thoughts:

Pacing in the early game is way off. I had to play for something like 6 hours before they let me use skills often enough to make the combat something other than tedious attack mashing on enemies from behind. At least now I can spam skills of my choice.

Skill variety is actually decent, and they change as they level up- Adol's default skill gained an extra hit at level 5, lots of other skills seem to follow this example, some just seem bigger and flashier. Skills are pretty unbalanced though, some are vastly superior and it's nigh impossible to figure out which ones are good without purposesly killing your allies so you can experiment on stuff solo. Even then, you don't know if the level 5 upgrade is going to be a huge buff with double hits or a minor AoE increase. Haven't gotten any to leve 10 yet; though I did just find out using the weapon that teaches the skill increases learning rate. Maybe I'll grind something easy to level 10 to see if there's another tier change.

Just now read about the flash guard mechanic in this thread. Jesus christ, of all the shit to not mention... now it makes sense why there were bosses with unavoidable attacks, like the firebreathing cunt in the fire temple.

The rock paper scissors thing is a shit design to begin with, but it's especially shit because scissors is the best type- Slashing attacks can damage everything in the game, albeit the dodge enemies are really awkward. Piercing attacks will never damage a rock enemy though, and strike attacks seem to never or almost never hit a dodge enemies. This is important because although slash might do 1/10th damage to the other two types, you still deal just as much stun and build up just as much SP. And stunned enemies basically have no defense.

Bosses are a weird clusterfuck. Their AI is extremely random; with the boss often falling into a pattern of repeating the same move over and over, sometimes not even triggering it's desperation attacks near the end of the fight. The clearly tied the AI into player behaviour somehow, though I'm not clear on how. But you get into these situations where you and the boss each do the same shit for the whole fight and it's boring as fuck. Some of the bosses have also been weirdly vulnerable to being juggled for extremely long periods of time, but launching them in the first place seems to requiring hitting them in a brief window after certain attacks or something? I'm sure some speedrun exploits the shit out of this but it's not something you're likely to figure out casually.

The status effects are highly inconsistent- AI will break out of stagger from a shockwave very quickly (like twice as fast as I can while mashing; I just switch characters if it happens for this reason) but will sit in petrified state forever, losing all their hp, and never seem to shrug off panic.

Sidequests are lame- fetch me a pile of items in exchange for some gold and eventually an item you probably could have bought. These got better later on, offering items I couldn't just buy at least.

Exploration has also been lame up to this point. Chests contained shitty accessories I could have bought and don't even want to equip. And consumables. So many shit consumables. Finally starting to see better stuff, like new gear I can't buy. The resource gathering thing is lame, it's easy enough to farm but awkward to do passively because the AI will ignore the gather spots if there are enemies anywhere remotely nearby, even up cliffs off screen. Previous games offered a lot of permanent stat boost consumables, which always felt satisfying to discover. Also, almost 0 room to go off the rails, which always sucks. Biggest freedoms I had so far was when to kill the dinosaur titano (even that was basically gated behind a certain level of gear) and sequence breaking a chest with a nice accessory by spamming healing items and teleporting out.

In game descriptions have been pretty terrible. No explanation of what dex or agi do (I'm assuming accuracy and dodge but accuracy seems near enough to 100% that these are irrelevant, even for characters with extremes in either stat) lots of accessories have terrible descriptions (Stun rate +1 actually gives 10% more stun, for example) and basic game mechanics like what causes stun never got explained (it's independant of any of your stats, you'll do just as much stun vs an enemy you hit for 1 damage with a bad attack as you do vs an enemy you hit for 200 with a weakness, skills have their own values, each enemy has it's own values for how big their meter is and how quickly it fills, all shit I'd have liked to know)

Story is rather unimaginative with cardboard villains that inexplicably go unpunished and heroes with contrived backgrounds. I will say this for the writing though- it's had some funny self aware moments, like Dogi mentioning how often Adol is 'the chosen one' or the fact that he can just bust out of prison (you know, the prison Adol could have just teleported out of at any time...) Still waiting for a Ys game that lets me simply massacre an entire city trying to arrest me though. I kill dragons bitches, put your spears away and kneel.

Last but not least: cutscene skipping is wonderful. Holding down the dash button speed up the cutscenes, gradually shifting through 3 tiers. I even use it on new scenes to speed through crap like panning over terrain or displaying the name of an area.

Oh, and final pet peeve: fuck designers that make spamming a dodge move the fastest way to travel long distances. Fuck that shit to hell.

 

[LESS T_T]

XSEED Ken's take on the Ys VIII localization fiasco, from GOG Q&A: http://af.gog.com/news/interview_xseed_on_localizing_humor_and_harsh_realities_part_2?as=1649904300

Ys VIII is the first game in the series that you did not publish – and which prompted an official apology for the localization (which is getting completely redone for the PC release). What's your take on what happened there, and what can developers do to avoid those mistakes in the future?

Ken: Based on the very active release schedule that publisher had at the time, one can only guess that the localization team wasn’t given the time and resources needed as they were forced to meet a hard deadline for most likely financial reasons (since September is the end of a fiscal quarter for most companies). That was likely compounded by them shipping a total of four titles within four weeks of each other, one of which was the absolute localization beast Danganronpa V3, which would have required tons of their resources and have taken priority as it’s been one of their top-selling franchises for years.

The localization team over there is capable of putting out good work if given the proper support, as I’m sure they will prove once the new localization patch is released. This is true of most teams and projects, but sometimes harsh financial realities don’t afford people that luxury, so I’m not really sure there’s an easy answer on how to fix it when time and/or budgetary constraints get in the way of passionate people trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

 

[spekkio]

^ This character's speech is way over 100.

 

[Endemic]

It's obvious Tom can't be critical of a competitor (and possible future employer in the darkest timeline) so everything gets a positive spin, but it's pretty clear his message is self-serving: "Passionate people capable of putting out good work"

He's elaborated on this in the comments thread of that article: https://af.gog.com/forum/general/in...nd_harsh_realities_part_2_fac33?as=1649904300

 

[Arthandas]

I still think Ys II Chronicles+ is the best Ys game and you can fucking write it on my tombstone.

 

[Arthandas]

It appears the RNJesus won me a copy of Ys7 from GOG's giveaway I never planned to touch it since idea of party based Ys always seemed bizarre to me, but I guess now I'll have to give it a chance.

 

[Arthandas]

Ok... I played it a little... and this series is fucking dead to me.

Spoiler

 

[Momock]

Ok... I played it a little... and this series is fucking dead to me.

What is exactly that you didn't like in a Ys-with-party game? I ask this because I'm a fan of the Felghana and Origin ones (I like Ys Chronicles too, the 2nd one at least) and never tried one of these new games with no jump and what looks like a lot of farming. I'm afraid to waste my money!