Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana review for Nintendo Switch

System: Switch
Release date: January 7, 2024
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: Marvelous

Despite arguably being dethroned as Falcom’s flagship series over the years by the Trails series, Ys has nonetheless seen a rising amount of success since the release of Lacrimosa of Dana. The standalone nature of the games make it an easy series to jump onto at any point, and although it’s a difficult series to access in its entirety outside of PC ports thanks to several of the games being decades old and trapped on outdated platforms, it’s gradually making its way onto modern consoles through remakes and remasters. Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is the latest chapter in Adol’s expansive adventures to come to Nintendo Switch, and is another strong instalment despite its age and notably different gameplay style from its successors.

Ys Memoire is set three years after the events of Ys I and II, placing it between Ys X: Nordics and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on the timeline. With his ever-present companion Dogi in tow Adol Christin, now a seasoned swordsman and adventurer, is heading towards Dogi’s hometown of Redmont on the continent of Felghana, the next stop in his travels. However a run-in with Elena, one of the inhabitants of the town and Dogi’s childhood friend, reveals that all is not well in the land: monsters have been appearing in larger numbers and with greater frequency than normal, the local and thoroughly corrupt nobleman Lord Maguire has sealed the town’s mine, and Elena’s brother, Chester, has vanished without a trace. Naturally, it falls to Adol to investigate and ultimately fix the problem.

Unlike the more recent titles in the series, which have given you at least one other character to control and kept your actions firmly guided by frequent story cutscenes, Ys Memoire instead adopts an almost entirely hands-off approach after this initial opening cutscene. Adol ventures out into the land of Felghana alone, with the infrequent narrative snippets between dungeons feeling more like progress checks, or a recommendation on where you might want to explore next, rather than your driving motivation for doing so.

Although there is a more intricate plot with much higher stakes than is initially presented, the narrative is largely confined to interaction between a handful of characters with the inhabitants of Redmont generally having very little to say for themselves if you choose to interact with them over the course of your adventure and having very little to do with things outside of occasionally giving Adol access to places he wouldn’t be allowed to go to otherwise, or providing some limited background context for the current state of affairs in the area. Much of the focus here is on Elena and her missing brother Chester, and for long-time fans of the series the game gives Dogi some additional backstory, but their absence for much of the game blunts a lot of the emotional impact that this could have had if they had been playable characters.

Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is a remaster of the 2005 PSP release of the game, which was itself a remake of the 1989 PC-8801 title Ys III: Wanderers of Ys. If you’re coming into the game fresh from the more recently released titles in the series such as Ys X: Nordics or Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, you’ll find this a markedly different experience. As an isometric action RPG with much simpler gameplay systems and a notably faster pace, the game shares more in common with Ys Origins rather than its 3D successors, although this is not necessarily to its detriment as it offers a different kind of action that can be equally as challenging even once you have grown accustomed to the flow of combat.

The speed of the action is certainly quite jarring if you’re used to the slower and more combo-oriented combat of modern titles as Adol tears across the battlefield with reckless abandon, slashing enemies to pieces with a handful of blows before moving on. You can vary your moves slightly with jump attacks, and later magic, but most encounters will be over with so quickly that by the time you’ll have thought to do so your foe will have exploded and you’ll be moving on. The game leans into this by rewarding you for dispatching foes quickly in the form of experience multipliers and temporary boosts to stats, and the lack of a block or parry function, as well as very limited healing capabilities, helps to balance things out and present at least some danger on anything other than the easiest difficulty settings.

Although it can feel a little mindless at times when you can clear the majority of encounters by hammering a single button, it also serves to make those moments that do require more thought that much more impactful. Many bosses can be approached with the same hack-and-slash mentality, but most have specific weak points that need to be exposed first or are only vulnerable to damage for a brief time, and the lack of reliable recovery methods means that, on higher difficulties especially, a reckless approach to combat will get you killed in these instances. The option to retry immediately throws you straight back into the action, and you can take the time to lower the difficulty if you’re struggling, but even on Very Easy you won’t be able to brute force your way through bosses that require strategy. It’s in these instances where Ys Memoire requires you to slow down and take a breath that it arguably shines the brightest, as the simplicity of its gameplay makes finding a solution to the problem equally as simple, and far more satisfying than button-mashing your way through it.

Progression is Ys Memoire is quite linear and you’ll be unable to access most areas until either the story requires that you go there, or you first acquire an ability that will let you bypass a natural obstacle; the game will generally allow you to run wild in each area and explore it at your own pace, but will carefully guide you so that you don’t explore anywhere you’re not supposed to ahead of time. This can feel quite restricting at first given the relative size of the map and the game is notably shorter than more recent titles at around ten hours if you take the time to explore thoroughly and clear side quests from Redmont’s inhabitants as they appear. Levels are gained quickly as you progress so there is no real need to grind between boss encounters, and Ravel Ore, which is found in treasure chests and is required in steadily increasing amounts to upgrade weapons and armor, provides incentive to explore every nook and cranny of an area. As you explore the various areas of Felghana you’ll also acquire three different magic abilities, injecting some variety into your combat movepool, and also affecting how you interact with the environment; for example, using wind magic to extend your time in the air and cross wider gaps. Magic can be upgraded further with hidden gems, allowing you to charge it for greater effect in combat.

Outside of combat, there are some brief platforming sections to tackle, but this never feels especially problematic since the camera angle provides a good view of the action at all times. There is the option to skip one particularly long and more complicated platforming section entirely later in the game, eliminating a potential roadblock that would otherwise feel distinctly out of place in what is otherwise an extremely fast-paced and action-focused experience that feels designed to keep you moving from one place to the next as quickly as possible, rewarding you for combat proficiency, but having just enough in each location off the beaten path in the form of hidden chests that, if you take the time to stop and explore, you’ll almost certainly be rewarded with something for your efforts.

Although it remains largely the same game as the original PSP release, Ys Memoire includes a few quality of life changes of note. Turbo Mode, which allows you to speed the game up by 1.5x or 2x, is an interesting addition that feels unnecessary for a casual playthrough; traveling between places is a brief exercise which you can cut down even further with the use of strategically-placed fast travel points, and the combat is already suitably fast-paced, leading to the question of when or even if you would choose to use it. In line with more recent Ys titles, Adol has also been given a few voiced lines of dialogue and although this doesn’t noticeably enhance his character, it does provide a nice degree of synergy if you’ve played more recent instalments in the series and have grown accustomed to him not being an entirely silent protagonist.

As you would expect of the remastered moniker, the game boasts a higher resolution, although it is still not one that I would recommend playing in docked mode as there are some lower quality textures that become far more noticeable when blown up on a TV screen; when playing in handheld these are compacted to the point that they would only be noticeable if you were aware they existed in the first place. The highlights here are the new character portraits which bring the designs up to a more modern standard, although the classic look is available for those who would prefer the nostalgia. This ties in nicely with the soundtrack options with both the PC-8801 and X68000 versions of the soundtrack available alongside the default, which has the heavier metal/rock style that has become synonymous with Falcom’s games in recent years.

Modern action RPGs often have more nuanced combat systems and gameplay mechanics to come to terms with before you can really get stuck in, and Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is a wonderfully refreshing reminder of simpler times; from the minute that first story cutscene finishes to the final boss you can tear through enemies with intuitive ease, and those moments when you have to stop and think about how to tackle a boss or plan your way across a series of environmental obstacles are made all the more satisfying for that. Although its more basic approach to combat and hands-off approach to story may not resonate with fans of Adol’s more recent outings, it’s a remarkably solid little adventure that has withstood the test of time and will offer a few hours of fun, as well as some potentially unexpected challenge, to those willing to give it a chance.

Ys Memoire Oath in Felghana copy provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.