Ys: The Oath in Felghana has endured as one of the cornerstones of the Ys series. As a reimagining of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, one of developer Nihon Falcom’s most controversial titles, it managed to successfully redeem that part of their history in the eyes of many. It was also one of the earliest titles used in Falcom’s in-house efforts to move away from PC development in favor of consoles, having been ported to PSP alongside the likes of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Nearly 20 years removed from its 2005 release, they now aim to recapture that same spark with Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana.
Felghana Fracas
Adol Christin and his companion Dogi are off on another adventure detailed in one of Adol’s travelogues, this time titled the “Felghana Archives”. This game picks up some time after the events of Ys: Memories of Celceta, making it Adol’s fifth chronological story (at least until Falcom retcons things again). As the name suggests, this adventure takes place in the Felghana region, which Adol and Dogi investigate after receiving a premonition that something awful is about to happen there. Not too unusual for them by itself, but Felghana is significant in that it’s the old stomping ground of Dogi. This means that almost everyone met throughout this story already has a connection to one of its central characters, which makes it rather distinct among the many tales of Adol.
This is an interesting idea by itself, but it falls short in that The Oath in Felghana’s story isn’t particularly interesting. It’s strangely unimaginative for a Ys game, falling into a lot of typical RPG tropes that Ys is normally good at recontextualizing or avoiding outright. It plays every predictable idea and twist completely straight. There’s a corrupt church, there are macguffins used to revive an ancient evil, there was a guy with a legendary sword who stopped him once upon a time, and the Count who rules the land is an evil bastard. Even the locations you’re exploring don’t do much to inspire, and while I can appreciate some amount of groundedness, it feels like that was prioritized over giving things a distinct flair. There’s no attempt to spruce this up or have any fun with it, and the main characters of the story are among some of the blandest in the series’ history.
Outside of Adol and Dogi, there’s also Elena and Chester Stoddart, siblings in the town of Redmont who’ve recently become estranged. My feelings on Elena are quite plain: she’s as boring as it gets. While her plight regarding Chester and her family history inspires some sympathy, she’s not a particularly active player in the story. She essentially only gets involved when other characters need some development; a walking macguffin made to cause problems for other characters to solve. Chester fairs slightly better in that he’s more exciting to watch, serving as Adol’s main rival for this game, but I think the game went too far playing up certain parts of his character to make him appear sympathetic. He isn’t, Chester is tragic, but his actions and behaviors throughout the story made him basically impossible to root for at any point. I felt more like I was babysitting him.
My feeling on the story of Ys: The Oath in Felghana can be described as one of good intentions that just isn’t interesting enough for its own good. Despite how much villains try to ham things up and raise the stakes in its later stages, the end result is still something that feels anemic and lacking in emotional energy. Heck, despite Dogi’s supposed importance, he’s barely even around for most of the game—which makes the intention of the ending feel especially weak in my eyes. I understand that this is a remake and they were working off of an old framework, but this is still a low-tier Ys story in my eyes.
Redmont, Adventure, and You
When you’re not progressing the main story, you’re spending time in the town of Redmont and hanging out with its citizens. Despite my feelings on much of the main story, I think they did a good job with the NPCs this time around. Everyone in Redmont manages to fill a certain, distinct role in town, like an actor in a play. Despite their lack of importance in the grand scheme of things, they feel lively, helped by their dialogue and stories getting small updates every time you reach a new point in the main plot. They also have hidden quests that the game won’t point out to you, instead you have to be diligent about talking to them as often as possible.
These can be small things like playing with Anya, the local tot, a few times. Or they can be more emotionally major things like helping Granny Aida overcome her grief by finding the possession of her late grandchild. Ys has always been particularly good about giving a sense of granularity to its settings by making most of its NPCs their own individuals with their own quirks, and The Oath in Felghana is no exception. This is strengthened further by how their little questlines will often play into its adventure game elements, offering up rewards that can prove critical on higher difficulties. This most often comes in the form of ore needed to upgrade gear, but other times it can be things like key items that help you see in the dark or discern trap floors.
One of the things I always rather enjoy about the Ys games is how it prods at the player’s curiosity through some choice dialogue and leaving certain locations out of the player’s reach at first. The Oath in Felghana, when compared to the preceding Ys games, is rather generous about this since you don’t really get “lost” or confused like before. There’s never any question on what to do next, and while I feel that demystifies the setting, all the little nuggets of character here help to balance that out somewhat. One of my favorite parts about Ys is indulging in the fantasy of being Adol Christin, and I feel The Oath in Felghana handles this quite well.
Jump ‘n Slash
Being nearly 20 years old, Ys: The Oath in Felghana naturally offers up quite a different perspective on gameplay compared to the likes of Ys VIII, IX, or X. While the focus is still on fast-paced yet approachable action combat while exploring large areas, the language of play is quite different here. For starters, Adol is entirely by his lonesome in this game and has no innate skills related to guarding or dodging the way many later games do. All he has at the outset is a jump and basic sword attack. Starting out, it feels like a more three-dimensional version of the likes of top-down Zelda, preceding Ys titles, or Hydlide. But as you progress through dungeons and mow down enemies by the truckload, you’ll gain new items and abilities that augment Adol’s abilities and make him incredibly versatile.
The first of Adol’s new abilities is Boost, which actually made its debut here. Once a gauge on the lower left corner of the screen fills up, you can activate Boost to temporarily strengthen Adol’s attack power and speed. Later on, you’ll unlock the even more powerful Double Boost, which is activated the same way but takes a while longer to charge. A well-timed Double Boost blows away most regular enemies and gives temporary invincibility upon activation, allowing you to blank oncoming damage if you time it right. Adol’s attack power and attack speed also boost dramatically, making Double Boost ideal for when you want to take the offensive. Double Boost also lets you passively recover some HP, making it especially useful for situations where you may be running on fumes.
There are also the elemental Bracelets, which give Adol abilities that help him in traversal and combat. The Ignis Bracelet allows Adol to shoot fireballs from a distance, and its upgrade can shoot larger explosive variants. The Ventus Bracelet allows you to perform a multi-hitting spin attack that also lets you briefly hover in midair. Finally, the Terra Bracelet allows Adol to perform a shoulder tackle that grants him temporary invincibility. All of these can be upgraded in attack power by finding gemstones scattered throughout all of the dungeons.
All of these are good skills, but I found them to be somewhat underwhelming during normal play. While they shine for boss fights, regular enemies leave a lot to be desired due to their overall simplicity. Rather than have enemies scale in complexity alongside Adol, the game takes the uninspired route of often just throwing more stuff at him. A shocking number of enemies can be dispatched simply by hanging at the side of the screen and launching fireballs at them. I appreciate when games can let me get away with being cheeky, but when coupled with Oath in Felghana’s broadly average level design, it leaves something to be desired. It’s fast-paced and crunchy, so it is still perfectly fun, just not quite as much as I feel it could be.
Ys: Prepare to Die Edition
More than anything else, what Ys: The Oath in Felghana is perhaps most famous for is its boss fights. Owing in part to its surprising difficulty and generally solid mechanics, The Oath in Felghana offers up a wide range of bosses with some distinct mechanics. Though I must confess, this part of the game was always something that left me with mixed feelings. Unfortunately, they haven’t exactly improved with the new Memoire iteration.
Compliments first: the bosses of The Oath in Felghana are definitely varied. They come in a lot of shapes and sizes and it even manages to avoid the typical tropes of bosses being in arenas that all look the same. Sometimes they can take place on narrow walkways, fraught with traps that you have to avoid. Furthermore, they also typically incorporate some of the new powers Adol has just picked up. So one boss may teach you the value of using the Terra Bracelet’s shoulder tackle to negate damage, while another may have you using the Ventus Bracelet to keep yourself airborne. However, variety can only take me so far when I’m struck with the realization that I’m not having fun with a lot of them.
One of the recurring quirks about The Oath in Felghana’s boss fights is that they’re oftentimes quite selective on when is a good time to deal damage. While it’s perfectly normal to have to suss out good attack timing, what makes Felghana’s so frustrating is that these patterns are oftentimes quite limited and stingy. At their worst, bosses can have only two total attacks and very limited vulnerability windows. So I’m spending 90% of the fight dodging easy yet highly damaging attack patterns and spending the other 10% of it actually getting to fight back. I don’t mind when bosses are more in control of a battle’s rhythm than the player, but the issue here is that many of Felghana’s fights don’t offer up sufficiently interesting challenges to supplement that control. They are punishing in the sense that it’s very, very easy to die, but not challenging in how they test my understanding of core mechanics.
Bosses also highlight another issue that pervades the entire game, and that’s how it fumbles in readability. Ys and poorly telegraphed hitboxes are a pair as recognizable as instant noodles and broke college students. It’s always been an issue and probably always will be, but what makes it so damning here is the level of precision asked of the player during most boss fights. It can be difficult to discern what went wrong in previous attempts just because many hitboxes and animations don’t tend to properly align, leaving me to also suss out a boss’s jank before strategizing in earnest. It’s a real shame because, when bosses do work and have the depth to match their length, they’re tons of fun and are arguably at the height of Ys gameplay.
There’s pretty much no such thing as an action game without at least one or two badly considered boss fights, but here it isn’t just one or two. I would be tempted to say that I don’t even like half of them, maybe more. Perhaps that’s a harsh appraisal of an old game that’s showing its age, but I don’t tend to feel this way about most Ys games. At its worst, The Oath in Felghana’s boss fights are either frictionless or serve to actively undermine the game’s many systems that are otherwise elegant. At its best, The Oath in Felghana’s boss fights are some of the very best in series history. The battles against Chester Stoddart and the final two bosses are particularly praiseworthy, having aggressive but legible patterns that feel great to steadily overcome. But alas, if only this quality were more consistent.
The Red Speaks, and Other New Stuff
Everything I’ve mentioned so far has been in this game since the original release, so what new elements does Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana bring to the table? It’s quite a lot of small things that add up and make the game shine just a bit brighter.
The first big thing is the addition of voice acting for Adol Christin, who’s reprised by Bryce Papenbrook and Yuki Kaji in English and Japanese respectively. Since everyone, even minor NPCs, were voice acted in the original release of Felghana, it always smacked as being rather bizarre that the main character was the one exception to this. Adol is still a silent protagonist in the sense that he doesn’t have any explicit speaking lines in text, but there are quite a few incidental voice lines added where the narration implies that he was speaking. He also gets bespoke voice lines at the start of some of the major boss fights to amp up the tension just that bit more. This is a great compromise to give Adol an emotional voice without taking away his almost mythical, yet humble appeal, and I hope they bring it back in future titles.
Furthermore, all NPC portraits and story CGs have been given brand new artwork that is somewhat in the style of Ys VIII and IX. The coloring is a bit more muted and the linework is rougher and more sketch-like to help give the sense of this being a more quaint era for Falcom’s titles. The end result looks really good, and I think these new drawings blow the frankly ugly illustrations of old out of the water. But should someone have a preference for those, they can be re-enabled in the menu alongside things like the soundtracks; though the PC Engine OST unfortunately still remains absent in that version. Thankfully, The Oath in Felghana’s soundtrack is still fantastic stuff, combining Yukihiro Jindo’s signature synthesizers with live instrumentation to create a soundtrack that harmonizes old with new.
There’s also a slick new user interface to compliment the higher resolution and artwork, as well as rock solid 60FPS gameplay. Lastly, there’s a turbo mode feature that lets you double the game speed. I have no earthly idea why anyone would really want to use this since Felghana’s pacing is already quite hectic, but I’m sure people with more niche interests will put it to good use somehow. Additionally, the game now lets you lower difficulty on boss encounters even if you’re playing on Nightmare Mode. Mama didn’t raise a quitter, so I never used this, but considering my aforementioned frustrations with bosses, I don’t blame anyone who does.
All told, as far as remastering goes, this ought to satisfy just about everybody.
Verdict
As a remaster, Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is subtly slick and exactly what it needed to be. While it doesn’t necessarily improve my thoughts on The Oath in Felghana foundationally, it is the best version that you can buy. It looks sharp, runs great, and additions like new artwork and narration for Adol help to further uplift the story. That said, it’s difficult to overstress that these additions don’t fix the game’s problems, nor was that necessarily the point.
It still has an anemic story and a noticeably weak first half. Frustrations like poor hitboxes and a smattering of horrible bosses also still remain. While it does have good pacing, I’m also left with the sense that a lot of its gameplay elements aren’t able to fully breathe. To its credit, it comes together quite admirably during its climax and in a few instances offers up some of the most memorable encounters in the series. Once it gets good, it stays good, but the aforementioned problems leave me weary of the prospect of playing it again in the future. Fun for the one time, but ultimately not what I would call a favorite despite its strengths.
YS MEMOIRE: THE OATH IN FELGHANA IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Falcom Action RPG, you might want to check out The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails or Ys X: Nordics.
Many thanks go to Marvelous Games for a Nintendo Switch review code for Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana.
A hobbyist who took up the pen to write about their favorite pastime: games. While a lover of many genres, Isaiah Parker specializes in Platformers, RPGs, and competitive multiplayer titles. The easiest way into his heart is to have great core gameplay mechanics. Self-proclaimed world’s biggest Sonic fan. Follow him @ZinogreVolt
