It's new to me: Ys III: Wanderers from Ys/The Oath in Felghana

A good, early Ys became an essential action RPG with a series of neat tricks.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

For the longest time, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys was the last game in the series to release outside of Japan. And it released just about everywhere, too: it of course made the rounds with the various gaming computers of the time, as Nihon Falcom’s computer-centric development always did in the 80s, as well as the Turbografx-CD home console, the Famicom, the SNES, and the Sega Genesis.

Wanderers from Ys is a good game. It’s not a great game, like Ys Books I & II, but it’s good: there is a reason Falcom entrusted Tonkin House, who ported the game to the SNES, with creating an original Ys after this in place of Falcom doing it*. Wanderers from Ys has its flaws — the combat isn’t nearly as satisfying as it is in the series’ predecessors, as it’s a side-scrolling action RPG where you swing around a sword instead of a top-down action RPG where you bump into enemies and let your stats battle it out with your opponents’ stats. There isn’t nearly as much exploration to do, since the game limits itself to this side-scrolling setup, and it doesn’t set itself up with the kind of depth that, say, a Metroid or Wonder Boy does with the same basic platforming premises. And yet, it’s still fun.

*I might have come to Ys late in the game, but it turns out I was probably always going to like it. Longtime readers of this newsletter are aware that Quintet, creators of games like ActRaiser and Terranigma, is one of my favorite developers from back in the day. Quintet was formed by former Falcom employees — specifically, key employees who had put together the first three Ys games. So, when Ys IV was developed, it was made by non-Falcom entities, since key members of the Ys team weren’t around anymore: Hudson Soft for the PC-Engine, as they had experience porting over Ys games to their platforms already, and Tonkin House for the Super Famicom, as they had successfully ported over Ys III to that system. Tonkin House’s attempt at a Ys IV also ended up being the canonical one that would serve as the basis for a later remake.

Once you get the hang of the combat, and how much it absolutely does not want you to rush head-first into battles like you might in some other side-scrolling games where you can swing a sword, it ends up feeling good. Again, just not quite as good as in Books I and II, the rhythm of which I’ve already commended in this space. But still, the variety of ways in which you can approach enemies, often fast-moving ones, helps keep combat fresh and interesting. You can basically rapid-fire thrust upward to attack enemies flying above you, or lay flat on Adol’s stomach to stab at an opponent from below, or just hold the attack button down to perpetually swing your sword again and again at whatever is in front of you. Or you can jump through the air with your sword pointed downward in the hopes of landing it right inside of some creature’s skull. It’s your playground.

There are a number of power-augmenting rings you can equip, and you fill the meter for those rings by defeating enemies or paying to have it refilled back in town. So, you can wear a ring to increase your attack power, or your defense, or to slow down your enemies and their projectiles, and so on, which can dramatically change how a combat interaction goes down, or allow you a chance to capitalize on some respawning foes in order to gain some levels or gold and help you better prep for what’s to come. You have to be mindful of how much ring power you have left, though, because the boosts the rings can give you are even more vital in a challenging boss fight than the ability to fully heal yourself with an herb mid-battle.

Adol walking around in the Turbografx-CD release of the sidescrolling Ys III. Image credit: Cousin Gaming

The only problem, really, is that it’s all a little shallow for a Ys. Essentially everything about the first two games is better, and there just isn’t as much here in Wanderers of Ys as there is in the earlier or later games in the series. Again, Wanderers of Ys is good, but it’s not surprising that its 2005 3D remake, The Oath in Felghana, added more depth to the dungeons, the overworld, the story, and the combat when given the chance. The Oath in Felghana works as well as it does — which is to say, exceptionally so — because the foundation it was built on was strong. Wanderers from Ys is the kind of game where, if it were a house that needed some work, you’d say it had good bones. It just took Falcom going back to it later on to do something productive with those bones.

The story and basic premise are solid, and the soundtrack, originally composed by Mieko Ishikawa and then arranged in subsequent versions by an array of musicians, is fantastic. Here’s the track you hear in the brief intro sections to each dungeon you enter in the SNES version of Wanderers from Ys, for instance…

…which in turn became the general overworld theme for the Windows and PSP remake, The Oath in Felghana:

The differences in the arrangements isn’t quite as pronounced when you’re talking about the Turbografx vs. the Oath in Felghana versions of songs instead of what it sounded like on the SNES, but there’s still been an update, as heard here through Valestein Castle’s theme:

That’s from 1991. God, the Turbografx-CD helped make for some killer music. Anyway, the same theme, updated for Oath in Felghana:

Say what you will about the changes in gameplay and Falcom’s decision to briefly genre-hop Ys like they did with another series of theirs, Dragon Slayer, but Ys III’s soundtrack absolutely stands up against those of its predecessors, at least.

The soundtrack helps power the remake in a way that the original’s gameplay and setup just didn’t allow. It all drives you forward, compels you into battle, finds you in a rhythm akin to in Ys Books I & II even though you’re not using the bumping mechanic in the remake, either, but instead, a much expanded-upon, sword-swinging action RPG system. Like the best action RPGs, it all just feels so good to play, to swing a sword, to dodge an attack, to find a weak point, and it all helps elevate Ys III from being a good game to a fantastic one.

Leveling up could be a little bit of a chore in Wanderers from Ys, given how precarious your defense and health situations were when you first entered a new area, or especially early in the game. You’d do quite a bit of defeating enemies near the entrance to a dungeon, then scurrying outside to heal, and repeating the process until you felt comfortable delving deeper. Not so in Oath of Felghana, though: this game not only brings back the scaling experience that lets you know when you’re just wasting your time with specific enemies who aren’t worth the effort and should press on, but the fact combat just feels so good, and so satisfying, means leveling up a little when you feel underpowered isn’t a chore, but is instead welcome.

It also greatly expanded the kinds of items and equipment you could acquire, largely by incorporating an upgrade system for your swords, shields, and armor, and making the source of those upgrades a raw material you could collect by defeating enemies, or completing optional side missions, or just around in chests. This encouraged exploration beyond what the original design was capable of, and helped justify the expansion of each dungeon, and the introduction of a traversable overworld full of enemies and encounters with NPCs and hidden goodies, as well — the original Ys III simply used a map to select your destination, rather than let you walk there yourself.

Oath in Felghana managed to expand upon the original conception of Ys III, bringing in quality of life updates, additional gameplay, a revised story that is able to better set the stage for the game and make it memorable, more reasons to interact with the residents of the village and learn about them and their own tales, and a wholly revamped combat system, all without losing what made Wanderers of Ys work in the first place. It’s still Ys III, to the point that Oath in Felghana isn’t the definitive Ys III just because it’s nicer to look at. Falcom built a killer brand new game on top of an already solid foundation, and it’s impressive how well they captured everything notable about the original without losing any of what made it notable to begin with in the process. Wanderers from Ys is good: The Oath in Felghana is essential if you have even the slightest interest in action RPGs.

If you want to play the former, you’re going to have to either find a physical copy — which isn’t too bad on the SNES, where you can find listings for $20 cartridges — or emulate it. As for the latter, it’s available on Steam for just $15, which is probably where you’ll want to go unless you have at least $200 to shell out for the PSP version on Ebay, as it sadly did not arrive during the time where a physical release meant a game also had a digital release.

[Edit: As pointed out by Aron in the comments, you can get The Oath in Felghana, along with other PSP-released Ys games, on the Playstation Vita digital storefront, even if you cannot get the PSP versions of these games, digitally, on your actual PSP. That’s good news for Vita owners, not so great for those of us who stopped after the PSP.]

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