Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta is the 5th game that I played (others being Origin, 1,2, and Oath) and this is so far the weakest one even more than the bump combat games. Story is lacking something that makes Falcom games special, characters are whatever, and while I enjoyed the gameplay despite being meh about it, both Origin and Oath beat it by miles especially the boss fights. The music is still wonderful with Ancient Land and Gust of Wind being my favorites. My biggest complaints are definitely the ending, the villains, and how you complete the map in this game. First off, the "ending" is so funny cause it's so rushed and I'm wondering wtf was Kondo doing when directing this game. Even the game acknowledges how abrupt the ending is LOL. We don't even see what happened to Adol's companions lmao. It's just...lacking impact compared to other Ys endings. Yeah, okay Adol got the title he has but that's it....the end. Second, the villains in this game are so boring, it's not even funny. Guess it's nice to see the new generation of Darklings after the previous games but they have no sauce whatsoever. Bami and Gadis are just Scarlet/Vulcan archetypes done in a very sleep inducing way. Even…

its fine i guess, but mask of the sun is a far more interesting experience

I had purchased 4 Ys games some time ago, under the promise of them being peak J!ARPG, and after the absolutely horrible jank that were Origins and Ark of Nepotism or however it's called, this is the first one I'd actually consider good. Story is simple but entertaining, combat has it's ups and downs, being it's best version in the mid game, before your tools makes it a skill fest, and there was enough diversity in the way characters play to justify their existence. All in all, I actually had fun in this game compared, specially considering this time around I was not getting hit by misaligned hitboxes like in the 2.5D games. That said, Nihon Falcom still shows that QA is an alien concept to them: I travelled the entire map and still missed 0,2%, which is apparently an issue with needing to uncover what's not in the map, and I read this exists since the original release on VITa and they didn't bother to fix in subsequent re-releases. The camera angles are another issue. The game gives a fixed camera that does not really let you see what's below you most of the time, which of course is not that much of an issue, since is not like the game features a superboss that can easily move…

The gameplay / fighting is pretty fun, the voice acting is minimal and not a standout but not a detriment either, background music amazing as usual, graphics fine if a bit blocky. Plotwise, I really enjoyed the framing of Adol regaining his memories, and also other memories that fill out his background. It did feel like there were hanging plot threads that didn't come to a satisfying conclusion or get tied into the climax / main story - two companion characters did not appear to have their subplots resolved and a mysterious character with a hidden background basically had no tie in to the plot. The number of skills and the amount of spamming for skills was somewhat annoying at times, but the skills looked cool at least. It's also somewhat annoying that you have to play the game twice in order to obtain all the ultimate weapons.

its pretty solid, but the story feel too bland they clearly put more focus on gameplay

Good game. Very beautiful intro theme. Fun and challenging.