Ys Origin

Ys Origin was my first rodeo into the world of classic Ys titles. It wasn't my first time with the franchise overall, I'd previously completed Ys X: Proud Nordics and decided after some time that I wanted to check out more Ys games to see another side of Nihon Falcom, especially since I was all caught up with the Trails series. Since Ys Origin is, well, the "origin" of Ys itself, I figured it was worth a shot. Right off the bat, I have to admit that I didn't finish Ys I & II Chronicles because the bump combat system turned me off, so I at least watched someone else's playthrough. Moving on to Origin, I went in completely blind, and overall, I came away with a mix of positive and negative thoughts. Ys Origin takes place 700 years before Ys I & II Chronicles, introducing us to a bunch of characters, some of whom were already present in I and II. The game was fun. It reminded me a lot of Trails in the Sky the 3rd since it takes a pure dungeon crawler approach instead of the typical JRPG setup where heroes set out on a grand journey. I didn't mind that setup at all, considering Sky the 3rd is one of my all-time favorite Trails games. The dungeon floor layouts weren't the most jaw-dropping thing ever, but considering the game came out back in 2006, they got the job done. You play as three different characters: Yunica Tovah, Hugo Fact, and a secret third character known as "The Claw." While having three playable characters sounds great on paper, you'd think you'd also get three unique takes on their ascent up the tower. Apart from each character's combat style, though, that's not really the case. Yunica is your classic melee brawler, Hugo is a ranged spellcaster, and The Claw is another melee fighter. Both Yunica and Hugo share a near-identical story with only minor differences, whereas The Claw serves as the canon route with the actual true ending. The biggest offense, in my opinion, is that you're forced to beat the game as both Yunica and Hugo just to unlock The Claw which kind of sucks, given that the dungeon layouts don't change at all. Same floors, same structure, same pathing. The only real differences are the main protagonist, minor bosses, and the fact that The Claw actually holds the "meat" of the lore players actually care about. That design decision turned me off pretty quickly. After finishing Yunica's route, I started playing as Hugo, but his gameplay didn't interest me one bit. I was intrigued by his connections to certain characters, but with the copy-paste dungeon design and lack of real uniqueness on subsequent playthroughs, it just couldn't hold my attention. After dropping Hugo halfway through on my Switch 2, I ended up buying the game cheap on Steam just so I could mod a save file with The Claw already unlocked and play his route instead. I liked his story the most since it had the most lore which I was interested in, and, as I mentioned, it's the canon path. The combat itself was a blast. Exploration was heavily encouraged since the floors weren't overly large, and missing out on gear upgrades meant your damage output would suffer severely. The boss fights were super fun, and the OST was great, too. Overall, Ys Origin isn't necessarily anything to write home about. If you're a hardcore Ys fan, you'll probably power through and finish all three playthroughs. But if you're just getting into the series and struggle to stay invested, I'd say just look up the canon route online.