Did this earlier and thought I'd share it~
- Solid gameplay
- Not a lot of dungeon diversity
- Low enemy attack-type diversity
- Most bosses kinda simple/easy (including the final one)
- Grind-heavy
- Doesn't explain dash-jump in-game AFAIK which is lame (the ability itself is cool though)
- Not the best Ys game IMO, around Ys Seven level.
- Catastrophe mode was ok but again, poorly explained
- Music isn't bad but only has a few very good/memorable songs, OiF, Origin, Celceta, and VIII had way better soundtracks as a whole IMO.
Objective rating is about a 6.5/10, personal enjoyment rating is about a 7.5-8/10. (I like action, I like combat, I like the bits of exploration/platforming, I like talking to people, I like the RPG stuff, and I like all the references/relations to Adol's past adventures, so as a series fan I'm pretty biased...).
Current rough rankings of the games in the series:
Top tier:
- Ys Origin (Toal, then Hubert/Yunica about the same)
High tier:
- Ys VIII (suffers from excessive dialog/story-interruptions)
- Ys Celceta, Ys OiF (like them around the same)
Rest (great to good, nothing less than a 6-7/10 really)
- Ys I & II (good, but soooo old and soooo hard)
- Ys VI (bonus points for the voice acting in Konami's version)
- Ys Seven (Ys 7's gameplay was very rough, I didn't really like the team thing, and overall it just didn't leave a great impression on me, but wasn't bad, I don't think...)
- The rest (the other version of Ys IV and Ys V, it's been so long since I played them [and they're such short games] that I can't remember much about them and don't really have an opinion on them anymore )