I recently beat Ys Seven last week or so, and since I haven't done one of these review threads in a while, I decided that Ys Seven would be my next victim. I like the Ys series, so how did Ys Seven fare out?
Good:
Fantastic boss fights: The best thing about Ys Seven is the boss fights; they're fast-paced, intense, challenging and fun. And what's even better about the boss battles is that they're not mindless :hack n' slash" to defeat like many action-RPGs out there. They involve some sort of skill and strategy like in Devil Summoner 2. The boss will sometimes have multiple targets, different weaknesses, or will throw multiple spells at you, in which you abandon attacking the boss and just run away. Boss battles aren't cheap like some reviewers are stating. You just have to pay attention to the fights and not carelessly button smash all the way through the battle.
Great soundtrack: One of my favorite things about the Ys series is the soundtrack, and Ys Seven is no expection. A lot of the tracks are relaxing and nice to listen to, and there's some great rock tunes that really pumps you up for a fight, especially during the boss fights. The music is great overall.
Encourages you to use multiple characters: You know in JRPGs, there's usually one or two characters you never use because they either suck ass or don't have anything to contribute in battles. Well in Ys Seven, the game encourages you to use multiple characters due to enemies having multiple weaknesses. Some will be weak to pierce attacks, others to strike attacks and others to slash attacks. Also, enemies can be strong against or nullify certain attacks. Each character has a different type of attack, so you have to be constantly switching characters to defeat the enemies you encounter. It is possible to beat levels without switching between characters, but that would take long.
Portable friendly: Battle are quick and fast-paced. You can beat one section of a dungeon in like two minutes. If you ever run out of time or something unexpected comes up, you can just press start and save the game. That's right. You can save everywhere in the game.
Good dungeon designs: One of the things I dislike about many JRPGs is that they have bland dungeon crawling, and it's even worse when they're highly repetitive. My precious Persona 3 is an offender of this. Ys Seven, on the other hand, adds a couple of gimmicks to their dungeons: spike floors, lava and moving platforms, dark dungeons, etc. You never feel bored progressing through the dungeons since each dungeon is different, and the fact that you're not kind of seeing or doing the same thing over and over and over and over.
Good graphics/artisitic design: Honestly, I liked the graphics, mainly because of the designs. The world, characters, dungeons are nicely design and interesting. It's not amazing by any means, but yeah, the game looks pretty good.
It did nothing to piss me off: Not sure if you remember, but the past games I reviewed pissed me off. The Turd Birthday had a wonky camera, terrible controls, poor design choices, frustrating and tedious boss fights, crap story, bland characters and cheap one hit kills. Lunar Silver Star Disharmony (can someone come up with a witty name? :) ) pissed me off by having me to talk to various NPCs, sometimes multiple times, in order to advance. Also, it had a terrible escape system where everyone would just jump around and not escape, and chests that confuse you and ultimately kill you. Ys Seven, on the other hand, did nothing to piss me off, so that's an automatic 7 right there.
Neutral:
Characters: A great amount of characters here are cliche or uninteresting, and some don't even have good character development. I only like a handful of characters including Dogi and Adol, but to be honest, the character development for Adol wasn't that great. The reason I liked him was because of the previous installments. Dogi and Maya, on the other hand, were great. Anyways, for the most part, the characters here are forgettable minus a few exceptions.
Battle system: Battles are fast-paced and sometimes fun, but I will admit that I did get kind of burned out after seven hours. I couldn't play this game for more than an hour after that due to the battle system being repetitive. The battle system mostly revolves you constantly mashing X with the occasional O to switch characters. Yeah, you gain some skills as you can go through the game, but all you mostly do in mash X. It needed more depth and variety, imo. The dungeon designs and boss battles kept the gameplay from being a total bore.
Bad:
Story: The story cliche and horrible. It's like this: the world is coming to an end, so you have to visit the five tribes to learn about the dragons and how to prevent the destruction of Altago. That's it. There's maybe like one or two I didn't see coming, but the majority is just cliche-badness. And please don't say, 'but Ys never been about the story.' Yeah, but that was twenty years ago. Ys Seven puts a lot of focus on its story; too bad it isn't good.
Value: I beat the game in like 22 hours on normal with a few quests done, and there isn't any post-game content or much to do. There are side-quests, but many get cancelled out once you reach the second half. In addition, the majority are tedious fetch-quests. In one quest, I had to revisit the same statue four times, only to get an item that is available in the store. Money is never an issue in Ys Seven, so I didn't think doing this side-quest was a good payoff. Also, due to the repetitiveness of the battle system, it's highly unlikely I'll play this game again. It's nowhere near 40 - 70 hours....unless you play it twice or three times.
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Overall, I enjoyed Ys Seven, and I would recommend it for its current price. The boss battles and dungeon designs are the things that stood out the most for me. I would have liked that the battle system wasn't so repetitive or maybe have a shorter campaign with lots of optional/interesting side-quests. The previous Ys games were short, so the repetitiveness didn't struck me as much as it did here. Story sucks, so skip or fast-forward the cutscenes (seriously, it's not worth your time.)
Score: 7.5 (Good)
