My gaming goes in cycles, from console to console. I'm currently on a DS kick right now, and was inspired by the news of XSeed releasing three games in the Ys series to pick up my copy of Ys Legacy by Atlus and finally, FINALLY, finish it. And I'm loving it.

Hardcore Gaming 101 has a great, informative article on the series as a whole, so I suggest you google that if you're interested in learning about the series and it's roots. This is less about the game itself and more about my personal experience with the game, and why I've finally decided to pick it up and what's keeping it in my hands.

My first experience with Ys was, properly, the Turbo-Duo edition of Ys: Book I and II. I purchased a used Turbo from a little game shop in town, and it looked like the previous owner had abused the system, but only ever had the games it came with. Not surprising, considering the market for the NEC-System-That-Could was tiny here in the good ol' U.S of A.

The music stood out, as did the combat. No attack button...just ram your little dude into the overworld enemies and then stand still to recover. Rinse, repeat ad-infinitum. It felt weird, with such a simple combat system, but oddly satisfying, especially as you began to level up and plow through once-deadly enemies with ease. (Ease, by the way, is how you pronounce the games title. So, was this purposeful on the developer's part, to not only have an interesting name but to portray how they viewed the game as a whole? Sounds good to me...)

I never got past the first dungeon, actually. I lost patience and turned to other things, always meaning to go back and never doing so. Then my Turbo disk drive died. I still need to fix it, but the imperative has disappeared in the face of the Wii Virtual Console having most of the games I'm interested in or own for the Turbo, including Ys and Rondo of Blood. (If they ever get Macross 2036 on there, I might just write off the Turbo entirely. Not likely, though...)



On the DS version, developer Falcom added a button press sword attack that makes combat feel more interactive. I like that, although you're still pretty much just charging the enemies and pressing the sword button at the last minute. There aren't any real combos or anything to speak of. And the game is still super-simple, doesn't look very good, and is highly repetitive. So why do I like it so much right now?

Frankly, because of all of those factors, I think. I'm at a point in life where my whole life is changing rapidly. A son on the way (as mentioned in my last post): family, professional and personal changes abound...and Ys is a small bastion of uncomplicated escape. Ease, indeed. There is no angst, no fuzzy morality, no gray area...just Adol and a sword and a quest to do well. Simple, really.

I'm reminded of a couple years ago when I picked up Final Fantasy for the GBA, and plowed through it with a smile the whole way. I'd never played through an entire FF before, and this experience was better than any I'd had with the series. It was simple, fun escapism, and I relished it. This is how I feel about Ys now. It reminds me of why I fell in love with games in the first place, and doesn't ask a lot of me. Which is good, because I'm spread kinda thin as it is.

I remember hearing Chuck D of Public Enemy say once (paraphrased), "I have a hard life, so the songs we're writing now are softer. Those with a soft life write harder songs." I don't know how accurate that is in general, but I get the sentiment. Ys is ease for me right now. Can you dig it?