Other YS
Ys Strategy
This game doesn't seem to have anything to do with Falcom other than the name and was developed by a company called Future Creates. It was released for both the Japanese, European, and Australian markets in 2006 avoiding the North American audience entirely. It also sounds like an RTS gone wrong in every way possible aside from forcing players to stay connected to a DRM server to play it.
In digging up what I could on this one, it's an RTS for the DS which shouldn't be too unusual. After all, FF12 Revenant Wings didn't do too badly with that direction along with Rondo of Swords, so tactical strategy isn't too bizarre a challenge for Nintendo's portable. What is bizarre, from what I've been able to gather, is how the game actually plays out.
Map at the top, have no idea what the hell is going on on the bottom.
For some reason, you are charged with building up forces and crushing Romun enemies in RTS-style: mine resources, build units and buildings, and head out to kill everything that moves. What appears to be particularly game breaking are the Hero units that can apparently heal themselves whenever they can without penalty before heading back out to devastate the other side. The AI is also apparently as smart as a rock.
It seems to take the player around Ys' world in a fight against the Romun Empire and see the sights that players never got to see outside of Adol's adventures. For what reason is left a mystery since no one seems to have a translation of what the story, which the game is apparently stuffed to the chips with, is all about. I guess it could be fun since there's one review on Metacritic that actually seems to like it, but no link to the actual article to find out why other than the blurb.
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Ys I & II Chronicles
This was a remake based on the PC release of Ys I & II Complete and made available only for Japan on the PSP in 2009. It's basically the same game from what I've been able to gather only with a few new tweaks such as four difficulty modes and a number of updated graphics and character portraits.
Then, in a bizarre turn, it was ported back to the PC. Why? I have no idea since the Complete version of the game is still considered the go-to copy to pick up by fans if you want the experience there...which Chronicles is based off of, making this a really strange case of a remake's remake being sold as a new game again. Chronicles' PC version is the horse armor of the Ys series.
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Ys: Typing of Ys
This was actually a hidden game within Zwei!!, an action RPG from Falcom exclusively released in Japan in 2002 for Windows PCs, and then later brought out for the PS2 in 2004 and then for the PSP in 2008.
Typing of Ys Title Screen. The fun is about to start!
This is a funky game. It's based off of material from Ys II Complete and is a side-scrolling, typing attack game. Enemies show up with a speech bubble and you have to type what they're saying to defeat them or move on to the next stage. Interestingly, if the enemy is far away, they explode. If you finish typing in their word or phrase and they're in Adol's personal space, Adol slashes at them instead.
Boss attacks are trickier because after typing what's in their speech bubble, blue spheres with letters are shot at Adol and you have to hit the corresponding letters before they do damage, bringing up another speech bubble. Adol has to rinse and repeat this a few times before the boss bites it and with each successive boss, the spheres also increase in shot speed and variety. Some of the bubbles attack in pairs, others stream out, one after another.
Faster, faster, must type faster!
Later on, more than one enemy will also show up requiring you to pick which to type in first, punctuation and all. It's pretty challenging in the later stages, but it's also quite a fun distraction for when you want to beat on the keyboard instead of monsters for awhile.
Performance is even graded after each stage. Errors, such as missed letters, punctuation, or spacing, are also factored into your score so accuracy is key to getting a good "grade" at the end.
You're not penalized for errors onscreen, but the speed of each enemy as they come at you and the limited health that you have in each stage can make every missed keystroke or fudged letter hurt just as much.
