Ys games don't often make their way out of Japan – and not because of the cheesy dialogue in the title - but when Ys Seven hit shelves last month, it made a money splash with both a regular and CE version for fans.

But the bigger question on my mind was if Nihom Falcom's changes were as fantastic as their remake of Ys III as the Oath in Felghana was, or as bizarre as Ys III kicking away the top-down look for sidscrolling back in the early nineties.

If you don't know what Ys is about, the series revolves around a red-haired swordsman named Adol Christin whose wanderlust has often dropped him into the lap of adventure – usually when he least expects it. And being the goody two-shoes that he is, he never says no. Not that you can actually say no since Ys has always been about thumb blistering action with only a slight glazing of story as additional motivation.

But Ys Seven's isometric world is saturated with the kind of story-driven direction that their efforts with Oath in Felghana or Ark of the Napishtim have shown fans in the past. I might not have been able to change the opinions of anyone that I brought Adol into contact with, but its text-heavy parts were pleasant enough reprieves from the relentless slashing and upgrading that is at its core.

Adol finds himself in the town of Altago which had recently won a war against the Romun Empire. Dragon Knights keep order in the streets and aside from a few bad apples, are a generally decent bunch. Deep below the surface, though, is a mystery involving the Five Dragons of Altago.

Revered as gods in the past, their power is waning and the land is slowly suffering. To make things worse, Adol and his erstwhile companion, Dogi, are mistaken for Romun spies and spend time cooling their heels in jail – until the king makes them an offer that's right up their alley. Cue heroic music!

No job is too small or request too weird for Adol and Co.

It's a Party in Altago!

Fans of the series will immediately notice that the biggest change is that Adol no longer has to save the world by himself outside of the story. Although you only get to control one character at a time, up to two AI controlled partners can come along allowing players to switch between them on the fly.

Each partner specializes in a specific attack type which, later on, can also be altered by what weapons they can wield. This is important because in Altago, Adol's do-it-all approach won't work as well as it did in his previous adventures. They apparently grow the monsters tougher and stronger than anywhere else in the world in Altago making it important to swap between teammates to slice or crush whatever is in the way.

It's not so much tactical as a frenetic feeling that it adds to the onscreen action in jumping between characters making the concept feel less novel than it really is in practice. Instead of swapping between different weapon types, Ys Seven swaps the option out for characters instead, meaning that one or both ineffective partners might run around aimlessly like dangerous lemmings until you get the job done.

Tweaking the settings can make them more aggressive or passive though it's still limited by its weapon specializations. At least you don't have to worry about leaving any of them behind as they conveniently teleport to where your controlled character might be when their pathfinding fails. Or try to blindly attack an enemy they can't get to.

One of my favorite characters to team with, she's blind but she's far from helpless. Anime magic girl POWAH!

And a Bludgeon Built for You

The extra help isn't without some benefits. The AI plays along as an extra pair of hands fighting and gathering ingredients found in the field, though most of the real work will be done by the controlling player anyway. It's most useful in gathering up the stuff that literally explodes from defeated creatures. Enemies burst like pinanas after getting killed, except for the bosses, littering the ground with goodies.

The big reason why is that the crafting system which has always had something of a token presence in several Ys titles has been given an MMO makeover here. Gathering up ore, creature parts, and other ingredients such as spring water plays into building up a huge collection of weapons, armor, and even potions. Side quests also add to Adol's to-do list with NPCs often asking the player to do a little harvesting for cash, and eventually, the reward of a rare item or two.

There's even a skill system involved, granting Adol and his friends a number of bone breaking moves that they can learn from the weapons they wield. Though they often have to wield the weapon that they're associated with, they can be earned after so much use leading to lists filled with assignable actions. As long as the party has action points that they can spend from bashing monsters the old fashioned way, they can literally tear across the screen with everything from magical tornados to deadly fists of fury. There's even a super attack specific to each that can be triggered with enough skill use complete with a flashy intro.

Ys Seven's bosses look good, but not all of them are as tough as I had expected.

Clocking in at a little over thirty hours, Ys Seven also adds up to become one of the longest Ys titles out there especially if you try to chase after every side quest; some of which can become unattainable as the story moves on. Difficulty-wise, it's also one of the easier ones to get acquainted with without scaring off potential fans. Ys has a well-earned reputation for morale crushing bosses, even on the default 'normal' difficulty level, but in this case, Ys Seven didn't force me to invent new swear words until the last one.

Ys' infamously brutal difficulty has generally scaled upwards from the start until the end in the most basic way: if you push too far ahead before you're ready, don't be surprised to die in seconds. Ys Seven's combat difficulty scales well enough against the player's own actions since you are killing everything onscreen to get to where you need to go, making it a more leisurely jaunt than one that will rip you apart for going one screen over into territory you weren't meant to enter yet.

As a result, grinding didn't feel as important to me here as it might have been with its predecessors -  outside of farming for ingredients - with the dividing line between success and failure for not being at a specific level blurred far more than it was in the past. That might come as something of a relief to veterans, though the lack of the kind of fiendishly deadly encounters that made Adol's previous efforts a bit more memorable might not be as obvious to old hands without raising the difficulty immediately from the start with a new game.

Just Short of Glory

Adol and his friends still retain that regenerative health ability when they stand still, though it's been given a gradual effect that starts it off slowly when standing still before speeding up. Fortunately, being able to save anywhere in Ys Seven outside of an actual boss battle was a great feature to help avoid unnecessarily repeating too much of your journey, something that a few other titles could learn from.

Visually, the game looks fine on the PSP and the anime-styled artwork that it uses for its storytelling does a decent enough job. This is a game loaded with text! Most NPCs usually have different sets of dialogue to mash through multiplied by the story events, so anyone who loves to read will find plenty of old school RPG texting here. XSEED has done a great job with the translation but likely had no say on its glacial pacing and a few odd characterizations towards the end that weaken the setup for the inevitable climax.
 

Adol checks out a village while Dogi ponders if there's a wall somewhere that needs smashing

Adol remains the silent protagonist as usual with most of the story told through Dogi's own words as he vocalizes the kind of things that his friend might otherwise say. There's even some voice acting in here that sounds off whenever you swap characters. It also assaults your ears with one or two that simply won't shut up -- like the Princess who yells every time you fire an arrow with her. It's not as bad as Shining Force Neo's fireball flinger who shouted "Hot stuff, coming your way!", but she was the first thing that I was reminded of. Augh.

The good news is that the soundtrack delivers plenty of rock with the Altago Desert theme, its plains, and the boss battles featuring a few of my favorite pieces. The fast moving, techno-styled beats might not be to everyone's taste, but to fans of Nihon Falcom's brilliant Sound Team, they fit the action like a well tuned glove. Sharp sound effects round out the audio package making every striking blow and roaring monster come to life through the tiny speakers of the PSP or your favorite headset.

Add to this a real manual that explains more about the game and its world than most others even care to do past the EULA without including foreign language versions of themselves, and you've got a game that was put together with the fans in mind and a welcome jumping off point for newcomers.

Dogi's smiling face hides the cold terror of taking a boat trip with Adol whose luck has sunk more ships than Davy Jones

Fin, Until the Next Adventure

Finishing the game, unfortunately, fails to give the player any new extras. The CE version has a lot to look forward to such as its music CD, but if you only have the retail version, you're out of luck outside of an additional unlocked difficulty level.

There's no boss rush mode to get excited about or freestyle jukebox to sample its tracks which are unusual omissions for Nihon Falcom to make considering the previous fanservice from their earlier work. It also felt as if it fell a few notches short of the much faster paced formula of their previous titles – such as when it erased Adol's teleport markers which came off more as a blatant attempt to pad the hours than as an introduction to a new side of the world that I hadn't seen yet.

I still had a lot of fun with Ys Seven despite all that. The ideas that it brings out within its gameplay such as the deep crafting system and the weapon skills backing its nonstop action are great even though its thoroughly old school action can lay the repetition and linearity on a little thick for players unused to Adol's adventures.

Its shortcomings also make it hard to put Seven above my current favorite, Oath in Felghana on the PC, but fans shouldn't feel let down by Adol's latest with solid improvements to the old formula that make it worthy of sitting alongside it on the shelf. For anyone hungry for a little adventure while on the go, smashing your way through Altago on a quest to save it from total destruction is a great way to forget just how far it is to the next level.