Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana PS5 Review. Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana stands at an interesting point in the Ys franchise lineage; Ys X: Nordics recently made its way to Western shores and despite releasing in 2023, stands as the direct prequel to Ys Memoire, a remaster of a remake of Ys III. By all accounts, it isn’td necessary to play the Ys games in any sense of chronology to enjoy them, but that knowledge is still an interesting wrinkle.
In its own right, Ys Memoire is a compelling remaster of a series classic that preserves the original for better and worse. While I don’t think Ys Memoire does enough to stand out among an incredibly saturated crowd of action RPGs, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a solid game by itself; I would be remiss to deny that, even if it isn’t a game I found the most engaging.
Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana Review (PS5) – Setting Sail to Old Lands
Returning to your Roots
Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is quick to establish itself as a part of the greater Ys mythos with the disclaimer that this is but one small chapter in the greater story of Adol Christin. It invites you into this small-scale adventure and encourages you to stick around for the long haul, even if you’ve had a limited history with the series so far.
The vital context for characters is laid out in black and white for you to intuit. Very little time is wasted on catching people up to speed on the exploits of Adol and Dogi up until this point, outside of vague allusions of “experience” and an inherent trust from others on account of previous adventures. It’s an elegant way of setting up a sequel without being dependent on the previous game. For those who have played Ys and Ys II, this continuity is more of a special treat, where the connective tissue is just set dressing for newcomers.
In more ways than one, Ys Memoire very much stands at a crossroads with modern action-RPG standards as we’ve come to appreciate them, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. In terms of the narrative, this results in a compelling enough if deeply exposited story about family politics, mystery and a tyrannical King ruling over an island.
Each member of the cast was memorable and I enjoyed seeing how the story developed over the adventure, but I never found myself losing myself in the story or the themes that it raises. The beating heart of this story is ripped from an era where games were just unable to go to the territory they can today, and that’s important to keep in mind. There are some seemingly odd choices that make far more sense when viewing them through the lens of a game from the past rather than a modern release, and that perspective helps to smooth over some of the rockier moments nicely, even if I found the story to be relatively mild.
While I wouldn’t say that Ys Memoire is reinventing the wheel in terms of RPG narratives, that doesn’t mean there aren’t character moments to enjoy and setpieces to string you along in this episode of Adol’s saga.
This remaster also includes the prologue novella that sets the stage for Memoire as a bonus, if you’re so interested. This addition is sequestered off in a separate menu on the title screen and is a neat way to preserve what would have been lost media. Similar to the rest of the game, it was perfectly solid if not revolutionary.
Setting Foot on Land
Similar to the main narrative, the gameplay of Ys Memoire trims the fat and idiosyncracies of the action-RPG genre and presents a refreshingly simple system that is easy to pick up and enjoy, for the most part.
Combat takes place in real-time and has Adol fighting wave after wave of enemies as you progress through an area, with each having unique methods of attack and defence to navigate. While ordinary enemies don’t really put up much of a fight if you maintain a steady clip of upgrading your equipment, bosses do test your pattern recognition and dexterity, more than I was expecting, even with their own oddities.
Felghana is an island that’s split into distinct locations that you’re clearly signposted to throughout the runtime of the main quest. This remaster forgoes adding quest markers and modern quality of life to the game, instead relying on heavily exposited dialogue to do the heavy lifting. Characters will describe the exact location of key items in ways that are incredibly strange, but helpful in their own right.
I always had a strong sense of direction and a good forward momentum, despite the lack of explicit quest markers and ways to directly show where to go.
Test your Steel
In an era where action combat is becoming exponentially more difficult to parse for newcomers, Ys Memoire breaks the standard and offers a refreshingly light combat system, that only slightly shows cracks throughout the experience. This rings true for the whole of the game but what you see is what you get with Ys. Combat areas are strung together with weaker enemies before encountering a boss and finishing the job.
You’re encouraged to keep attacking, rather than worrying about managing healing items and buffs through thoughtful combat. Healing items and buffs drop from enemies as you defeat them, with experience increasing in a multiplier as you defeat more enemies in a row, drawing a focus to forward movement and never letting up on the offence.
This lends Ys Memoire an almost arcade spirit as you make your way through the main scenario, which is an interesting result. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this change of approach, but I would have liked to have seen an effort be made for a wider variety and opportunity for player expression. The most that I found was that certain attacks refused to deal any major damage and that I’d have to swap to using magic projectiles instead for a few enemies.
This issue extends to bosses, that felt far less organic than I would have liked, and felt more like roadblocks than climactic showdowns. While these don’t take away from the solid foundation, I feel like it could have been developed that little bit more for a well-rounded experience. This still feels like a game designed for PSP, with pick-up and play being a priority.
Stuck in its Time
One of the most staggering aspects of this game is the lack of quality-of-life improvements from the original version of this remake on the PSP. But that isn’t to say that there haven’t been meaningful improvements to the experience overall. Where a glut of remasters have introduced mechanics like autosaving, save states and game-breaking difficulty modifiers for the sake of modern players, Ys Memoire sticks to its guns and solidly replicates the original down to the minute details. Turbo mode is one of the only additions to this entry that speeds up the pace, but was something I avoided out of wanting to see how the game originally released.
Level designs are basic, combat is designed in an easily understandable way and I never felt particularly challenged by this entry, especially when compared to its contemporaries.
On the one hand, this is a wonderful preservation of a classic entry in the Ys catalogue that people can enjoy in their own time for generations to come. On the other, obstacles to entry haven’t quite been addressed here and may turn newer players away who joined with more recent games like Nordics.
Oath in Felghana doesn’t have the fangs that other games from that time period have when it comes to accessibility for new players, but seeing a few more additional features would have been a pleasant way to bring this up to snuff; because it definitely shows its age in more ways than one.
Maintaining Identity
As I mentioned up above, this version of Ys Memoire: The Oath of Felghana is a remaster of a remake that released originally on the PSP. The original game was a 2D platformer, where this version of the game is an isometric action affair with an emphasis on quick combat encounters.
This remaster returns to a lot of the assets originally made for the PSP version and brings them up to a high standard of production set by other entries in the Ys series, with a particular focus on music and character portraits.
With the ability to switch between all three versions of the soundtrack in this version, you can easily see just how far this score has been pushed throughout the years. While I’m sure there will be more than a few who opt for a more classic experience, the new versions are still full of life and energy across the board and were great backdrops as you charge through enemy after enemy.
The same can be said of the updated character portraits, which can also be swapped with their original versions. While you only get a few expressions for the main cast, the art itself is gorgeous and maintains the details from the originals.
As far as remasters go, this is one of the most faithful that I’ve seen in a long while, and I commend it for that. Ys is a series that is slowly finding its feet in the West after a strange history with localisation and this glimpse into the halcyon days of the past is one that lands at an opportune moment, given the recent release of Ys X: Nordics. If you’re looking for a low-commitment RPG with a strangely charming simplicity, Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana might be just the palette cleanser you need.