Ys Origin Switch Review – Prepare Your Fingers

Ys is an old series and one whose title I only recently learned to pronounce properly.  “Yees.” The series essentially pioneered the action RPG in the days when the action was pretty much walking into the monster, rather than this awesome spectacle it has become.

Ys Origin
Developer: Dotemu
Price: $19.99
Platform: Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC
MonsterVine was supplied with Switch code for review

This series is still going strong today, with Ys 7 being well received, and Ys 8 currently in development.  The hallmarks of the series have become amazingly tight gameplay, music that gets stuck in your head for weeks on end, and screen-filling bosses that will test everything you have learned thus far in the game. Ys Origin is a prequel to the first two games technically and has a lot of references that series fans will appreciate, but newcomers might lose a bit of the experience as these fly over their head.

This game takes place about 700 years before the first two, and humanity has been driven into the sky, protected by twin goddesses who whisked them away from the massive force of demons seeking to destroy and conquer.  Not a group to be outdone, the demons were attempting to build a huge tower that reached in the heavens in order to wage war on humanity once again, but this time in their supposed safe haven. There is not a whole lot left on the surface aside the Devil’s Tower, so humanity forms up a search party of their best and brightest in order to try and find the Goddesses in the one place there is to go, the aforementioned Devil’s Tower!

You can choose from two characters, as well as a third one you unlock later (but it’s just an excuse to play through the game again).  The first is apprentice knight Yunica Tovah, who focuses on close-range slashing with her trusty axe.  On the other side of the spectrum is Hugo Fact, the haughty sorcerer from an esteemed family.  He uses magic to command two bits that shoot magical bullets at his foes, allowing him to fight at range against all the various demons and beasts he will encounter. The two play styles are nice because they let fans of either style have a way to play through the game that aligns with what they enjoy doing.

You level up, upgrade equipment, or get new equipment to increase your stats in this game, to help you better take on the enemy forces. You can also trade a special currency for “blessings” that will give some more separate bonuses that are a little more impactful than just doing more damage or taking more hits.  Ys Origins has you climbing the tower from the start, and you will run, jump and kill your way through it in your quest to find whatever your next objective is. Be it the next platforming segment to fight your way through, a puzzle to figure out, or maybe a relic that grants you a new ability that will help you to progress, including wind shields that absorb hits and slow your fall, or unlocking the ability to run faster, or maybe hold your breath longer!  Yes, that’s right folks, we’re in my territory now, Metroidvania elements!  It’s not too heavy on it, but it’s certainly there.  Normal combat is fun, having you fight a good number of enemy types in different combinations as you make your way up the tower, but gameplay-wise, the bosses are where this game really shines.

Ranging from character-sized bosses to screen-filling ones, each of these fights will ask you to analyze patterns, try different strategies, and fight as hard as you can to whittle their health down before you exhaust yours. I had many fights give me multiple tries to beat on normal mode, which is a little bit more than I would normally run into for most games, so this game certainly isn’t a walk in the park on its default mode.  I often found the general gameplay to be pretty chilled out, but it was really the bosses where I found myself pushing myself and enjoying myself the most.  As the story went on and such, it never hit me TOO hard or had me super invested, it’s pretty basic and has a lot of moments for series fans rather than the everyman, so what kept me going was looking forward to the next boss battle.  Would it be another giant demon?  What about another person?  What kind of reward would I get?  All of these were things going through my mind as I was blowing my way through various smaller demons, running circles around them because their attack startup is generally too slow to hit you if you do that.  I started to kinda get bored with the in-between segments, and the lack of a map made those Metroidvania moments a bit more tedious than they needed to be.

Ys Origin is a fun game that fans of the series will get a good bit of enjoyment out of because of its place as a prequel story to the world established in the first two games Towards the middle, it starts to meander in the, and the overall loop starts to lose my interest.  However, the boss fights are so good that every time I got to one, I had another good bit of time being hooked on the game just from the hype.  I wish there was a little more of a difference between the two main characters’ games, and it’s heavily suggested to play the other character afterward, but it’s only a few different story beats but most of the actual gameplay is all the same in terms of bosses and enemies.

The Final Word
Ys Origin is a good entry into the series with a stronger focus on dungeon crawling than most of the other games it is related to.  I would absolutely recommend this to people that feel like what I’ve described resonates with you. If this is out of your comfort zone, it might not be able to keep your attention fully.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good