Virtual 100 #43: Ys III The Oath In Felghana

I get to consider this the very first Ys game I’ve ever completed. As in, actually watched the credits roll. I’ve gotten to the very end of Ys I and Ys II, then realized how utterly ridiculous those games got and put them back on the virtual shelf. As much as I wanted to love those games, they’re held back by an archaic design that just doesn’t hold my attention well enough in the modern day.

And the same holds true with Ys III: The Oath In Felghana, to a certain extent. Even with this re-imagining, the game is still pretty old school. I’m going to attempt to dig into the (extremely) complicated history of the Ys franchise at some point, but for now let’s just say this series has been torn down and rebuilt more times than your grandpa’s 1982 Chevy, so to say you’ve beaten Ys III is only going to prompt someone in-the-know to ask, “which Ys III?”

That’s because the original Ys III was a 16-bit side-scrolling, Zelda II-style RPG called Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. It was then remade as a 3D isometric hack ‘n slash as Ys: The Oath in Felghana for PC in Japan in 2005. Then it was given a PSP port, which was then released as a PC version in the U.S.

THEN, it was given an HD brush-up for PS4 and Switch in 2024 or ‘25, called Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana, which had better character art and voice acting.

Do you see what I’m getting at here?

So, for the record, the version I played was the Windows version of Oath in Felghana, which I believe is the port of the PSP version. I think. Fuck.

Anyways, Oath in Felghana starts with our red-headed stepchild, Adol Cristin, and his blue-haired buddy Dogi as they dock their dingy outside the town of Felghana. This is Dogi’s old home-town, and he’s anxious to see his friends and family and let them know what he’s been up to. But, even as they are stepping foot into town, trouble is brewing. There are monsters in the mine! As adventurer’s tend to do, Adol steps up and offers his services in order to fulfill his bloodlust… and to figure out just what the hell is going on.

As far as JRPG’s go, the story plays out exactly as you’d expect. Some evil-doer is trying to get ahold of four ancient statues, which hold the key to unleashing a beast of immense power. Adol tries to acquire them before the bad guys do, which he does, but ultimately loses them and the beast gets unleashed and yadda yadda yadda.

I will be perfectly honest, I’m more interested in the over-arching story of Ys, as opposed to the individual games. I know that each game can be played and enjoyed as a stand-alone product, and each game is essentially its own self-contained thing, but if I played this game in a vacuum, I’d say that the story is probably the least of its strengths. Even with this fleshed-out version, which had added story over the original side-scroller (damn these dashes) it’s still pretty shallow.

The real reason to play an Ys game is the simple, yet for some reason very satisfying combat. Ys is a game where offense is the best defense. In fact, it’s the only defense, as Adol can’t do practically anything other than hop around like a chimp to avoid enemy attacks. The only path to victory here is to kill the monster before it kills you. Luckily, Adol is a sword-swinging motherfucker. Boy could probably mow a lawn with nothing more than a steak knife. He can hack away at a mob and get in a good five or six hits before the monster even realized what was happening. Doing so causes the defeated enemy to drop several different types of gems. Each one will add to a bonus multiplier, whether it’s offensive or defensive. They’ll add to his strength, movement speed, defense, etc. They all have a timer that ticks away, so you’ll want to kill as much shit as fast as possible to not only keep your multiplier from expiring, but also to add to it. Luckily, Adol is a genocidal maniac, so it happens with ease.

This is a recurring theme in these earlier games. I believe Ys I and II used multiplier gems, and I know the relatively recent Ys Origins does as well. It’s shallow as hell, and makes for practically zero strategy, but at the same time its pretty addictive, so what do I know.

When I mentioned earlier that the original had Zelda II style gameplay, a lot of that remained largely intact in the transition from 2D to 3D. The game has that Zelda DNA, where certain areas or enemies cannot be defeated until a specific item is found and equipped. This is fine and dandy, but the game does a very poor job of telegraphing just why you can’t do a thing.

One example is toward the end of the game, when I encountered skeletons that could not be defeated. They would collapse into a pile of bones, and like the red skeletons in Castlevania, they would pull back together after a few seconds. The problem with this was that there were walkways with like, twenty skeletons. And I figured I just wasn’t strong enough yet (more on that in a minute). It wasn’t until I retraced my steps, realized I went left at a fork when I should’ve gone right, and discovered an item in a chest that— you guessed it— makes the skeletons stay dead. After that it was a breeze, but I needed to find that item, without even knowing it existed. So it was a lot of trial and error before I finally decided that there was something I needed to do, or find, that would allow me to progress. Talking with certain NPC’s will give vague hints, much like Zelda II did, but finding that one specific person to give you that vague hint is almost as elusive as the item itself.

To compound that, there is no map. Sure, there’s an overworld map that will show you the smattering of locations you can visit, but it’s mainly used for fast-travel. The dungeons themselves have no map whatsoever, so a lot of the confusion in the game just comes from wondering where you’ve been, where you have to go, and what you might have missed along the way. It requires a lot of backtracking and re-tracing your footsteps, especially when you see something like a crack in a wall that you know you’ll be able to break whenever you have the appropriate item or skill, and you have to remember where the fuck that is, three or four hours later. Maybe the PS4 and Switch versions have a map included… I don’t know.

Luckily, all that aimless wandering pays off in the form of experience and leveling-up, because Adol can go from an area where he’s just absolutely wrecking shit, to an area where he’s doing very little damage to a basic enemy. It’s that moment when you’ll realize as a player that you A) need to upgrade your gear, or B) need to do some grinding. Or maybe even C) both. Adol can find or buy about five different sets of gear, and each of those items can be upgraded to level 3. Early on in the game, you’ll be able to get by with just finding the new weapons and leveling up Adol. But by the second half of the game, the gear starts to become a little more spread out and a bit better hidden, so when that bat starts to require a few more hits than it should, and all your shit is leveled up to max, and the XP slows to a trickle, you know there’s a new weapon to be acquired somewhere. You just have to find it.

I have to admit, I got about halfway through the game before I realized I was not playing the most recent iteration. Which is kind of frustrating, if I do say so. To know that there was a better version of the same game out there triggered a little bit of the FOMO. Which sucks, because I will honestly feel that way about all of these older Ys games. There’s now a precedent.

The way I realized this was annoying as shit, too. I reached a point in the story where I needed to get to the mountains. I traveled the required path, and reached a ledge that I should have been able to get onto. Adol double-jumped for all he was worth, and he could never seem to get that ONE EXTRA PIXEL higher that would allow him to get on top of the ledge. I must have tried everything. Finally, I was at my wit’s end, so I watched a Youtube video. The videos all showed Adol run up to the ledge, double-jump, and carry on like it was no big fuckin’ deal. But it WAS a big deal, because my Adol was coming up short no matter what. And I noticed something when I was watching that footage; the shop lady in Felghana had great cleavage. Now, I know that sounds horrible to say that the first thing I noticed was cleavage. But it was really impressive cleavage. And I thought to myself, “I surely would have noticed that on my game.” So I went to the shop lady, and that’s when I noticed the art was different. Then I noticed the HUD was different. I had never paid attention to the HUD because I was just watching Adol double-jump without breaking a sweat and wondering what the hell I was doing wrong. That’s when I realized I was watching Switch footage and it was “newer.” So yeah. But that said, the version I own cost like, four bucks so I couldn’t be too mad. But the FOMO was triggered regardless. My shop lady had inferior cleavage, dammit.

I mean c’mon.

Anyways, I ended up having to consult the interwebs and dig into the GOG forums. As is the case with a lot of the games on GOG, some of them just aren’t as compatible with newer hardware as we would like. Apparently, the physics or collision detection in the game is tied to the framerate, which could be thrown out of whack due to the v-sync. Now, I never use v-sync much these days anyway due to my VRR monitor, but I also have the refresh rate set to 165 MHz, or whatever it is. It’s something stupid. BUT, that was fucking with my jumping. After I locked it to 60 MHz, with v-sync kept off, Adol hopped on that ledge like he was king of the fucking mountain, and I couldn’t help but be annoyed that I wasted so much time on a technical hiccup. It also made me realize that all that platforming that I was absolutely sucking at earlier in the game was a result of the jump-timing being fucked up. All those times when he jumped short, I thought it was just me being retarded. But after I fixed the refresh rate, I didn’t have any problems after that. So if you’re reading this, and you’re playing the old GOG version, that’s why you can’t jump for shit. Or maybe you are retarded. Who knows.

In hindsight, in this exact same forum where I learned that Adol’s jumping is tied to the frame rate, I also learned that Ys I & II had the same problem. And it particularly reared its head during the final boss fight, when the final boss is flying around the room at a thousand miles an hour. Apparently he’s not supposed to move that fast, nor are his projectiles. The reason I put that game down in the first place was because of that ridiculously impossible boss fight (that might not actually be all that impossible). Will I go back to it and try to beat it? Maybe, but not today. Or tomorrow.

But I will end this with the note that I played this game on Easy difficulty. And I did that on purpose, and no, I’m not ashamed. Ys games are pretty well known for being relatively difficult, and stupid. Maybe the later games, with a more modern design, are more fair, but in my opinion the older ones are just dumb. So I played on Easy, and honestly, the difficulty was just right. I died on bosses until I was sufficiently leveled, and learned their patterns. And I had to be careful with mobs, or I could meet my end pretty quick. But it at least felt fair. As long as I paid attention and leveled up my shit, I could survive.

I enjoyed The Oath in Felghana quite a bit. I feel like with a proper dungeon map to remove some of the aimless wandering, it could be a lot better, and the modern re-release of the game probably fixes some of the framerate issues (as well as just better options overall). So if you’re looking to check this one out, you’d probably be better off going with the Switch or PS4 version. And keep notes, cuz the game don’t tell you shit.

That’s number 43 in the books. Seven away from the big 5-0.