Find it hard to believe some of the negative comments on here. Never played an Ys game before, took a risk on this and can't believe how addicted I am to it. If you like your games to be streamlined, perfectly paced with tight, fast gameplay and no unnecessary filler then I highly recommend this. The music and all round presentation are excellent too. Load times are almost non-existent even on umd.
Some of the boss fights are extremely tough. I guess that could put some people off (though it does give you an option to lower difficulty) but it's nice to see an action rpg that actually tests your skill and timing.
There are also plenty of secret areas to find if you like exploring.
Ys: The Oath in Felghana is one of the best action-RPGs out there and also one of the best remakes. The original game, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (1989), was widely considered to be the black sheep of the series, but with a great soundtrack, so what Falcom did was to remake the game by making everything better (including the soundtrack), and they did a fantastic job with that.
It's solid proof that sometimes a game doesn't have to be overly complex and innovative to be great -- if it has solid fundamentals and executes them well, you'll still have an excellent product.
For RPG fans craving a more Zelda-like adventure, Oath in Felghana is a really good bet. Just don't be a hero and shoot for Nightmare mode on your first play-through. Save your sanity and start with normal.
Oath in Felghana, like all Ys games, represents the pinnacle of the action RPG genre, sporting fast combat and great level design, all set to one of the best soundtracks in gaming history. For those of you who have only played Ys Seven, it's worth noting that Oath takes slightly different tack then Ys Seven does. Where Ys Seven sought to add a longer story and depth to the combat system, Oath in Felghana, being a remake of Ys III, instead hews close to the classic Ys formula, polishing it to a brilliant shine. Yet despite it's definitively old-school approach, it offers a large number of difficulty levels ranging for extremely easy to sadistically hard, as well as many modern perks, making it fun and accessible to the old-school gamer and the new generation alike!
Ys: The Oath in Felghana offers perfect pacing, great music, and some of the best action/RPG gameplay you can get on the PSP. Ys has always set the bar high, and Oath in Felghana takes that bar and runs with it into the stratosphere. It's a must-buy for any fan of the genre, and definitely worth taking a look at even if you're not... you just might be surprised!
Pros:
- story
- pace
- sound
Cons: - difficulity level - some boss fights
- graphics (not great, not terrible)
- chaotic fighting with mobs
I am very big fan of Ys series, and the Oath of Felghana, alltough is remastered version ov much oder game from SNES with interresting story, was for me sadly a bad experience comparing to other games from the series. The game was often very annoiyng with ridicoulusly hard bosses and even normal mobs, the chaos when you are being attacked by masses of enemies was resulting in seeing game over sign over and over again. The sound was good and it played well together with high pace of the game, the story short but interresting, loading times were almost nonexistent, but difficulty level and fighting did a very bad job for this title and maked it a lot worse as it could be.
Not sure what's so special about this game because its just a typical Japanese ARPG. I don't get all the hype but I took the plunge and its a pretty normal game. If anyone remembers Lagoon on the SNES, its kinda like that. Anyone looking to buy a used copy for about $10 less, check ebay in about a day or so.
Having played some of Xseed's other games, I didn't expect much going into this one. It turned out that that I was right not to hope for much. Ys: The Oath in Felghana is another classic example of a male-chauvenistic world. For some reason, the developers of this game think that Adol, the silent, red-haired protagonist is so sexy that women are just going to fall all over him. From a female standpoint, this is male game geekism at its best...though I'm not saying this as a compliment. I'm also looking at the huge contrast between some of these high and low scores and wondering if we've just got a huge number of Ys fans and haters having a turf battle instead of being objective. Despite this, I agree with some of the positive and negative points.
Story: The character development is for the most part pretty iffy and I hardly found any of the interactions between Adol and the supporting cast to feel that believable. This is just me, but for someone who reads a lot of books, I found this to be one of this games biggest weak points. The world is also really skewed in its perspective of both men and women. Men are all macho and women take a back seat and look like a bunch of whiny babies waiting for Adol to come to the rescue. I just don't agree with that idea that women should be made out to look like people who are incapable of helping themselves.
Music: The music is good at first, but the actual tracks themselves are too short so after hearing them repeat so many times without any variation, even these start to become annoying.
Action: The action is good **** a while. The only problem I had with the hack-and-slash part is that it offers little variety so I ended up just doing what works best. Basically the best way to beat the enemies is just go crazy on the attack button and use the wind magic if there are a lot of enemies. This works on most bosses too, but admittedly some were really hard and it made the experience not as fun. I really hated with a passion the pits I fell down and had to retrace my steps because of one little mistake. I kind of felt like all these mistakes could have been avoided if this game were on a console and I had a real controller in hand. This game doesn't feel suitable for a portable game system and is actually quite irksome in more than just a few places because of the control scheme.
Stages: They are okay in general, but nothing really noteworthy as the graphics are just kind of there instead of any really drop-dead-gorgeous landscapes like you might see in a Prince of Persia, Tales, or even a Final Fantasy game that you would want to visit again and again. The artwork is nice but it really clashes with the low resolution graphics. I was surprised to find that there is only one town in the whole game which in the end seems like it would be impossible for Redmont to even exist given the lack of people living there, let alone the Illburn Ruins or Valestein Castle. This seems really short-sighted on the game developers part and prevents the world from having that convincing touch. This criticism mainly comes from my having read and played tons of books and games. The game is also way too short. I've actually got more game time out of some free demos than I got with this one.
Replay Value: If the story was good I would say that there is replay value and while there are many difficulty levels, it doesn't change the outcome of the game so there is little if any reason to give this game another run through.
My critique of this game is that it is basically an rpg with some action elements, nothing special, nothing fancy, and is it worth buying? I would have a hard time recommending this game to anyone unless they for some reason are more interested in anime girls than real ones. I think there are many other games that will give someone a more fulfilling experience.
This is a very polarizing game for me to play. I first played this game on the SNES way back in the day and even played the remake on the Playstation 2, which in my opinion is the better version of Ys III. I think this game really shined as a side-scroller and I don't know if I like the PSP version in 3D. The analog nub does not work well with how this game is supposed to play and causes gamers to miss simple jumps that they should never miss. The voice acting gets you through the story but that's about it. This is a classic game but I don't think it does well in this generation of games. Given the play control alone, I wouldn't give this game over a 5, but I think the additions to the story really make the game more convoluted than it really should be so I am deducting a point for that too. The soundtrack is pretty much the same as what I have heardin past Ys III versions so I'm not going to add any points for that either. This is a so-so game on the PSP and I really anticipated more. Good thing I didn't buy the LE.