dark_empress

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.