Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana, originally released in 2005 (under Ys: The Oath in Felghana), is a remake of the franchise’s third entry Ys III: Wanderers from Ys from way back in 1989. Featuring the early workings of real-time Action RPG combat (a genre traditionally turn-based in the ’80s) that made strides at the time, this port is a welcome venture for newcomers like me who want to experience a bit of history. What it is not, however, is an all-that valuable port for people over-familiar with the original game. Like many early RPG experiences, what you see in Felghana is what you get.

Though more or less every Ys game is standalone, staples from other entries are again here in Oath in Felghana. For one, you control series regular Adol Christin, a largely voiceless red-haired everyday hero. By your side is the blue-haired lovable brute known as Dogi. The pair venture to Felghana, the town where the latter of the two grew up. Coming in contact with Dogi’s childhood friends and the locals, all is well with the world again, until monsters start creeping about the seaside town. Then a plot of mysterious dark forces and a quaint village in danger ensues. The world’s equivalent of a God shows up. Y’know, typical early JRPG affairs.

While I love sprawling RPGs that take dozens upon dozens of hours to complete, I’ve come to appreciate and pine more and more for similar adventures with smaller scopes. Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana is exactly this. There’s little levelling fuss other than watching defence, health, and the like go up when levelling up and upgrading gear. The story is just the right amount of involvement as cutscenes never linger and only what’s needed is there. It made me forgive what little visual or quality-of-life upgrades there are because everything is so damn neat. Not overstaying welcome is a lost art in modern RPGs. Even the last mainline game Ys X: Nordics is guilty of this with how much it is trying at once. Oath in Felghana gets in, tells you a simple but charming bite-sized story and gets out. This meant that by the end of my 12 (!) hour playtime, I got to walk away fondly.

What also helps Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana feels lightning-fast in pace is the Action RPG combat. Save boss encounters, Adol and all the nasty ghouls, goblins and other dastardly monsters are tiny, chibi-like figures on your screen. This makes the hack-and-slash combat style relatively simple and something that’ll never make you sweat all that much. Everyone is within easy reach, no one enemy is notably smarter than you nor hard to take down and there are no complex combos or attack patterns that Adol has that you need to memorise. Enemies always take no more than a few seconds to go down too. Once you combine all of this with the fact the game has a Turbo mode that makes everything go up to 2x as fast and suddenly you can floor it through the entire game, making tidy work of dungeons in no time.

I can’t emphasise enough how exciting and varied these dungeons are. Oath in Felghana does a lot with the little environments, maps and screentime it has. Sequences will have you frequently jumping between 3D and 2D perspectives all in the hunt for a chest with a key item or little goody. There’s platforming, puzzle solving, and what feels like waves upon waves of enemies. Maps and dungeons are varied by biome types and just general placement in the world. Environments that make you go deeper underground such as mines stress more verticality as you’ll be channelling through tunnels or platforming over broken rail tracks. There is never a dull moment.

Dungeons and combat slowly do get more involved and demanding the further in you get. This is thanks to the spell-casting abilities you gradually unlock. As you’d probably expect, these are based on the elements Earth, Wind and Fire. Using fireball projectiles is not only a good means of making a dent in enemy defences but is in dungeon puzzles where you have to, say, light x amount of torches to unlock a door. The wind ability is a whirlwind spin that is handy for both clearing out foes bunched around you and also clearing longer jump gaps in platforming, extending your airtime. Lastly, the Earth ability sees Adol performing a dash which is handy for quickly bumping foes out of the way but also gives them a brief immunity while it is being performed. You’d be forgiven for not finding it all that useful, but it’s crucial to boss fights where a million AoEs, lasers and other projectiles are being rained down upon you all at once. Trust me when I say that a last-minute dash is everything.

Most demanding but exciting throughout all of Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana are the boss encounters, an exciting feast requiring fast-paced precision and inputs that make the player sweat. Depending on the boss, gimmicks come with fights that have you on the edge of your toes at all times; one encounter with a dragon serpent-type thing had a move that would launch you into the air and transport you to freefall on a 2D plane. When this sequence occurs, Adol’s whirlwind spin must be used to slow the fall speed and trepidatiously navigate around obstacles to minimise damage on your descent. Then comes the final few bosses where so much is happening on screen you scarcely have a moment to think. It’s MMO levels of positional requiring, where you’re not just say, avoiding one small circle Area of Effect attack but threading the gap and noting there’s only one spot you can stand at a given time in an arena without dying.

So I’ve spent this long gushing about Ys Memoire: Oath in Felghana. What exactly is wrong with it? Not a lot, but it hardly feels like a worthwhile port if you’re a loyal fan with a PSP or PC copy that has been available for years now. The touted new voice-acted Adol lines are incredibly few and far between as he’s largely a silent protagonist. There’s also the ability to swap between new and old character sprites for the visual novel-style dialogue and while the more modern ones look cleaner, something is charming about the jagged-lined and more rough originals. Longtime fans, you’re simply not getting all that different or better an experience than you already have.

Also with some issues are the occasional tedious side quest such as being tasked with escorting civilians with the tiniest slither of health through waves of enemies. It might already be hard as is for some newcomers with the somewhat dated and crunchy graphics to get into the game as is, but missions like these are of no help. Hell, with a few Legend of Heroes games also under my belt, I’ve certainly noticed side quests aren’t necessarily Nihon Falcom’s strong suit.