Ys: the Unbalanced Omens – Ys Chronicles 1 Review

I've been gaming since the early 80's. Between arcades, consoles, handhelds, portables, PC and mobile platforms, I've played (played NOT owned) over 1,500 titles. This port of this classic title is an extremely solid game, which falls apart at the very end. The damning issue stems from a lack of gameplay balancing. More specifically, the final boss is unbeatable. The playing field is 25% smaller than the areas where you fight the other bosses. Every time you land a blow on Dark Facht, a small portion of the field falls away. If you don't move fast enough after scoring a hit, you fall through that hole and die. At any rate, you end up reducing the playable area to one that barely leaves enough room to be maneuvered around. As this is happening, Dark Facht's zipping around the entirety of the screen like a ping pong ball. This includes the border areas you can't reach. While trying to mount an offense, you're also being assailed by multiple, simultaneous fireballs that explode in all eight directions. So you're constantly taking damage. You don't have the option of using any restorative items. Any status buffs your equipment gives you are nullified. To be fair, that's how it is with all the boss encounters here. However, that doesn't mean it's fair or even sensible. I've come across bosses like this before, in other games. The only way to beat them is with a cheat. But, when you do that, it ends up crashing/freezing the game as you weren't supposed to be able to beat them. I don't think that's the case here. The devs desperately need to roll up their sleeves and actually do some gameplay balancing to alleviate this issue.
Review by Detroitalan01 on Ys Chronicles 1.