This game is a-maze-ing.

[Metric Guard]

Seriously, why is every dungeon in Ys II a friggin maze? Maybe it's because I hate excessive backtracking, but they seem to be the only difficult part about Ys II outside of Nightmare difficulty. Anyone else feel the same?

[almost_smart]

Only the final area (was it entitled Solomon Shrine?) had some navigatory drawbacks at first.
It has been some time but i don't recall any area where the path was rather hard to find or to remember.

It isn't an issue of backtracking since that isn't that much needed.
Different people have different senss of orientation. Maybe the environment just didn't suit yours.
But that is just a guess of mine. Let's see what other people have to add to this topic.

[Korzic]

You think this is bad, you should play a Korean version of Ys II, known as Ys II Special. That game is pretty much guaranteed to have you hunt down maps on the internet at some point or another. =p

But seriously, I agree that it can be a bit confusing, but the areas honestly aren't all that big, so it's not too much of an issue. Especially when you take into account the length of the game. And maybe it's just my speedrunning experience talking, but repeat playthroughs help a ton in remembering where things are.

[Berahlen]

Man, I hate to see how you'd react to the really old-timey RPGs like Phantasy Star.

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by Waypoint:

Man, I hate to see how you'd react to the really old-timey RPGs like Phantasy Star.

I remember playing Phantasy Star II on some sort of Genesis compilation for the X360, and I gotta say... it was really boring to be honest. I didn't have much trouble finding out what to do, but I stopped playing around 3 1/2 hours in because of sheer boredom. I perfer the later Phantasy Star games on the Genesis, they were much, much better in my opinion.

[Mr. Pickles]

This is the reason I liked Ys I a lot more than II. I had me wanting more, II had me glad it was over.

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by ________:

Stop whining

I'm not whining. Ys I & II are actually within my top 10 favorite adventure games ever, it's just that when I replayed Ys II recently, I realized how mazey and confusing every dungeon is.

[Milien]

Originally posted by ________:

Stop whining

Hey You, toughie. Shut up unless You've got something interesting to add.
Leave and be a grump somwhere else. But befure doing that, write down your useful advices on paper, open UrAnus and put the letter there.

I'm really tired of organics like You.


Back to the topic - yes, I've also got silmiar feeling about the game. As it was mentioned above, Solomon Shrine would be the most confusing location. Other areas aren't that hard to explore (considering the speed of travelling).
Also, mazes and labirynths are rather common things in this genre, as these succesfully adds more game's lenght. On the other hand not all of them are well designed (Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain makes it better, but it's a younger title).

[ZuruXu]

I agree that Solomon Shrine is the only one that made me sigh in frustration. Finding the silver pendant was a nightmare for me. I'm actually playing it my first time and on nightmare so I find it fitting l. Also, I feel like nightmare mode on these versions was the difficulty these games had on SNES.

[Korzic]

Well, the SFC games were hard mostly because they were poorly designed (bad hit detection in Ys III, enemies moving too fast in Ys IV, making it hard to attack them off-center). With these versions of Ys I & II, the difficulty actually feels fair (though people love to grumble about certain Ys I bosses =p).

[petran79]

I prefered Ys I since it had the right amount of length and difficulty. Character introduction was much better as well

Ys II while much larger did not have as interesting or well developed characters.
I had abandoned it for months and only recently decided to finish it, almost 2.5 years after finishing Ys I.

I liked what the Ys II anime tried to do to Lilia, giving her demon blood and offering her as sacrifice. I liked the anime Keith better too. Anime had a much better story though it did not cover much of the game events as opposed to Ys I anime.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by petran79:

I prefered Ys I since it had the right amount of length and difficulty. Character introduction was much better as well

Ys II while much larger did not have as interesting or well developed characters.
I had abandoned it for months and only recently decided to finish it, almost 2.5 years after finishing Ys I.

I liked what the Ys II anime tried to do to Lilia, giving her demon blood and offering her as sacrifice. I liked the anime Keith better too. Anime had a much better story though it did not cover much of the game events as opposed to Ys I anime.

I finished the Ys anime series (both of them), then Ys I, and I started Ys II but haven't gotten that far in it yet.

The anime series definitely does do a good job of storytelling, even it does kinda mess with some of the plot events.

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by petran79:

I prefered Ys I since it had the right amount of length and difficulty.

I agree with you about the length, but I disagree about the difficulty. The normal monster difficulty scaling was decent, but the difficulty of the bosses is all over the place. The first boss is pretty damn tough the first time around, the second boss is so stupidly easy you just run around in a circle to win, the third boss is so unbelievably cheap it isn't funny, and so on.

Originally posted by petran79:

Ys II while much larger did not have as interesting or well developed characters.

I agree.

Originally posted by petran79:

I liked what the Ys II anime tried to do to Lilia, giving her demon blood and offering her as sacrifice. I liked the anime Keith better too. Anime had a much better story though it did not cover much of the game events as opposed to Ys I anime.

There's a Ys anime???

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Yes; 4 episodes covering Ys 1 and 7 episodes covering Ys 2. It's sometimes known as Ancient Books of Ys.

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by Quint the Robot Girl (new mouse):

Yes; 4 episodes covering Ys 1 and 7 episodes covering Ys 2. It's sometimes known as Ancient Books of Ys.

Niiiice. Dunno if it's gonna be really good, decent, or mediocre, but I'll still check it out sometime.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Mute_Guardian7:

Originally posted by Quint the Robot Girl (new mouse):

Yes; 4 episodes covering Ys 1 and 7 episodes covering Ys 2. It's sometimes known as Ancient Books of Ys.

Niiiice. Dunno if it's gonna be really good, decent, or mediocre, but I'll still check it out sometime.

It's solid storytelling, music, and voice acting (at least the English dub is good, since that's what I saw), though it's very "90s anime" in its art style and animation. It also changes the storylines a bit...though the advantage is that if you haven't played the games, some things will still be a surprise to you.