Ys III: Wanderers From Ys (TurboGrafx-CD) Playthrough
173A playthrough of NEC's 1991 action role-playing game for the TurboGrafx-CD, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys.
Wanderers from Ys, originally released by Falcom for NEC PC-88/98 computers in 1989, saw its first official release in English with the debut of this TurboGrafx-CD port in late 1991. Localized ports on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo appeared the following year. It also received a remake, Ys: The Oath in Felghana, which was first released in English in 2010 for the PSP.
Ys III is the direct sequel to Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished: The Final Chapter, a game that had only been released in the west as part of Ys Books I & II (https://youtu.be/urALq21pEu0), a 1990 TurboCD-exclusive that featured enhanced remakes of the first two games in the series. The first game, Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, was released in English as a stand-alone title in 1989 for Dos, the Apple IIGS, and the Sega Master System (https://youtu.be/P6FucUaA9xc).
Despite being part of the same series, Wanderers from Ys bears little resemblence to the first two games. While I and II are both viewed from a 3/4 top-down perspective and employ a "bump combat" system similar to Hydlide's, Ys III is a side-scrolling action-platformer à la Zelda 2 or Faxanadu.
Our hero is Adol Christin, an adventurer renowned equally for his fire engine-red hair and his skill with a blade. Wanderers from Ys begins as Adol and his buddy Dogi, a fabled crusher of walls, arrive in Dogi's hometown of Redmont. It's immediately apparent to the duo that something fishy lies at the root of Redmont's recent hardships, so Adol decides to help these people the only way he knows how: by violently impaling anything that moves on his sword. Real salt of the earth, that Adol is.
The general flow of the game is similar to Ys I and II's. You'll typically receive a quest, slaughter guys for some experience and gold, upgrade your equipment, kill a big boss, and return to inform the quest giver of your success. Once that's all done, you'll inevitably stumble across someone else who can't do for themselves and the cycle will begin anew.
The corny voice acting and the melodrama do a great job at keeping the story moving along at a brisk pace, and with how short the game is, it never really gets the chance to bore you. Like in any pseudo-RPG of its time, grinding is a necessity, but it goes quickly. I haven't edited anything out of the footage, so as you can see, once you know it, the game can be comfortably cleared in under three hours.
Ys III's graphics are pretty good, overall. The sprite work is great and the backgrounds feature a lot of nice detail, though that stuttery faux-parallax effect can be really rough on the eyes until you get used to it. The cutscenes are the real visual highlight. There are only two of them, but they look fantastic for a 1991 console game.
But in my opinion, the best part of the entire game is the soundtrack. Ryo Yonemitsu's redbook arrangements of the PC88 version's tunes are loaded with more wailing guitars, 80s synth leads, and power drumkit patches than you could ever hope to shake a stick at. The music is all incredibly memorable, and you'll be forever spoiled for music in other video games after hearing it.
(Then again, the same thing could be said for many games in the Ys series...)
The production values boost the TurboGrafx-CD version to the top of the pile o' ports, but the Genesis and X68000 versions were also excellent. The less said about the SNES game, the better.
While Ys III: Wanderers From Ys hasn't ever really been anything more than a slightly above-average ARPG, it is a game that to me feels like so much more than the sum of its parts. I've always loved it.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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