EES

The Ys series comprises a number of JRPGs with interesting combat and memorable boss fights. Ys: Origins and Ys: The Oath in Felghana have both found their way onto my backlog, but before I play either I've decided to play Ys: Books I & II on my Wii's VirtualWare.

Books I & II is a top-down JRPGs with an average story and very basic gameplay. You're the swordsman Adol who is gathering the Books of Ys which will prevent the destruction of Esteria, according to a fortuneteller who has seen the tragedy in her crystal ball. The fortuneteller turned doomsday prophet, Sara, doesn't let you begin your journey until you get yourself a shield, armor, and a sword. Unfortunately, you only have enough gold to afford two of the three items from the local shops and are forced to venture from the city to gather more.

Once in the field and after fumbling around with the controller a bit, it becomes apparent that there's no attack button in Books 1 & 2. The only way to fight the rogues and knaves outside the city walls is the run straight into them. Combat is not as simple as it sounds though, as enemies push back and will damage you if you are standing still or hit at certain angles.

As you kill enemies you level up, raising your Hit Points and damage, and receive gold, which you can use to buy items and upgrade your weapons. Even so, clearing enemies becomes dull bouts of poking, backing off, and poking again until you outlevel enemies by enough of a margin to one-shot them. Luckily, the game is paced pretty well and there isn't too much of this sort of fighting between boss fights.

So far, boss fights are what keep me playing this game, and they have always been my favorite part of video games.  They force the player to use their problem solving and technical skills in order to defeat an enemy of equal, or even greater, power. These strange combinations of logic puzzles and obstacle courses known as "bosses" come in wide variety of types. In Ys: Books I & II, bosses are more basic than most (yet, still more complex than the quick time events which pass as "bosses" in a number of modern day games), but they manage to have a lot of charm while providing straightforward examples of boss archetypes still used today.

The first boss is a Spooky Ghost Man who isn't as much of a danger as the erratic rows of fire which he disappears and reappears between. His is a boss fight which revolves entirely around "keeping out of the fire" while getting hits in whenever you can. It's simple enough, but it's important to time your hits right as his vulnerability time is quite short before he vanishes and you may very well end up singed without scratching him at all.

Boss two guards the first book of Ys an is a giant centipede. Like most worm-like bosses, the centipede's weakness is its hindquarters. Trying to face it head on will only result in damage, but keeping behind the beast is easy enough.

Book Ys is protected by the third and last boss I've faced so far: some weird bat demon thing. He spends most of the fight separated into a number of bats who are fast-moving, numerous, and damage you on hit. He's only vulnerable when the bats group back together, but positioning is important as it's easy to get damaged by him yourself while attacking him.

The strange combat system and poorly defined hitboxes made this boss more trouble than I'd like to have had with him, but I was able to defeat him in the end.

Next is the Tower of Darm, also known as "The Devil's Tower." Hopefully more fun and interesting boss fights await within. I'll leave you with Ys: Books I & II's boss music, which is pretty rockin, much like the music in many other TurboGrafx games (Lords of Thunder comes to mind).