Ys: Memories of Celceta (English) · Test

Nihon Falcom: Ys and The Legend of Heroes

There’s no doubt that Nihon Falcom is a developer that every JRPG Fan should at least know of. Founded in 1981 it’s another one of the oldest existing development houses with nearly 4 decades of history. But if you talk about Nihon Falcom, you have to talk about their two Marquee IPs: Ys and The Legend of Heroes.

The latter is a classic turn-based RPG and currently is running the 4 part story called Trails of Cold Steel that is coming to a close soon. If you love a world that is rich in lore, characters, Final Fantasy X-Esque Gameplay, and best in class User Experience then you should at least try the first arc of Trails of Cold Steel with 1 and 2 that are published by Marvelous.

The very same Publisher that brought us to today’s topic: The PS4 Remaster of Ys: Memories of Celceta.

Keep in mind that this was originally a PSVita game and therefore had to work against many different constraints of a handheld. Nevertheless, Ys: Memories of Celceta is known to be one of the crown jewels of the PSVita. PS4 owners are now able to experience it too in blazing high and responsive 60 FPS!

But is it as good as the rumors say?

About Ys: The story of the Adventurer Adol

The Ys series is a story with a long history that spans over 3 decades and is about the Protagonist and Adventurer Adol Christin who travels the World. As Adol has a character fitting of a Hero, he’s involved in many quests in saving the world while meeting new friends each time.

A Ys Side Story: Memories of Celceta

The story is set after Ys 2 but isn’t part of the main story. It starts with a completely exhausted Adol walking around in the city of Casnan. Meanwhile, you get to catch some talks about the current state of the region that is at war. Not long after, he falls unconscious and gets saved by the local Inn.

Though Adol is saved, there’s a big problem coming up. He got a complete Amnesia! Soon afterward a guy called Duren tries to get all chummy with him. It doesn’t take long before both of them team up to take on the big mission of discovering and mapping the forest of Celceta.

Along with the story you get to meet natives of the different regions of Celceta who all have vastly different cultures. Some live on a big Tree while another lives at the sea and in each of them you’ll find new team members. There’s more to it than just a simple Adventure as you soon get to find out that villains are going around to execute their evil deeds. What could they be planning? Who are they? What happened to Adol and his memories? There are many questions to be answered and it’s up to you to find them.

It’s important to note that the story and characters are one of the weaker links of the chain. The story itself is solid but nothing elaborate. This is the same case for the characters but the issue lies in their lack of depth. All of them are rather one dimensional with a specific characteristic. While this can be attributed to the constraints of the platform, it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s lacking in this regard.

The same thing applies to the villains too. There’s simply not enough information to get invested in them, except seeing them doing bad things.

There are a few interesting attempts but that’s pretty much all it amounts to.

Gameplay & Controls

This is it shines. The Action RPG gameplay is comparable to Final Fantasy VII Remake or maybe Trials of Mana. Full realtime battles that require you to plan and adapt on the fly to survive. There are indeed only a few buttons in use when it comes to combat but there are enough mechanics to let you conjure up a storm and master boss encounters.

In Nihon Falcom tradition there are 4 difficulty levels to choose from and you can even reduce it if you feel overwhelmed in the options. The gameplay package can be categorized into 3 essential parts: Adventure, Combat, and Equipment.

This review is based on the difficulty level of Normal. For reference, I finished it in about 20 hours without dying once but there were moments where I was chugging a lot of potions near the end against some bosses.

The Adventuring

Your mission is to discover and map Celceta and with each big milestone, you can go back to the starting city Casnan to cash out rewards. Along the way, you will find new people that join your team at each of the cities because of issues that go beyond their home. Additionally, each city has its specialty. Some can use beast materials to reinforce equipment, another can craft accessories, etc.

The journey is mostly a linear one but has some Sub Quests to give you some extra motivation to backtrack, fight, or explore optional areas. There are also rare cases of puzzles but nothing substantial.

The Map

Two maps are available at any time. A local one and the other is the full map of Celceta. The latter even gives you the % of how much you have explored, mapped, materials you can get, missed treasure boxes, and most of your current targets.

The local one is on the other hand very weird because you can control the height with the right stick and everything that is not at the set height will be blended dark. I have no idea what reason this design decision has but it’s one of the worse kinds of maps.

Memories and Character Unique Actions (Triangle)

Adol can find Memory Orbs at specific places that either give you more of Adol's childhood or the lost memories of his earlier adventure to Celceta. Each of them will give you a permanent stat increase.

Duren can take care of locked chests and other characters will help you to dispose of obstacles to open up new areas.

Artifacts

Akin to games like Zelda or Metroidvania games you get Artifacts that help you access prior inaccessible areas just like characters and their unique abilities.

Some artifacts are just key functions, a few others are there to support you in adventuring or a very rare case both.

Health Points, Tents, Monuments (Warp Points) and Saving

In some way, you have plenty of HP but against some stronger enemies, you’ll become a glass cannon. HP recovery items are costly items that you should save for the direst situations. The good news is that you can recover HP by just simply staying still outside of dungeons. Just make sure there are no enemies around to stop it.

Tents have the special function to restore HP, EXTRA Gauge, mark adjacent Memory Orbs, and even give you a piece of memory back.

The most important pieces are the Monuments. They not only fully heal you but are also warp points. In the beginning, you can only warp between Monuments of the same colors. In the latter half, you will be able to warp to any of your choices.

Last but not least, you can save everywhere!

Combat

This is probably one of the greatest strengths of the game. Aside from normal Attacks, there are a few mechanics to make it much more engaging and interesting. Including a good variety of characters with their palette of attacks and skills.

Important Advice! The targeting only works if you let go of the direction. This is especially important for combos and it’s the only way to juggle enemies in the air.

Combat Controls (Standard Controls)

• Action/Attack (Square): Standard attack that turns into an attack string with multiple presses.
• Guard (Triangle): Your character goes into defense for a short period and reduces the damage of incoming attacks.
• Evade (X): Dash into a direction. Has seemingly no invincibility but is fast enough to dodge attacks. It can also be used to avoid knockdowns with the correct timing. It’s also the fastest way of moving.
• Switch (Circle): Change to the next character in the party.

Advanced Controls/Mechanics

• Charge Attack: Hold your attack and your character will automatically charge up. A successful charge attack recovers 20 SP.
• Flash Guard: Guard just before the attack hits and you will fully negate the damage, get a charged attack, SP, and EXTRA Gauge. Additionally, your attacks will be guaranteed critical hits for a short time.
• Flash Move: Dodge right before the attack hits and your team turns invincible and slows down time for your enemies.

Team and AI

The active team consists of 3 characters with one of them being actively controlled by you. Your AI partners have two modes: Offense and Evading.

Offense lets them attack. They will also use their Skills in tandem with you, for free. The trade-off is that it opens them up for taking damage.

Evading puts them in defense that makes them reliably dodge all attacks so if you prefer a battery style (have partners at full health as reserve) of play you’ll be using this mode most of the time.

Depending on what you’re facing you can switch between these two modes to optimize your strategy.

There are two types of team bonuses: Increased chance of getting rare drops or increased damage. Having two characters with the same type of attack will get you the latter.

3 Attack Types: Slash, Strike and Pierce

This is the most likely reason why you can have up to 3 characters in your team because each character represents one type of attack. Adol Slashes, Duran Strikes, and later on you will meet Pierce Type characters. Some enemies have an advantage/disadvantage against a certain type of Attack. Not sure about it? Use the L3 to show the information!

These special enemies will take increased damage against one specific attack type while having an extremely buffed defense against the others.

Attack Bonuses

• Aerial Combo: Attack the enemy after sending them into the air. This will give you extra damage, Gold, SP, and LP.
• Skill Finish: Defeat an enemy with a Skill and you get some of your SP back and small HP drops.
• Excellent Kill: Defeat the enemy with the correct Attack Type and you get more gold and maybe rare item drops.

Skills (R1 + Square, Triangle, Circle or X)

These are special actions that require SP (10, 20, or 40). You stock the SP Gauge up to 100. Most of the time they are special attacks though there are exceptions that offer stat buffs/tradeoffs.

You automatically gain new Skills by fighting and at some point, they will just appear. As you only have a limited amount of slots for Skills, you’ll be forced to decide on which skills to use. All skills can level up by frequent usage and max out at 3. They come with additional effects so it’s worth it.

All Skills can be canceled into each other for some devastating combos.

Each Skill is measured in 4 categories:

• Power: Shows the damage level.
• Stun: Shows the amount of stun it deals. More about it later.
• Range: Shows the range of your skill.
• Area: Shows the range of your attack area.

EXTRA (R1+L1 or optional L1)

Skills and Flash Guard will charge up your EXTRA Gauge. As soon as it’s full you can use your character-specific EXTRA Attack. You can find an accessory that changes it to an alternative version.

These EXTRA Attacks will completely freeze your enemy and leaves them open for some easy pummeling by your Teammates.

Stun

One oft he hidden mechanics when fighting against grunts. Hit them often enough to turn them into the stunned state. Some enemies have very strong defense until they are stunned. Normal mooks don’t have stun because they will die before reaching stun anyway.

Then some high-level special enemies have a lot of HP and are usually higher level than you since they can take a lot of damage they are one of the few enemies that are susceptible to stun but you have to pummel them without rest to reach it.

Boss Fights

All of them are quite different from each other and thus require a different type of strategy. Unlike grunts, all Bosses have a Stun Gauge but not all will use it. Some just need to be pummeled to reach Stun and reduce their defense by a lot. Others have special attacks that are the only way to stun them. There’s some more but let’s not spoil it.

In general, just keep watching them and create a plan of attack. It should be possible to defeat the bosses unscathed once you know how to fight them in your sleep.

Equipment

The last part of the puzzle is Equipment and Customization. They are something akin to a modifier when it comes to combat and helps you carve your way through your enemies and endgame content. At some point, it’s recommended to start customizing your weapons as it makes a huge difference. Once you get a taste of it, you’ll be looking forward to keeping it going.

Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Your weapons become close to obsolete due to the low damage output and you’ll be forced to spend a lot of cash buying new weapons. You can skip buying at a city at most.

Gold

Against all expectations, gold is the most important resource due to it being the basic requirement for nearly everything. Buy potions? You might not have enough gold to buy equipment because of that! If there’s one single thing you don’t have enough, it’s going to be gold. Reporting the mapping milestones can sometimes be a lifesaver when you’re running out of it.

Weapons, Armors, and Customization

Improve your Armors and Weapons at the local smith! This isn’t only about making your weapons do more damage or increasing the defense. Make no mistake. This is an endeavor that will cost you Gold and Materials you gained from enemy drops.

You can add HP Drain, Critical Hit Rate, and various negative status inflictions to your weapon. Imagine putting grunts on Freeze, Poison, Paralysis and Burn just by striking them while getting HP back. It is possible!

Armors can give you HP Regeneration, Speed Buff, and faster recovery from debuffs.

Debuffs don’t work on Bosses so you’ll have to decide on how you want to augment your offensive power with your limited resources. You can’t spend too much on an early weapon too because they will become obsolete.

Accessories

Every character can equip up to 2 accessories. The easiest one to use is those that prevent specific debuffs like paralysis. Then others help you increase EXP or master skills more quickly.

The final type of accessory is those that improve your combat capabilities like increasing your SP regeneration or even changing your EXTRA Attack.

New Game+ and Time Attack

To get the full 100% you’ll need to play the campaign at least twice but that’s where the New Game+ comes in. You get to keep the majority of your gains and experience the store anew.

If you like some extra challenge or the boss battles you can fight them directly in the Time Attack Mode that comes with the New Game+. You can fight single battles or go through a complete gauntlet with Boss Rush.

Gameplay Impression

The exploration is comparable to a linear experience with set paths, sometimes with a choice which to tackle first. There are only a few optional areas. Though it’s a relatively small map, you can find a good variety of different cultures in it and it also helps that they all have their specific monster inhabitants without any palette swap fillers.

Sub Quests will also help you to find new things but backtracking will still be a part of it.

When you combine the combat and equipment mechanics you get a very fast-paced action game with simple but fun customization. While it’s not an action game, it offers a lot to not only make you feel strong but also gives you advanced tools, albeit riskier, to feel like a boss when you finally master their usage.

Another thing worth mention is the fast and easy recovery of SP. In most games, you will always feel heavy restrictions when it comes to special moves. Be it cooldowns or limitation of resources like MP. This game has none of that. By using things like accessories, charge attacks, skill finishers you will rarely feel constrained.

The augmentation of your Weapons will play into the usage of your skills. Imagine you have a weapon with a low debuff proc rate. There are two options to improve it. You can either use your resources to upgrade it or you simply increase your attack rate by utilizing multi-hitting skills.

On a personal note, I have no qualms saying that this game’s combat punches above average when it comes to the Action RPG genre. It is simple to play but has enough depth to keep things entertaining and leaves you enough room to optimize your strategy on the fly. That’s not the only thing, the combat is very responsive and well-paced with good cancel options to keep it fast with very little restrictions.

While it doesn’t have all the fancy graphics of Final Fantasy VII Remake, I found myself preferring the combat in this by a wide margin.

Grafik & Sound

Since it was originally a PSVita game, you’ll have to keep your expectations in check. The visuals are probably comparable to a PS3 game but runs at responsive 60 FPS. Don’t look down on the latter, fighting games must have 60 FPS and the simple reason for it is responsiveness and it’s no different in this case.

The only place that dips into really low numbers is the Comodo Village but I’m 100% sure that it’s more of a bug/glitch and as no battles are happening there, it is pretty much negligible.

Character illustrations are upgraded and look fine.

If Trails of Cold Steel was any indication of Nihon Falcom’s musical prowess, then this cements it further as the future proves the past. The soundtrack is great with a tinge of nostalgia that reminds you of PS2 times that came with unique tunes that get you pumping.

The PS4 Remaster also gives you the never-before option of using the Japanese dub or the classic localized English one. I don’t think there’s a lot of dubbed talking but it’s a very nice option to have.

Fazit

While Ys: Memories of Celceta has is merely ok in the story and character department, it does a great job with its gameplay. The combat is better than the majority of Action RPGs that I’ve played. The visual upgrades certainly did no miracles but the 60 FPS is very welcome and makes it without a doubt the superior version due to the fast-paced action.

So did it deserve it being called one of the best games in PS Vita space? I’ll give it a resounding yes!

Considering the modest £24.99 price tag, it’s a very easy recommendation. Fans of Action RPGs should give it a shot and it’s also a very good entry point into the Ys Saga.

Wertung

9.0 Sehr gut

Kaufempfehlung

90% Kaufempfehlung

90%Absoluter Pflichtkauf