Adorkable: Despite Adol’s status as a Heroic Mime, many fans found many traits of his to be very endearing. A lot of his dialogue choices range from super sweet to hilariously snarky, he’s constantly polite to everyone he meets and he gets very ecstatic in finding undiscovered ruins like a child in a candy shop.
Broken Base: XSEED Games is not the publisher for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, but rather NIS America, who acquired exclusive publishing rights for the game. Unfortunately, the latter company hasn't exactly had the best track record when it comes to localizationnote Game Breaking Bugs, incorrect translations, poor misuse of Woolseyism, among others, especially when XSEED Games stayed consistent for every Ys installment ever since the start of their partnership with Falcom. While many fans were wary of NIS America's approach to this franchise (particularly with Falcom backing their proposal to localizingYs VIII), others were willing to give them a chance, seeing as this was their first foray into Ys. Discussions continued when NIS America withheld the launch of the PC version of Ys VIII by delaying it indefinitely a day before launch due to the publisher's concerns the game wasn't fully optimized for the platform. Seven months later following additional delays, the PC port was finally released, albeit not entirely to standard.
Cargo Ship: Expect fans to post that Adol's true love interest to be either ships sinking or adventure. Dogi also has one with walls.
Cliché Storm: The plots for each installment often face accusations of this. When the franchise was new, the accusations didn't have as much teeth (since the entire medium, let alone the genre, was still in its infancy), but most people agree it slowly got less predictable with Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand and Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, whereas the older games suffer from it too much. As for Ys SEVEN, much like the game-play is significantly changed up from its predecessors, the story deliberately sets up an apparently cliche experience, only to turn player expectations completely on their ear on just about every front, such as The Reveal that friendly Non Player Characters who were deemed allies are actually in cahoots with the Big Bad and deconstructing tropes regarding The Chosen One, the latter of which is also turned on its head in Ys VIII.
Common Knowledge: A common fan in-joke (one perpetuated by Falcom themselves) is that any ships Adol boards will always sink. In reality, he only got shipwrecked a total of two times (in the first and eighth games to be specific), while in the sixth game, he simply got thrown overboard. Other games have him come on the ship with him and said ship being intact, not having him on a ship (like arriving to a place on foot) or having a rafting accident than an outright ship accident.
"Flash Guard" and "Flash Move" - successfully blocking just as an enemy attack hits and the former activates, wherein all damage is negated, and Critical Hits are guaranteed for a period of time; similarly, the latter triggers upon dodging at the right moment before an enemy attack lands, slowing down all enemy movement for a duration, just like "Witch Time" from Bayonetta. Combined with accessories in certain games that either restore Hit Points when Flash Guard occurs or lengthen the time of Flash Move slowing down enemies, alongside players being able to pull off both mechanics with ease after practice, it's possible to not get hit in a play-through at all, nor is the level of difficulty a concern anymore.
In Memories of Celceta and Lacrimosa of Dana, the player can use items at any time in battle, including Extra Skill animations. If a STR buffing item is used right before the first hit of the Extra Skill (and preferably with Flash Guard effects), it's possible to get a lot more damage out of the Extra Skill.
Genius Bonus: The Roos "speak" using runes - one might even call it a "Roonic" languagenote One may notice that these are runes similar to those used in the Ultima series. While the Roos make silly quotes in Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter, they actually say things relevant to the plot in Ys: Origin. In fact, this is a substitution cipher where each rune replaces a specific Latin letter.
While the Ys franchise has always been well respected and popular in its home country, Falcom's financial earnings consistently show the games sell more in North America, whereas the Japanese market prefer the Kiseki Series, though there are certainly fans of both (see Friendly Fandoms). To English-speaking players, Ys is the more popular title from the company due to its obscurity and infrequent release schedule with their older works.
The franchise is also very popular in China, and it helps that the series originated on PC, which is far more popular than consoles in the country. In particular, Seven and Celceta received Chinese PC localizations years before the rest of the world.
Adol Christin - HE EATS GODS FOR BREAKFASTnote Adol consistently defeats each game's Big Bad with little to no difficulty, something others from the past had trouble doing. Bear in mind he's only a simple swordsman who cannot use natural magic (except via rings, swords or wands), yet he's so skilled with a sword it's enough that ancient demons and dark gods cannot thoroughly trounce him. Suffice to say, Adol has an effortless, yet extensive laundry list of slaying what's conventionally unbeatable In-Universe (of note, he's still in his mid-20's as of Ys IX)
Because of their Heterosexual Life-Partner status, expect Dogi to be the one chosen to win any argument on "who Adol should be paired up with", even if Dogi is not a selectable option.
Adol's propensity for being shipwrecked has been the source of many jokes both within the fandom and eventually the series itself. When Ys X: Nordics was announced with its focus on seafaring, the jokes pretty much wrote themselves.
Most Wonderful Sound: The sound that bosses make as they're defeated and dissolve away in the early games (and kept in the remakes of Ys I and Ys II), especially if it's That One Boss.
The opening of the 3rdepisode of the OVA adaption of Ys II opens with a disturbing flashback of Keith Fact's transformation into a demon by Dares after he (unknowingly) killed his sister and his saving Lilia from death when she was young]]. With its ominous music, a creepy blur effect, and the Body Horror involved (his skin flakes off his fingers), it signals the Darker and Edgier turn that the last two episodes will take (even more so than the first two episodes, natch!).
Once Original, Now Overdone: 1UP called the original duology one of the most boring games of all time in 2004. It isn't hard to see why - an "Action RPG" where players don't actively attack much of the time. Even by 1988 it was getting stale, and the next three games were all about the franchise essentially trying to find its footing in an industry with plenty of competition. These days, seeing what made the early Ys titles significant in any way can be extremely difficult (the impressive-for-the-era graphics, amazing music and the fact the games were voiced at all - nowadays, meh; in 1990, absolutely mind-blowing).
Only the Creator Does It Right: Variation - given how NIS America handled the initial localization all the way to its PC Porting Disaster of Ys VIII, it's unlikely there's another publisher aside from XSEED Games whom fans will ever want when future installments are announced for an overseas release due to XSEED's more favorable track record for the franchise.
Several ports of Ys I and Ys II are this: the TurboGrafx-CD version included excellent voice acting, CD audio, Anime cutscenes and character portraits, combined both games into a single campaign and kept player stats, which all subsequent ports would follow up on, and fine-grained movement when the PC-88 version only had FM audio and movement restricted to one tile at a time. The PlayStation Portable version that was subsequently ported to Steam has some expanded areas, significantly upgraded visuals with high-resolution sprites, a more expansive, colorful script, and allows players to pick between the Ys Complete midi arrangements, the PC-88 originals with unused tracks or a remixed symphonic rock score with live band and orchestra (though it lacks voice acting).
The console versions of Ys III: developer Tonkin House's Super Famicom port significantly upgraded the graphics when porting from the much weaker PC-88, while the Hudson SoftTurboGrafx-CD port only slightly upgraded the visualss due to the limited amount of main memory and graphics data that could be accessed in its RAM, yet significantly outdid the Super Famicom's sound upgrade due to having red book audio and enough space on the CD to hold voice acting.
In general, the PlayStation 2 ports are pretty shoddy: their versions of Ys I, Ys II and Ys IV: Mask of the Sun use polygonal graphics and voice acting, but textures are blocky and appear sub-par, while music has been downgraded to midi, and the art coloring isn't improved. Its attempts at revamping combat only leads to sluggish controls. The only exception is the Konami port of The Ark of Napishtim.
The Nintendo DS versions of Ys I and Ys II has awkward polygons, another stiff attempt at melee combat, the bottom screen map is distracting from the top's game-play. While the Bump Attack combat can be used, it can only be done via touch controls that are choppy and unresponsive. These ports might have had some unique additions (Co-Op Multiplayer), but they don't make up for their lack of quality. However, its musical arrangements are very solid as it uses Ys Eternal as a basis.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Reviewers of the Android and iOS versions of Ys I and Ys II state the Bump Attack system works exceptionally well on touchscreen devices because it eliminates the need for a virtual button to initiate a physical attack.
Scrappy Mechanic: The Bump Attack system of combat in Ys I, Ys II and Ys IV, where attacking enemies doesn't involve hitting a button to strike with a weapon, but rather running into an enemy from any angle except directly in front of them in order to deal damage while avoiding it simultaneously. It's especially unpopular with newer players, even those who try out the enhanced remakes of Ys I and Ys II, who often come in expecting a battle system like The Legend of Zelda or Crystalis. However, there have been some old and newer fans of the franchise who will defend it on grounds other than nostalgia, citing it can be fun to simply bulldoze over enemies and that it requires a different kind of strategy (although it's telling the game-play was radically altered in Ys III and changed to be more "traditional" for installments by Ys V).
Sequel Displacement: Ask a Western gamer to describe an Ys game (assuming they know of the series at all); most likely they'll get a description of a Nice Girl named Elena, her Jerkass brother Chester, and a town called Redmont. Ys III is the best-known of the franchise in the public eye, thanks to the fairly significant amount of promotion the game got and the width of its release on all three then-modern fourth-generation consoles, followed by a remake on the PlayStation Portable and its port onto Steam. More recently, a fair number of people may describe Ys SEVEN as the one they vaguely recall due to its exclusivity on the PlayStation Portable (until its Steam port in 2017); similarly, Ys VIII with regards to NIS America's divisive localization and PC efforts. Just about nobody knows of or remembers the original games, though, despite their TurboGrafx-16 release in North America, while The Ark of Napishtim may dimly register on the radar of those who have played the PlayStation 2 port.
While the English voice work for most of the games that have it are divisive at best, its use in the TurboGrafx-CD version of Ys Book I & II is often considered to have the best English voice work for a TurboGrafx-CD game and is still generally considered good, namely on how Hudson Soft and Falcom surprisingly got known voice talent, such as Alan Oppenheimer, Michael Bell, Jim Cummings, and Debi Derryberry to provide voice acting in key scenes..
The primary cast of XSEED Games' PlayStation Portable version of The Oath in Felghana: while a lot of the extras tend to vary, Elena and Chester stand out as fantastic performances and rarely go without praise. The game's story wouldn't be half as charming without them.
Vindicated by History: Ys III and Ys IV - the former was such a radical shift in the series' game-play, going from a top-down Action RPG to a side-scrolling perspective with active melee combat, while the latter returned to its traditional roots, yet lacked direct involvement by Falcom (who only provided an outline of the story and its soundtrack), while featuring many contradictory versions. The TurboGrafx-CD and Sega Genesis ports of Ys III use altered translations, leaving the Sega Genesis port as the best with FM music ; even though the Super Nintendo version had a decent translation, its visuals were muddy and the music samples were terrible. Fortunately, thanks to definitive reworkings by Falcom themselves, Ys: The Oath in Felghana and Ys: Memories of Celceta iron out problems pertaining to both games, revamping them to reflect modern game-play elements in the style of Ys VI and Ys SEVEN, respectively, alongside live music. Meanwhile, for those that prefer the original Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys, a Fan Translation of the TurboGrafx-CD game was released complete with an English fan dub, giving players the opportunity to see what the game was like upon release.
XSEED Games seems to specialize in this with its English localizations, such as with the random Castlevania: Symphony of the Night reference in Ys SEVEN from a minor Non-Player Character and Ys I & II Chronicles Plus on Steam renaming Dr. Buldo and Slaghf to the easier-to-pronounce Dr. Bludo and Slaff. In fact, the publisher must have had a heyday with Chronicles Plus by throwing in every obscure reference they could think of whenever Adol hits a villager with a fireball rather than just use a generic angry phrase in Ys II.
XSEED Games is not alone in using this trope, however: Falcom's own translation to English for the "Shrine of Solomon" in the Android/iOS versions by DotEmu that use Nihon Falcom's original title cards instead of localized title cards reveal Nihon Falcom's English name of this place is actualy the "Shrine of Salmon". Hudson Soft renamed it to Solomon Shrine in the English localization of the TurboGrafx-CD version, and the latter has stuck for almost every other English localization since.
Ys VIII), others were willing to give them a chance, seeing as this was their first foray into Ys. Discussions continued when NIS America withheld the launch of the PC version of Ys VIII by delaying it indefinitely a day before launch due to the publisher's concerns the game wasn't fully optimized for the platform. Seven months later following additional delays, the PC port was finally released, albeit not entirely to standard.