YS VS TRAILS IN THE SKY: ALTERNATIVE SAGA
Original Release: Falcom, 2010, PSP
Falcom moves in on the arena fighter space created by Square with Dissidia, but with what is essentially a repurposed Ys 7 engine
Ys vs Trails In The Sky: Alternative Saga (PSP, Falcom, 2010)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Also transliterated as "Ys vs Sora no Kiseki," this was basically Falcom's attempt to horn in on the popularity of Final Fantasy: Dissidia with their own comparable title featuring characters from Ys and the Trails in the Sky games. It's basically like playing Dissidia's "Arcade Mode," though, in that it foregoes the more complex stuff like the "Bravery Points" system and the QTE cinematic special moves and has a simpler graphical style and camera system. This one is more like Sloppy Action-MMORPG: The Arena Fighting Game, sitting somewhere halfway between Power Stone and Dissidia in style. I think it was actually meant to follow the Ys series' shift to a more MMORPG-like battle engine with its 7th game, which came out for PSP about a year before this did.
Upon first firing it up I really didn't "get" how to play it effectively. I went into "Free" mode just to play around and get a feel for it, and was quickly annihilated when I tried to engage in every battle as one of the enemies would pull out a "SUPA ANIME DAHKNESS BURAAD-O" or something and just wipe out like half my health instantly (though they never seem to do that much damage to each other). I only started winning by accident when I picked Adolf Crispy, fought in the lava stage and started running around exploring for bonus items while the CPU all wound up Royal Rumbling with each other in the magma and killing themselves.
It turns out the game actually wants you to go straight to "Story" mode, where you get a paced tutorial over the first few battles. The X button is your all-purpose dodge duck dip dive and dodge button, and it seems to be key to victory as the only way I could win anything was to spam it to fly and roll around the enemy taking little chip shots on them.
But the hard fact is, eventually you're just gonna have to Grind to get past certain challenges. Eventually bosses or whatever just hit too hard and take too little damage off you. Each individual character gains EXP by being used in any of the game's various modes (a la Dynasty Warriors), you also get currency for use at a shop and can get random equipment drops at the end of every battle. The loot system is copied almost exactly from Dissidia, the menus even look very similar.
I think it's fair to say the game's hyperactive, sloppy fighting and MMO-like reliance on repetitive grinding is going to be hit-or-miss. What is more universally enjoyable is that the game doubles as a sort of Falcom celebration, incorporating bits and pieces from much of the rest of its library. For example, you can catch Sorcerian's "Bloody River" as one of the random menu songs that pops up from the outset. You gradually unlock a whole slew of wallpapers, movies, a "sound test" jukebox of songs, and such. That's probably the strongest recommendation for putting up with the frankly crazy amount of grinding this game seems to expect from you.
Ultimately, I think the game was really relying on online multiplayer to carry it. You can still pull that off in this day and age with emulation, but it's tricky and the pool of takers is probably gonna be quite low. I really don't know who the single-player experience was meant for ... Asian kids on Ritalin is my best guess? Not me, that's for sure. And I'm a huge fan of Ys, at least the older ones ... Ys 7 was right about where Falcom in general lost me with its aesthetic and gameplay changes, and this game is definitely a part of that whole trend.
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