Beat the game and thought i'd give some thoughts on it so far.

Game: Ys Origin (From HB, should be the same as GoG)

Graphics: 3D with 2D sprites. In comparison to Ys 5 on the PS2, it's very similar and has a very nice feel to it. The character portraits are nice, and full drawn images are beautiful and easy on the eyes. All sprites look nice and clean, and are animated well.

Music: Beautiful and upbeat, keeps you playing. If it weren't for the music you'd probably lose interest very quickly.

Sound: Good assets, if they are reused from earlier/later games i'm not sure. There is no voice acting, but then again there doesn't need to be. Everything sounds at the right level so nothing will be shrilling to your ears.

Story: Confusing, but as a prequel to the series it fills in the gaps and tells the overall universe's layout fairly well, even if you are limited to only the tower... As well as about the two goddesses, and the source of the evil.

Stages: Each stage has their own theme, and you'll get unique items to combat issues on those stages (cleats to walk on slippery glass, boots that resist quicksand, etc).

Warning: If you don't have water scales for holding your breath; You can and will die quickly once you run out of air. There's no slow drop of HP over time, it's a HUGE drop of HP very very quickly once your oxygen runs out. Also you need to equip the scales for them to work, unlike most of the items in the inventory.

Bosses: Each monster boss plays out the same way: Stun it, hit it's weak point, repeat. All bosses have multiple stages, although most of them only have 1 life bar. When their life runs below a certain point they will either have more attacks and patterns, or just be more annoying at times. The final boss has multiple forms, which i have yet to beat, so... Be ready to be frustrated at some of the bosses or cheap kills.

Bugs/Issues: You can't skip cutscenes (although the videos can be if you beat the game previously), and i really wish there was a quick way to equip the mask and swap it back out with your other item quickly so you can search for hidden objects... Although the mask's uses seem fairly limited to a few specific cases.

The books/information section has GP listed under one of the stats, which i think is suppose to be SP.

Also graphical options are set in a launcher, so if you want to raise/lower effects you need to restart the whole game. Also if you have a wireless or controller you want to use, have it plugged-in or turned on before starting the game, otherwise it probably won't recognize it.

The game seems to work fine shoving all the files on an ISO and running it from ram via imDisk, so that's always a plus...

Characters: The three characters play quite differently.

Yunica: Good & balanced. close combat with some ranged. A fun first playthrough. Wind early on acts as an excellent nearby AOE. If you usually want to play the growing innocent hero, definitely fills that role.

Hugo: Ranged & magic. Plot concentrates more hinting the story between him and Toal. Lots of button mashing until you get your second skill (bomb) or third skill (fire AOE).

Toal: Close combat, fast. Plot shows the other half of the storyline, path of uncertainty and then redemption. Also has the true ending (or so i've read). Good close combat as he sticks to enemies when you're attacking (Rather than randomly missing).

Difficulties: I played Normal and Very Easy.

Very Easy: Not quite a cake-walk, but i didn't need to do any grinding, and bosses weren't nearly as annoying. If you just want to get through the story, just play this.

Normal: Several times (usually bosses) i'd die simply because i couldn't deduce their attack pattern before they killed me. Several fights i ended up replaying over and over again. Some grinding required. After a while it got on my nerves. Some grinding required mid & late game. You also need every upgrade.

Finally: I think the game was well made, sounded beautiful, good story. If you want action/adventure/RPG, i heartily recommend!



edit: updated 5 March 2015

I just finished Origin on Normal with Yunica today, after a Normal playthrough with Hugo, and I have a Toal save right after beating the sand monster. Loved the game, and I don't think you can say much about the story without having played through it with each character, as it's interwoven and each character campaign will give you insight to what's happening in different parts of the story (I'm particularly interested in finding out who was the traitor in the search party that gave away the location of the Goddesses, something that's being explored in the Toal campaign).

As for bugs, I should mention that whenever I reach the final boss on top of the tower, usually the game crashes (the same happens when starting a new game with Toal, as the game starts atop the tower). It's probably just something with my computer but, still, I thought it was worth mentioning. When I restart the game, it prompts me a "would you like to load a backup?" message, so, I would think this is something the game does on some machines or OSes. It's annoying, to say the least, but it didn't stop me from finishing the game or enjoying it.

I had already played The Oath in Felghana a few years back and I still think it's better than Origin, but I really loved my time with the latter and it's definitely one of my newfound favourite games.

Maybe thread "Ys Origin - Out of Memory" could help you with this, the solution there helped me with exactly this issue: two crashes during final battle with Yunica or during final video sequences before I was able to get her clear save, and frequent crashes in any part of the game when browsing through monster log. I applied it before starting Toal's campaign, and it didn't crash a single time since then (I already completed it for Toal). Alternatively, lowering resolution may help too, but I didn't test it.

Well, according to that thread, you need a 64bit version of Windows, which I don't have, so, my best bet would be to lower the resolution, something I'm not too keen on doing, as the resolution I'm using for the game is already low enough (1024x600)...

Interesting... I was tempted to do Hugo first, however i'm finding the slight annoyance of having to mash the button every time i want to attack, while with Yunica most of the time i was using the wind attack while it was charged up which does like 6 attacks as a local AOE... Is there a upgrade fairly early on that lets the eyes attack constantly as an autofire? If not i might not finish with Hugo, and may never get to Toal either...

Seeing as i've put [s]over 20[/s] hours into the game i'm not sure i can go through that much with the other two, unless it was on very easy just to speed things up.

Also i heard there was a NG+ which gave new characters 30k SP to start with, which would do great as a early boost in the game. Sadly i don't see that as an option anywhere... I know i heavily enjoyed that on the PS2, which i played like 6 months ago or so. But i don't know feels like there's something lacking... But i can't put my finger on what's off about it...

edit: I decided i'll play the other two characters, but i'm going to switch to very easy just to save time.

Edit2 Note: Apparently saves make note of the day/time as 24-hour clocks and not as how many hours you put into it... quite confusing if you aren't ready for it... It says i put in 22 hours in the other game, and yet i think it actually meant it was last saved at 10PM...

I don't think there's an autofire. This game was made before "play the game for me"-features became common. :P

Wanting to not get carpal tunnel syndrome isn't the same as 'play it for me'. I'm quite happy to have an fast/auto-fire on games like megaman simply because it's hard on your thumb/hand after a while...

Course if i wanted the game played for me, i could just watch a lets-play on youtube and have no interaction at all...


edit: and yes i know your post is effectively just a joke :P

I'm sorry if this sounds like thread-derailing, but since we have a conversation going on in here, I might as well update my experience in this thread. OK, I just finished Origin and, granted, the game is amazeballs, in some ways I like it better than Felghana -- at least story-wise. The thing is, that memory thing is a real nuisance and it effectively prevents you from *actually* finishing the game, as Toal's end game (SPOILER: the true end game) cannot be completed and the clear data saved, so I had to follow huan's advice and install the Large Address Aware tool and follow the 32-bit Windows tutorial, which involved inputting a command into the Command Prompt running it as administrator. If you don't do this, the game is nearly unfinishable, and this is a huge deal, because, otherwise, it's one of the best games available on GOG.

I'm baffled as to why not that many people have spoken up on this subject, it would seem most gamers basically put Origin on their ever growing backlogs or they finished the game with one character and thought that was it. You don't finish Origin until you finish it with Toal, and as far as I'm concerned, you don't need to do a run on Very Easy, Easy is, not surpisingly, easy enough for a first playthrough if you wish to unlock all the extras, and I don't think there's anything wrong in sliding down the difficulty when you have trouble enjoying a game. Easy still provides a decent challenge (especially when it comes to the awesome bosses), and it lets you enjoy the story at your own pace. I finished the game with Hugo after 8h00m, Yunica's game took me 7h20m and Toal's campaign clocked at around 5h30m (since I already knew the layout of the tower and what had to be done). I finished each character's quest with all items maxed out, so I didn't miss a thing; the only aspect I could have done better was upgrading all the blessings -- I didn't feel like dragging the games longer than I needed to, just so I could get the required SP, especially since, now that I finished the game with all three characters, I can enable the SP boost on any new game I start, granting me an extra 30K SP right off the bat.

So, if you want to at least watch the real ending of this game, if you don't want to play as Hugo or Yunica, finish it with Toal (you unlock Toal by completing the game with any of the other two characters, I think, at least I unlocked it with my first Hugo play through, with no need to go through it with Yunica) and you'll get it. Be advised, though, that the "Out of Memory" issue is a real thing and it kicks in pretty hard during the Toal end game, so it is highly recommended -- I would go as far as to say it is, indeed, required -- that you use the aforementioned LAA tool in order to make the game properly finishable.

Someone should make a sticky of that fix, it's the same as playing Arcanum without the UAP or playing Interstate '86 without the Glider launcher: pretty much impossible.

It appears this issue only comes up when you finish the game with a character. The game is real hard so I'm not sure many people even get so far.

I for my part never managed to defeat the final boss so I wasn't aware that there even was a problem.

Even if I finished it, I probably wouldn't have enough motivation left to play through it again with a different character. I assume the dungeon is the same for the other character (at least there were no visible paths Yurica couldn't get to).

The game/story does change subtly depending on the character... When playing as Toal certain paths aren't available (not easily anyways). I'll have completed all three characters in the next few hours.

Yeah but just a different story is not enough for me to replay a game.

Just finished as Toal, and the ending is... different enough. There's a secondary final boss, and a couple search results record that Toal's ending is the most canon. Probably the best way to play it is Yunica, then Toal.

Oh well. Let's see... now i got to get the other games so i can review them here... eventually. But i don't know what i'll be playing next.

Quite a few bosses are different in Toal's path and each character requires different strategies to make it through the boss encounters. Toal's ending has been confirmed as canon as well.

For what it's worth, I finished Ys Origin last week with Yunica, and I did not experience any crashes or any other issues during the final boss or ending sequence.

Yunica's and Hugo's play throughs are relatively issue free, at least on my end they were, I had the game crash on me when reaching the final boss with Hugo, but I just loaded the backup data and all went fine. I wouldn't be so upset about this if it didn't give me all the trouble it did when trying to finish the game with Toal; you have two end boss fights in sequence, with no chance to save in between, and, as per Ys tradition, every boss fight is preceded by a long scene of dialogue. I could beat the second boss, but then the game would *always* crash, preventing me from saving Toal's clear data -- and watching the final cutscene.

I don't quite understand the feelings of some so-called gamers... so, basically, you buy games just to... collect them and say you own them? If I really like a game I usually replay it to hell and back, I had no trouble whatsoever with having to finish the game three times, at least finish it with Toal, so you get the extended cutscene, an ending where no one dies and, well, the canonical ending, for all intents and purposes. I honestly don't think the game is *that* hard, I finished it with three characters on Normal and, sure, I found each playthrough challenging, but far from insanely difficult. Like I said before, Easy is a good difficulty for people to start, if they're not very good at action games; you have slightly more health, deal more damage and enemies do less damage to you. If you feel Easy is still too hard, there's no shame in playing on Very Easy, it unlocks the exact same things, and you get to enjoy the beautiful art and sound designs of the game.

Having said this, I never understood the replayability issues, I'm not one to finish a game and never touch it again; we can always play several games at once, the fact we get new games doesn't mean we should stop playing our old ones. I'm not a game collector, I'm someone who actually enjoys playing and replaying video games, as long as I like them -- which I often do. I play through Silent Hill 2, Grim Fandango, most of the Zelda titles I own and Terranigma at least three times per year.