Finally gotten started on Ys Origin, after waiting ten years for a console release! Damn, I'm glad to finally play this game, and it completely lives up to my expectations.
For some reason I had it lumped in with the "Seven" era of Ys games originally, but when my friend started playing the PC version some years back it dawned on my that this is a straight up follow-up to Felghana, the arguably best game of the series, and it really shows.
It's basically marrying Felghana with Ys 1 & 2, essentially my two (three) favourite titles of the series, and I'm loving all the nostalgic callbacks. I didn't recognise all of the bosses, but it's great to see new takes on them, most of them having really unique and creative designs, probably even better than Felghana's.
It has the awkward unique EXP and damage scaling of the two first games, reuses most of the same items, and ties directly into the story - crazy that it took them nearly 20 years to make a new game that is actually
about Ys (and 10 more years for me to play it). Honestly, doing that feels way more canon than keeping Adol as the main character and changing everything else. I hope there will be more games doing the same in the future. Especially getting rid of a silent protagonist really helps with telling the story. You can tell this game was made around the same time as the first Trails game.