E3 2010: Hands-on with Ys: The Oath in Felghana for PSP

Thanks to XSEED, North America is finally going to get to play Ys: The Oath in Felghana. This reimagining/retelling of Ys III was originally a Japan exclusive, only available on PCs. It was recently ported to the PSP though, and that port will be headed to the US in November, 2010. I got to learn a little about Ys: Oath in Felghana and try exploring its world a little bit during my meeting with XSEED at E3 2010.

Like the other Ys games XSEED is working on, Ys: The Oath in Felghana offers many customization options to players. You can customize your game controls, the game’s difficulty level and the voice acting. There is full voice acting during cutscenes, and players can choose to turn on or off a narrator’s voice if you’d like to “hear” what Adol might be thinking.

I also got to explore a bit of Ys: The Oath in Felghana‘s fully 3D, interconnected world. You can take Adol anywhere, and he can run and jump around the areas. He also has a six pronged attack to use against enemies, and can charge up his attack to deal lots of damage to enemies – especially large swarms of smaller enemies. You can also jump and attack at the same time to do downward or upward thrusts. Defeating enemies makes enemies drop gems which you then use to heal. Since there are no healing items, you really need to be careful when grabbing these.

There were two more aspects I found particularly interesting about Ys: The Oath in Felghana. First, the game keeps track of how you’re doing. If you die repeatedly at certain spots or areas, the game will automatically downgrade the difficulty – permanently. Think of it as a badge of shame. Also, I didn’t notice any loading. The only loading I saw was when the game first began and when a save file was accessed so I could start playing.

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