It feels like just last week that I was lamenting the decline of premium action-RPGs in the App Store. Oh right, it was just last week. Well, someone at DotEmu must have a spiritual connection to me, because they’re going to be bringing Falcom’s legendary classic Ys to mobile platforms soon. Specifically, they’re bringing Ys Chronicles 1, the PC remake of the original 1987 game that kicked off a series still going strong to this day. I can only hope this is just the beginning because if I get to play Oath In Felghana on my iPhone someday, I’m going to break TouchArcade’s article word limit in the review.
In Ys, you play as Adol Christin, a young red-headed adventurer who drifts from place to place solving every little problem anyone can come up with. In this game, he’s tasked by a mysterious fortune teller to seek out the magical Books Of Ys. These books contain the secrets to putting a stop to the evil that has been growing in the land. The story is fairly light, but it serves as more than enough dressing for the action that follows. And oh, what action follows, my friends. Ys is not an action-RPG for the faint of heart. The boss fights in this game are white-knuckled contests that require fast reflexes and good old-fashioned pattern recognition. Hopefully the touch controls will be up to the task, but if they’re not, DotEmu are usually pretty good about supporting external controllers of many types.
The teaser trailer doesn’t specify a release date beyond saying that it’s coming soon, and it doesn’t show much in the way of gameplay footage. Since this is already out on PC and PSP, though, I’m sure you can find some gameplay video somewhere to give you the general idea. We’ll bring you further information as we get it. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here and wait for the news to come crashing through the wall like a giant metaphorical Dogi.
